The best preppy stuff is a little dinged-up, dented, frayed. It's not about neat and clean. It's about well-used and still handsome, solid, pretty. All those movies in which the preppy is the fastidious bad guy with the cable-knit sweater loosely knotted around his neck just got the whole feel of it WRONG. Go back and look at this book -- look at all the work that went into it, from the words, to the illustrations, to the way it is organized. If only our clever Tumblrs and BuzzFeed slideshows had this level of dedication.
I don't know when I first got my hands on this book, though I can't remember life without it. This handbook was my crack during those all-too-awkward pre-teen years. To this day I'm sure my overwhelming knowledge of East Coast boarding schools circa is disconcerting for those to whom it is somehow revealed, but you give an unbelievably gifted and imaginative ten-year-old girl copies of The Catcher and the Rye, A Separate Peace, and the Preppy Handbook and dare her not to dream. I'm proud of my past of wearing coulottes, headbands, argyle socks and Topsiders.
I loved my knickers and wish I still had a pair. This book encouraged me to imagine a life away from my own, where liquor cabinets were posh, boys were named Chip and Trip, furniture had heritage, and dogs were part of the family. And it's not like this came from nowhere. Hell, my childhood nickname was Kiki and I took tennis lessons. I still own an LL Bean fisherman's sweater and could probably find a pair of Weejuns, albeit badly worn, if pressed.
I think half my socks are argyle. I was raised by laissez-faire parents who enjoyed a monogram as much as the next guy. I still own multiple boat and totes! So you see, these dreams weren't born in a vaccuum. I just took them to the next level. I'm all for originality and whatnot, but I am a natural born preppy. I've tried to hide it for years, but I am happiest when wearing a Polo and swishing a drink.
Why fight it? Pink and green belong together. Totally useful for those who either live in New England, or ever want to visit there. Or just want a good giggle. Or both. Todd Cannon. What can I say. I think this book may have been meant as a joke but to some of us in the mid 80s it was a Handbook on how to dress, talk, and act. I'm embarrassed to admit it but I used to quote from it and we used it to settle arguments on what was proper and what wasn't.
They are prefect examples of people getting on with their daily life, at a time when nobody knew what 'preppy' was. I must have read the Handbook years ago and paid little attention. I re-read it a few years ago, and it is often glaringly accurate with a satirist's eye. I suggest everybody read it just for a laugh and maybe some insight. I've always thought of it as a nimble writer's view of their perceptions gathered growing up in or around what has become to be considered as "preppy".
In between the broad strokes drawn for mass consumption, the "Handbook's" finer lines really answered a few of my own questions and fond memories. I remember seeing it in the "humor" section of Barnes and Noble way back when. They must have thought so. My friend Ellis Duncan went to Hampden-Sydney and was pictured in the book as the 'good ol' boy'. I agree with Piece du jour that it was meant as a tribute. Believe it or not in my small rural town in Southwest Missouri I grew up with the same values, wearing the exact same clothes, driving the same cars with my house decorated the same way.
Were we preppy? Just traditional. I love reading your comments as much as I do your articles. As others have said, the book was a tribute in the form of very gentle satire. Looking through it now, the book is like one of those British society books about the "last season" before one of the World Wars: all that innocent joy before the fall, after the Preppy elite lost their control of the centers of economic and political influence, the prep schools were democratized, the elite colleges started looking closely at applicants' grades and test scores, the good stores all went out of business, and the only means by which old preppies could recreate their roseate joy was by buying used stuff on eBay.
Muffy, Great question. I say yes it is a satire, because it makes a caricature of preppies. It is however a great book and it is important to remember that comedy is not funny if it does not possess truth.
If you ask Lisa, she would confirm that it's satire. You should send her a tweet at the end of the poll, and reveal her answer. I am no longer sure what "preppy" means. In my mind it is a bit like using the term "classy", both terms obviously very un-U and capable of causing everyone present to squirm.
As I understand it The Preppy Handbook was meant to be humorous and i believe the biggest laugh came when the author realized it was being taken seriously. The author took what was a quintessentially American style and gave it a label thereby reducing it to the level of a "fashion" or "trend". It definitely was laughing at its subject.
The concept was funny, I thought, but the book only"meh". The remake, however, verged on fantasy, was not amusing and despite the attractive cover I returned it as did my friends. I vote: satire. There are plenty of comical critical judgments in the book, at least I think so. The difficulty with irony is that there is often nothing to signal it's use Necessitates wealth.
Garners admiration while allowing plenty of time for golf. I remember when the PH came out and being dumbfounded to find my life dissected in its pages. Dumbfounded for a number of reasons that my life was such a stereotype, and that it was all explained to "them" -- the great unwashed. At the end of the day I think it was both a satire, and also right on the mark. Had I know known or become related to many "real" preppies, I wouldn't have had a clue.
But so many things in the book jumped off the page when I looked around 30 years ago at the people I was associating with at the time.
But time doesn't stand still and some things have passed on, just as they always have. The book is almost nostalgia now. Here's another thought on the subject: the preppie handbook can be both satirical and factual but what do you think of the Ralph Lauren magazine advertisements? Of course it's meant to be taken seriously but the reality is, it's pure fantasy--sort of--just to sell clothes.
