A Guide to Wasp Literature, Part 1

Sociologist E. Digby Baltzell is generally credited with coining the acronym “Wasp” (for White Anglo-Saxon Protestant), but we don’t read him or Thorstein Veblen (inventor of the phrase “conspicuous consumption”), for that matter. Much too heavy going. Mystery writers such as Agatha Christie, Dick Francis and Josephine Tey are more my people’s cup of, well, tea.

Here are a few other preppy classics, as well as some guides to the species. Curiously, many of these works are now out of print. (Though perhaps that is fitting, since Wasps are a dying breed and may well find ourselves out of circulation soon!)

1. The Great Gatsby. Perfection, though thank goodness the publishers didn’t use F. Scott Fitzgerald’s proposed title, The High-Bouncing Lover. That doesn’t sound our sort of thing at all. Wasps sigh over gorgeously tailored shirts just as Daisy does, are bred to believe in the green light, yet we are all borne back ceaselessly into the past. (Bonus—the book is fairly short for a classic.)

2. The Catcher in the Rye. Prep school perfection, but so revered that it’s impossible to say anything about the book or its late author, the reclusive J.D. Salinger, without sounding trite.

3. Who Killed Society? Those in the know will recognize that the cover is meant to mimic the distinctive black and orange of the Social Register. Readers in 1960 flipped through Cleveland Amory’s book looking for names they knew, no doubt in much the same way they perused the Register.

4. The Preppy Handbook. Often imitated (c.f. The Official Filthy Rich Handbook) but never surpassed. I’m astonished that this has yet to be reissued. Hasn’t aged much at all. (Mummy was right; pastels and tennis do keep one youthful!)

5. First Garden. When I was growing up, young ladies received a copy of this gracious guide to green thumbs by the arbiter of high Wasp taste, the late C.Z. Guest. (Her daughter Cornelia’s 1986 book, The Debutante’s Guide to Life, does not make the list. Nor does Paris Hilton’s more recent Confessions of an Heiress.)

6. The Way of The Wasp. Written during the first, altogether more benign, Bush administration, Richard Brookhiser's book is a plea for a return to values such as civic-mindedness and industry. (It appears that W never read it.)

7. The WASP Cookbook. I’ve cited this one before; I’m a big fan of the author, comedienne Alexandra Wentworth. She is the star of Head Case but is perhaps better known as the “Schmoopie” girlfriend from Seinfeld and the wife of political pundit George Stephanopoulos. (Of course, the real Wasp cookbook consists of recipes from Campbell’s soup labels carefully pasted into a notebook handed down from mother to daughter, for cook’s night out. If that fails, there’s always the local Junior League compilation.)

8. Wasp, Where Is Thy Sting? Scathingly funny examination of preppy mores with a Dixie twist, from Florence King, the author of the perennial favorite Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady.