ABSTRACT
In Joseph Epstein's analysis, snobbery is all-encompassing, seemingly inevitable for the vast majority, as pervasive as the weather and both rooted in specific American behavior and so abstract as to defy a definition less than book-length. Snobbery is an aggressive, often vicious, wounding attitude toward people vulnerable to qualities they do not, perhaps cannot, possess. Snobbery results in isolation cushioned by smugness. At the center both of Epstein's brief definition of snobbery and throughout his examples in the expanse of his book appears the elements of taste and the formation of discriminations. One can argue that American democracy urges to approve the Latin saw degustibus non est disputandum, but reflection indicates its falsity. Taste is a function of civilization, but Epstein avoids analysis by allying it with ridicule. While taste may indicate snobbery at a superficial level, the development of taste, good or bad, begins in infancy.
