Snobbery: The American Version

Snobbery: The American Version, by Joseph Epstein (Houghton Mifflin, 274 pp., $25)

THEY are thorough chaps, the staff at NATIONAL REVIEW. Before they sent me this book for review, they telephoned, asked if I might be interested, and sent me details so I could decide. I did not need details. Who would not want to review a book on snobbery? I even got quite excited waiting for it to arrive. At last we would have a full-length defense of snobbery. That’s obviously what it would be, and about time too. Why obviously a defense? For the same reason that a book on racism, xenophobia, class hatred, and cruelty to small animals and children would obviously have to be a defense of them. All right, I shouldn’t have put it quite like that. Try some quotation marks: What needs defending is “xenophobia” and the others, that is, what passes today for xenophobia; that defense would be great fun to read. Xenophobia, racism, and cruelty to kittens are bad things. So what modern liberal society does is use these words to describe behavior it dislikes, but which is not xenophobic, etc. So patriotism gets put down as xenophobia. The traditional disciplining of savage young children to make them civilized adults is put down as child cruelty, and a sensitive attachment to the interests and lifestyles of one’s family, friends, and community is called class hatred.

About the Author

Joseph Epstein

Joseph Epstein is the author, most recently, of Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life: Especially If You’ve Had a Lucky Life.

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Snobbery: The American Version, by Joseph Epstein (Houghton Mifflin, 274 pp., $25)

THEY are thorough chaps, the staff at NATIONAL REVIEW. Before they sent me this book for review, they telephoned, asked if I might be interested, and sent me details so I could decide. I did not need details. Who would not want to review a book on snobbery? I even got quite excited waiting for it to arrive. At last we would have a full-length defense of snobbery. That’s obviously what it would be, and about time too. Why obviously a defense? For the same reason that a book on racism, xenophobia, class hatred, and cruelty to small animals and children would obviously have to be a defense of them. All right, I shouldn’t have put it quite like that. Try some quotation marks: What needs defending is “xenophobia” and the others, that is, what passes today for xenophobia; that defense would be great fun to read. Xenophobia, racism, and cruelty to kittens are bad things. So what modern liberal society does is use these words to describe behavior it dislikes, but which is not xenophobic, etc. So patriotism gets put down as xenophobia. The traditional disciplining of savage young children to make them civilized adults is put down as child cruelty, and a sensitive attachment to the interests and lifestyles of one’s family, friends, and community is called class hatred.