I remember the first time we saw the Official Preppie Handbook. Someone was reading from it as we munched our doughnuts and sipped our coffee in the parish hall after church high church, of course. This was just up the street from the White House and the person reading passages from the book was a lobbyist.
Everyone was laughing at the things in the book but the men all checked their jackets to make sure they had the correct number of buttons. Having studied at a prep school albeit one whose name was misspelled in the OPH , I will take a rigorous view on the division among literary forms.
I think the principal purpose of the authors was humor rather than ridicule, so I voted no. Press for the perusal of customers. I have two copies of the book: one is satire but the other is not. I enjoy them equally. An unwitting bohemian, w. The tone of the Official Preppy Handbook is light satire.
I remember when it was first published, and many people in Northwestern Connecticut had an adverse reaction to it. I would say OPH was intended to be gently satirical, and that the depiction of the lifestyle was accurate and still is to a degree. You're kidding! I had three Renaults because I liked Renaults my French period.
I also had two Rover sedans and a Land-Rover my English period. But when I got married, I settled down and we've had Volvos ever since except a , mile flirtation with Ford. I never had to worry about being mistaken for a preppie but I know what it's like to be visiting with relatives at their house and being interrupted by people wanting to see where such-and-such general from the Civil War lived. People do ask if I'm related to a certain baseball player but I'm not.
I still crack up when I read the "Etiquette in Connecticut" bit, about being rear-ended on the Turnpike and discovering the guy crewed on someone's boat. I was 16 when the book came out. I did not go to private school, and my formative years were the 70s. I confess I owned more than one velour pull-over.
Sure there were silly things in the book. But it taught me the where and why to buy certain garments. I was frankly clueless, and the book was an enormous help to me! I would call it an homage to the "prep". It is satire, more specifically self-satire. Thing is you have to be in on it to get the joke.
Otherwise it appears to be a real how to manual. If you recognized your college room in the description you got the joke, if you didn't you saw it as a goal.
Not all satire has to be cutting, and I always had the feeling that it was written with a sense of instant nostalgia. Of course it's a satire! The best satire is painstakingly reported and accurate, with just a touch of the absurd. And one of the best satirist's tools is exposing the depths running below still waters, which The Official Preppy Handbook does beautifully, so successfully in part because it recognizes that effortlessness is at least partly a fabrication.
And there's nothing funnier than exposing hidden deliberateness. The insider can accurately report on the scene and has credibility because she is is in it, while the outsider develops heightened skills of observation honed to allow her to fit in, and therefore notices things others might not--and finds humor where true insiders don't. On it getting things right and other things wrong.
I think this is because of two things. And to point out some absurdities the work had to make errors that the in-the-know reader would see. Indeed growing up I would rarely have even heard the word prep itself. I feel silly using it as anything other than a noun even now. Prep exists outside of New England despite the regions thoughts on the subject.
It exists in NY and Philadelphia and way out in California too. Each of the schools in these regions have a slightly different affect. Outside of school I would also suggest that there are small to large differences in regional prep-itude. Specifically because of what I tend to think of as city prep and town prep. Geographic location might make subtle differences seem glaring.
Clothes and customs would be different, slightly. I always remember the list of preppy handbook colleges and how sprawling the list seemed. I think the two reasons explain the college list.
Because of reason 2 the list goes across the US and offers a wide variety of prep styles to choose from , and because of reason one omits certain schools because we, the reader, in our in-the-know wisdom already know the real answers. I had not seen this book in years, but when I saw the photo on your post the first thought that came to mind as I cracked up laughing was: "Look Muffy, a book about you. Honestly, I suppose definitions change from misuse.
Are we confusing Parody with satire?? Satire, true satire, P. Wodehouse, Benchley, or Thurber essays, well.
Read some satire before deciding what satire is, for heavens sake. The Preppy Handbook was a moneymaker and early retirement for the author. Parody and satire are not mutually exclusive. Parody primarily refers to the form e. If it was "satire," it certainly must have been stinging satire to be so attentively debated 34 years after publication. It's tongue-in-cheek. Is that the same thing as satire?
It's funny, with an element of truth, but not absolute truth. I missed the boat on this one. The closest I ever came to a diminutive was when a boy would yell the rather obvious, not to mention cringe-worthy, "Hey, Duff," at me across the park. I chose to keep that to myself. A Well-To-Do's Don't.
I discovered it was bad form to get excited when receiving money. Hence, when my weekly paycheck was handed to me, I refrained from sighing with relief and kissing it — albeit the pittance that it was. Cocktail Time. Lime ," and wondered if he was actually going out with my evil twin when I introduced brunch into our dating repertoire.
I Ski, Therefore I Am. I hit the slopes once, as it was my secondary school's senior trip. I hated it, yet milked every aspect of the outing to at least be able to add something to the water cooler conversation. Madras Madness. I learned to love.
My sartorial acquisitions also included khakis, oxford cloth shirts, a lot of navy blue, and oxblood, and I developed a taste for anything with an alligator insignia. I also procured a Coach bag and a Tiffany key chain. I drew the line at a down vest though; it was just too "life jacket" for me.
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