I grew up in the suburbs, a calm suburb, without tension, with working-class and middle-class people mixed together.

I grew up a middle class, colonized child of teachers and librarians and people, women especially, who treasured education.

I come from the working-class area of Stockholm, and I grew up with Serbian and Chilean people.

I myself am consummately middle class. We grew up in upper-middle-class suburbs in Oklahoma City, and that's very much the same ethos as what Richard Yates and John Cheever wrote about.

Slums may well be breeding grounds of crime, but middle class suburbs are incubators of apathy and delirium.

With a billion people and a huge middle class being created, how can you ignore it?