Rating: 
Summary: I am too good for this book. Sadly, maybe you are not.
Review: This is a pretty good book. Not great. Sure, he pillories the major snobbish fashions of the day. Lots of fun making fun of people who are not as sensible as you or I.He also does a wonderful job of showing how the basis for snobbery has changed, from WASPs and elitism based on real but arbitrary standards like the name of the school you attended, or your connections to established families --- to the modern world, warped by the arbitrary winds of fashionable status, the "hotness" of market driven mania. Still, as a reviewer of great excellence, I must say that his discussion of his attempts to overcome a life of looking down on people and to enter the "snob free zone" limps along -- does he really want us to believe that such a place exists? Who would want to go there? So read this book if you want penetrating insights, sound social commentary, and great amusement. If those are the kinds of things that a person like YOU finds interesting. I might even have given him 5 stars, but of course, I reserve such an award for true merit, of which I am the sole judge.
Rating:
Summary: I am too good for this book. Sadly, maybe you are not.
Review: This is a pretty good book. Not great. Sure, he pillories the major snobbish fashions of the day. Lots of fun making fun of people who are not as sensible as you or I. He also does a wonderful job of showing how the basis for snobbery has changed, from WASPs and elitism based on real but arbitrary standards like the name of the school you attended, or your connections to established families --- to the modern world, warped by the arbitrary winds of fashionable status, the "hotness" of market driven mania. Still, as a reviewer of great excellence, I must say that his discussion of his attempts to overcome a life of looking down on people and to enter the "snob free zone" limps along -- does he really want us to believe that such a place exists? Who would want to go there? So read this book if you want penetrating insights, sound social commentary, and great amusement. If those are the kinds of things that a person like YOU finds interesting. I might even have given him 5 stars, but of course, I reserve such an award for true merit, of which I am the sole judge.
Rating: 
Summary: Hilarious, insightful, and sparklingly written
Review: This is one of the very best books I've read all year, and should be required reading for anyone who disapproves of snobbery but suspects that he might be kind of a snob himself. (Think of a Frasier Crane lovable-snob type.) Epstein's main point seems to be that snobbery, like racism, is one of those things that nobody can completely eradicate, though you can become more self-conscious about it and be a nicer, more self-aware person as a result. I'm probably making SNOBBERY sound like a self-help book, but in a way it is. And it's very, very funny, too. Minor caveat: Epstein's politics are definitely right of center (though he keeps them pretty well muted most of the time) and occasionally I get exasperated with his snide attacks on left-wing "virtuecrats" while ignoring the right-wing virtuecrats who spent two years investigating the sex life of a twice-elected president and then trying to impeach him for it, but . . . that shouldn't be reason to throw out the golden child with its sometimes-leaden bathwater. I especially recommend reading this book in tandem with Dan Savage's wonderful new SKIPPING TOWARD GOMORRAH, about a non-snobbish "pursuit of happiness" from a left-wing point of view. The two books are what we economists call perfect complements, and there's at least a couple hundred good laughs in them, too.
Rating: 
Summary: Joseph Epstein: when wit and charm are not enough
Review: What is the difference between being a snob, generally agreed to be a pernicious thing to be, and having extremely high standards, which is a vital and necessary trait? Joseph Epstein states "The distinction, I believe, is that the elitist desires the best; the snob wants other people to think he has, or is assocated with, the best. Delight in excellence is easily confused with snobbery by the ignorant." Not a bad distinction, even though one remembers that there are other, less agreeable, definitions of an elite. At another point Epstein defines taste and states that in friendship it requires "tact, generosity, and above all kindness," while "in culture generally, by a discriminating tolerance for tastes at odds with one's own." The task of Epstein in this book (and the source of its ultimate failure) is to demonstrate the extent that he himself meets these high standards. For more than two decades Epstein was the editor of the American Scholar, and made a reputation as a critic and personal essayist of considerable wit and charm. In discussing the contours of American snobbery, Epstein notes his own snobbish tendencies. (He doesn't like Humphrey Bogart now that he's so popular.) He discusses such matters as the decline of the WASP aristocracy, the ironies of status and possession, the decline of colleges, the difficulties confronting Jews and homosexuals, and the fine but treacherous art of namedropping. Throughout this book he shows a wide reading, capable of quoting anecdotes and epigrams from Montaigne, Balzac, Mencken, two generations of Churchills and Tom Wolfe. Is this enough? To be a real scholar of the subject one has to do more than purvey other people's punchlines. After all, it's not for their catchphrases that we remember Milton or Proust. And the quality