Snobbery : the American version / Joseph Epstein.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Epstein, Joseph, 1937-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Social status--United States.

Social status.

Snobs and snobbishness--United States.

Snobs and snobbishness.

United States.

Physical Description:

xii, 274 pages ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2002.

Summary:

Joseph Epstein's highly entertaining new book takes up the subject of snobbery in America after the fall of the prominence of the old Wasp culture of prep schools, Ivy League colleges, cotillions, debutante balls, the Social Register, and the rest of it. With ample humor and insight, Epstein uncovers the new outlets upon which the old snobbery has fastened: food and wine, fashion, high-achieving children, schools, politics, health, being with-it, name-dropping, and much else, including the roles of Jews and homosexuals in the development of snobbery. He also raises the question of whether snobbery might, alas, be a part of human nature. Snobbery: The American Version is the first book in English devoted exclusively to the subject since Thackeray's The Book of Snobs.

Contents:

1. It Takes One to Know One 3

2. What Is a Snob? 13

3. How Snobbery Works 20

4. The Democratic Snob 28

5. Snob-Jobbery 38

6. O WASP, Where Is Thy Sting-a-Ling 47

7. Class (all but) Dismissed 62

8. Such Good Taste 73

9. In the Snob-Free Zone 83

10. The High, Fine Nuttiness of Status 91

11. To You, I Give My Heart, Invidia 103

12. A Son at Tufts, a Daughter at Taffeta 115

13. Dear Old Yarvton 121

14. Unclubbable 133

15. Intellectual Snobbery, or The (Million or So) Happy Few 142

16. The Snob in Politics 153

17. Fags and Yids 162

18. The Same New Thing 172

19. Names Away! 184

20. The Celebrity Iceberg 194

21. Anglo-, Franco-, and Other Odd philias 203

22. Setting the Snob's Table 215

23. The Art of With-It-ry 227

24. A Grave but Localized Disease 241.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

0395944171

OCLC:

48144419