Francesco Pacifico

In Class, Francesco Pacifico tells the story of a young Italian couple who move to America, specifically Williamsburg: The Promised Land, to chase their ambitions. Once there, they fall in with a group of Italian expats. These languidly ambitious men and women will come together and fall apart, but can they escape their fates? A grand, subversive novel that bridges Italy and America, high and low, money and art; that channels Virginia Woolf and Kanye West, Henry Miller and Lil' Wayne; Class is an unforgettable, mordantly funny account of Italians chasing the American dream.

Class

Landen Angeline

What everyone else says about an unsatisfactory ending is true, so if you’re looking for clear resolve and redemption for extremely unlikable characters; this ain’t that book. 

Pacifico seems to be attempting something subversive with Italian slang - which seems to be inexplicably tied with how much money your parents make - but a lot of the details of these linguistic tags are lost on the English reader as we hear the characters refer to Brooklyn in the silliest possible ways. Williamsburg is "Willy" and we get out of touch descriptions such as: “You rented a large room in a rickety apartment whose molted hardwood floors slanted from north to south - No New York apartment had perfectly straight floors, you'd heard. There were large windows that let in, pale Nordic light and a rotten front door with three locks."
 
This intentionally out-of-touch-with-reality language blends with the RELENTLESS descriptions of shit these people consume or dream about consuming and forms something the kids today would call “Cringe AF.” Quite frankly, I had a lot of fun observing this cringy behavior here. These bougie a-holes were so obsessed with Vice, Wes Anderson, and chasing the American pop culture machine that they offered up a perfect, globalized perspective to the influence of American consumerism. I think anyone who has spent any amount of time outside of the United States (Particularly in Asia) will speak to the ubiquitous nature of Supreme T-shirts, Nike Air MAX, and NYU alumni pseudo-intellectuals. 

Is the ending incoherent? Yes. Are the characters extremely unlikeable? Absolutely. I think the only way that Class really shines, is as a critique that goes beyond New York and Upper Middle-class Italians and speaks to the way that that modern consumer culture is changing the global bourgeoisie and It does it often with strikingly beautiful prose.

Class

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