Quiet Street

May 15, 2023
A bestselling novelist and journalist reflects on how the ruling class perpetuates its own privilege. McDonell (b. 1984) grew up in a wealthy, well-connected Manhattan family. His mother is a writer, and his father has served as an editor at Rolling Stone, Newsweek, Esquire, and Sports Illustrated. Friendships with Upper East Side elites, attendance at prestigious schools like Buckley, Harvard, and Oxford, and travel to exotic locations were all part of his birthright within "The Fortress" of privilege. Where he differed from many of his peers was in how close he stood to the "ninety-nine percent." Just one generation removed from the working- and middle-class families that made them, the author's new-rich father and mother understood "how rare" their son's upbringing was. McDonell only began to see how charmed that life really was after his parents connected him to a publisher who helped transform his writing aspirations into a lucrative career. The author readily admits that he, like all members of The Fortress, existed within a bubble that spared them from "the societal traumas of racism, poverty [and] state violence. We never even had to wait in line, really." Set apart from the realities of those living difficult, just-scraping-by lives, they were also encouraged to believe in the meritocracy that masked "a profound entitlement" to the resources that supported a luxurious lifestyle--just as they were taught the (superficial) lessons of noblesse oblige that ultimately did little to change a global system designed to benefit them. Like Quiet Street, the stretch of East Harlem through which Buckley sporting event buses sometimes ran, wealth demanded moving in denial of race and class violence rather than actively speaking out against social injustice. As McDonell illuminates a rarified world of money, power, and connections, he also offers candidly sobering insight into the systemic cultural mechanisms designed to protect long-standing social inequalities. An eloquent and compelling study.

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May 22, 2023
Journalist and novelist McDonell (The Council of Animals) excavates his own privileged Manhattan upbringing in this slim but piercing study of classism in America. Though he fondly remembers his formative experiences at elite private schools in New York, and later at Harvard and Oxford universities, McDonell characterizes the culture of these institutions as a “superficial meritocracy” masking profound entitlement. He describes “The Bubble” that ensconced him and his prep school peers and the methods by which they reconciled the cognitive dissonance of their position at the top of the social hierarchy with their education’s purported values of “kindness, fairness, generosity.” These reflections support the author’s assertion—underscored at the end of the book through conversations with former classmates—that it is not loss of wealth that America’s elite fear most from reform, but rather a loss of self tied to that wealth. McDonell’s prose is ingratiating, and his recollections carefully drawn, but sun-washed memories of summers spent on Amagansett make this occasionally feel like an apologia for the 1%. Still, it’s an earnest and piercing examination of the mindset of the upper class.

July 1, 2023

McDonell (The Council of Animals) tells the story of growing up in New York City's wealthy and influential Upper East Side, where he enjoyed all the privileges of sailing lessons, trips to the Met, and holidays in private jets. Those not in his social group--mostly impoverished suburbanites who weren't white--were considered outsiders, and he ignored their existence. This work is a bold, moving description of the white ruling class of the American elite and how they unjustly maintain and pass on their privileges to their children. The author's fear is that the one percent in the United States will never have any serious thoughts about how to bring equality to all. The author notes they have been and remain unexposed and ignorant of those "others" and therefore lack any interest in their lives and fates. The book suggests that conversations between these divided groups could lead to better understanding and empathy for everyone. He bases this theory on his personal awakening when, as a reporter in Iraq and Afghanistan, he had an eye-opening revelation about people and a world he did not know existed. VERDICT Will likely appeal to general readers. It belongs in all social and behavioral sciences collections.--Claude Ury

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