BOURGEOIS ANONYMOUS
By
A gimmicky novel that remains strictly lower -class. Lavinia, struggling for standards, allows her roommate to take her to a meeting of ""Bourgeois Anonymous."" The participants in these meetings maintain anonymity by wearing hoods and cloaks. After the initial indoctrination of the ""Teacher,"" they stand up and tell of their fight against the ""rigor-mortis of total conformity."" Lavinia, a complete convert, discovers that her life is ""how passe -- how pre-World War I."" Then she meets Jeffrey, an illegitimate, self-educated, brilliant mathematician who is undergoing analysis in an attempt to (guess what?) learn to conform. The battle of the sexes becomes an upper-class discussion of the relative merits of the life of cliche. Beyond the rather dubious discoveries that ""when you're in love the whole world is bourgeois,"" Jeffrey's bastard father is the ""Teacher,"" and Jeffrey mathematically proves that ""there is no bourgeois,"" how long can a bourgeois reader read discussions of bourgeoisity before switching to Ed Sullivan?