varies. There is a good anecdote about Winston Churchill, an old joke about a Jew trying to enter an exclusive club, and Tom Wolfe's gibe that the Rolling Stones are like the Beatles "only more lower-class deformed." (Any takers for those who think "The Bonfire of the Vanities," will outlast "Exile on Main Street"?) If one really wanted to know about possessions, one should read Jackson Lears' "Fables of Abundance". The discussion of class is both vague and evasive, since as a conservative Epstein cannot admit to systematic injustice. So we get David Brooks' bohemian bourgeoisie, but no overclass from Michael Lind, let alone more stringent views from Mike Davis, Thomas Sugrue or Barbara Ehrenreich. Unfortunately Epstein does not possess the aforementioned "discriminating tolerance for tastes at odd with one's view." This is the critic, after all, who in 1983 argued that "By Love Possessed" was better than "One Hundred Years of Solitude," a view which could not be justified on any coherent aesthetic criterion but on the grounds that James Gould Cozzens was a conservative Republican and Gabriel Garcia Marquez a dirty Red. For those who think souffles should be doused with vinegar, Epstein has provided several snide and ungenerous comments. Virginia Woolf is called an anti-semite for no better reason because she thought Isaiah Berlin came from Portugal. Epstein implies Martha Nussbaum is pretending to be a Jew, when in fact she is a Jew. (By the way, it is in very poor taste in Jewish circles to mention that people are converts.) There is a passage on the New York Review of Books which subtly but inaccurately overstates its liberalism (Even in the seventies Lord Dacre trumped E.P. Thompson and John Updike and Joan Didion trumped Toni Morrison and E.L. Doctorow, while Leonard Schapiro and George Kennan gave the line on the Soviet Union); it reveals nothing so much as Epstein's failure to become a regular contributor. Finally I must protest Epstein's Francophobia, a surrender to an unusually common and vulgar prejudice. "The French are not easily admired," and they supposedly have little record of bravery. This is not true even in the stupid confusion of personal courage with winning wars, but Epstein goes on to suggest that Flaubert and Celine benefits from the specifically national nastiness of many Frenchmen. Whether it is David Cannadine on the British ruling family, John Rohl of Wilhelm II, Mark Steinberg, Andrew Verner or Mark Steinberg on the Romanovs, or Denis Mack Smith on Italy's spectacularly awful monarchs, it is clear that elitism is wasted on the aristocracy. This is the first vital point that Epstein misses. The second vital point he misses is that no principled cultural conservatism can come from those journalists of the New York Post or the Weekly Standard who preach a shrill patriotism and indulge in a cheap moralism while funded by an unprincipled Australian pornographer like Rupert Murdoch. Epstein mentions Pierre Bourdieu in passing; he should have prayed upon him in aid. For in comparison to Bourdieu, or to Adorno, or to the London Review of Books, all Epstein has done is show that here wit and charm are not enough.
Rating:
Summary: Secondhand prose
Review: Why, I found myself asking after wading through the tepid pool of watered-down prose that is Joseph Epstein's "Snobbery," am I so bored with this book? After all, it's not like the subject is uninteresting. Snobbery, class distinctions, social climbing -- whatever you want to call it -- has inspired some exquisite prose by some wonderful writers. Thackeray, Proust, Veblen and Paul Fussell have all had sharp and witty things to say about the topic of trying to impress your betters and look down on your equals. That's when it hit me. The essential vapidity of this book rests in the fact that its author is only regurgitating what others before him have said in a far wittier fashion. In particular, Paul Fussell's book "Class" (which Epstein, mendaciously, doesn't include in his "Bibliographical Note"), a far better guide to this subject, and one from which Epstein has clearly cribbed. If you're interested in the whole realm of social class and social climbing, there are far more intriguing books to choose from. Try Proust's "In Search of Lost Time" if you're ambitious, or Thorstein Veblen's "The Theory of the Leisure Class." Or William Makepeace Thackeray's "The Book of Snobs," or any of his novels, for that matter. Or Paul Fussell's "Class." But Joseph Epstein's book takes an endlessly fascinating subject and make it seem, well, tedious. Try Fussell instead. He may infuriate you, but at least you won't be bored.
Rating:
Summary: Nuances of power and self esteem explored
Review: With of plenty of self-awareness (not treating snobbery as something that happens just to other people), Epstein fleshes many forms of snobbery that effect American culture. I found the first half of the book intriguing. There he describes the mechanisms of snobbery. The section about college affected me a lot, touching upon many of my own issues of status. Much of the second half, or last third really, went into specifics about certain cultural icons and fashions. Though I didn't find that as interesting, that just demonstrates my own preference for the abstract; it is written well and is very engaging. In general, I found the book to be thought provoking and it has stayed with me weeks after I have finished it. Sort of like eating a refreshing meal, the book had just the right balance of intellectual nutrients.
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