Yesterday, Kevin had a post in which he said,

. . . perhaps Jay or Rick or Linda could help me out with this: Is there a word — preferably something outlandishly German — for the unique pleasure that some people derive from the disgust they cultivate regarding the amusements of other people? If there is not such a word (“snobbery” is not quite it), somebody should coin one. It would be useful for royal-birth commentary.

I immediately thought of Mark Helprin — whom I have heard address this subject several times, brilliantly. Once, he told me about going into the office of a well-known editor and seeing a bunch of kitsch — risible, Middle American kitsch. It was the editor’s way of mocking those tastes. And Mark, being Mark, let him have it: “This is how you get your yuks, putting down people less fortunate than you, in their natural endowments and life opportunities.” (I have paraphrased. I’m sure Mark gave it to him better than that.)

In a series I did on his latest novel, In Sunlight and in Shadow, I noted some passages related to what Kevin is talking about. One was this: “Irony is only a term for a cowardly mocking of someone else’s true conviction.” Another was this:

Townsend Coombs was too young for his name, which properly belonged to a portly, middle-aged insurance salesman in a small town, though not the one in New Hampshire from which Townsend Coombs had come, but perhaps in Indiana or Ohio, or some other place that sophisticates, having visited for perhaps an hour, would then mock for eternity.

(I quote both of these passages in this installment of my series on Sunlight.)

Enough of my indirection. How does Mark respond to Kevin’s post? As follows:

The word I use is Berumfeistenzumgefahrt. I don’t guarantee that this is a word in German, but when applied to the actions of demonstrative snobs who wish proudly to illustrate their distance from the rabble, it works, because it’s what they do. Their lives are perpetually like those of cats who present suffering, half-dead birds to their masters. In this case, the birds are “lesser” people and the masters are the herd of similar snobs.

Amen.