First published July 14, 2002
Have you read Epstein’s “Snobbery: The American Version”? No? Well, dahling, you simply must!
A fairly typical, if exaggerated, display of snobbery there. The probing query that leaves off the author’s first name, implying that everyone (who is anyone) knows which Epstein is referred to. The mock astonishment upon finding out the interviewee’s ignorance.
Then the kicker: the recommendation that puts both parties in their place, the one superior with knowledge and up-to-dateness for having read the book, the other much lower for being in the ignorant position of having to be told what to read.
One picks up Joseph Epstein’s new book with a burning question of one’s own: Am I a snob? The short answer is, yes, you are. But rest assured, everyone is to some degree, at least in the way Epstein defines the term. “The essence of snobbery,” he writes, elaborating on Virginia Woolf’s definition, “is arranging to make yourself feel superior at the expense of other people.” By that measure, even if you’ve only looked at someone else’s potbelly and thanked God yours wasn’t as large, you’re a snob.
Classical Life 