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Do we really need a book to tell us what snobbery is and how it infects all the nooks and crannies of society? Have fashions in snobbery changed in the past half century? Is snobbery in America significantly different from snobbery elsewhere? Is author Joseph Epstein himself a snob? Am I?
These are some of the questions that might flit through a reader's mind as they glide through Epstein's enjoyably lightweight survey of the American snobocracy. Epstein, a man of impressive academic standing, has not here delivered of himself a weighty academic analysis. Rather, he has skimmed lightly over the surface of his topic, dropping some names, defecating on others, keeping the tone of his discourse breezily informal. This is not really a necessary book but it is fun to read.
Your true snob, says Epstein, has two goals in life --- to play up to those above him on the social ladder and to keep himself ahead of those below. These objectives govern his every move in life --- what he eats, what he wears, what he reads, where he lives, what he drives, who he admires, where he (or his kids) go to school. Is this news? Perhaps not, at least for serious observers of the social scene.
Another of his basic messages is that the old pre-World War II snobbery barometer, calibrated by social standing, elite schools, debutante balls and WASPishness, has given way to a new one that measures "celebrity" status, restaurant choice, charity work, and career choice among other things. It now also defers to such former outcasts as Jews and homosexuals. The one factor constant in both eras, of course, is what Epstein calls "serious wealth."
Epstein takes aim at some easy targets in his survey: Wine connoisseurship, country club membership, name-dropping, fashion; and he can be nasty indeed when someone or something really excites his ire (Teddy and Jacqueline Kennedy, Susan Sontag, The New York Review of Books, Gore Vidal, virtually anything and everybody French); but in general his tone is fairly civilized, his barbs leavened with a dash of wry humor.
One surprising exception to this, given the author's academic standing and his 22 years as editor of The American Scholar, is his unremittingly sour assessment of American higher education. He damns American colleges almost without exception as shallow places that concentrate on nonessentials and turn out graduates as vacuous as they themselves are. For the old Yale-Harvard-Princeton axis of "best schools" he has invented a derisive portmanteau word: Yarvton. And his assessment of old Yarvton is scathing. These places, he insists, get by merely on no-longer-valid reputations. If it is still thought better to go to Yarvton than to Arizona State --- and it is --- that is merely a symptom of the indestructibility of snobbish prejudices.
Epstein delivers his lightweight sermon deftly and readably, inventing along the way some delightfully self-explanatory new words: Statustician, snobographer, virtucrat. He is himself a leading character in the book, his personal snobberies admitted and dissected along with everyone else's. He devotes pages to explaining the subtle differences and ramifications of snobbery's subgenera --- class, taste, status, prestige, fashion, celebrity.
One strange aberration is his attempt to define what a truly snobbery-free person might be like. This paragon, it seems, would be "on the lower edge of the old upper class," would have had some public schooling but then would have attended Andover or Groton, then Harvard or Princeton (now where does that leave Yarvton?), would have the necessary supply of money and an attractive Jewish wife and two kids who play tennis and are serious swimmers. Doesn't sound like anyone I know.
The end result of all this Sociology Lite is a diverting book, but one that need not be taken terribly seriously. Most readers, one imagines, will find themselves impaled on Epstein's sharp prose at some point --- maybe through their reading habits, taste in music, or the names of their children --- but not to worry. Snobbery is everywhere. It is inescapable. One is reminded of the advice supposedly once given by a government agency to a fellow desperate to rid his suburban lawn of dandelions: If all else fails, "learn to love the little things and live with them."
--- Reviewed by Robert Finn (Robertfinn@aol.com)
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