Books: Minor Social Science

SNOBS (54 pp.)—Russell Lynes—Harper ($ I).

A snob, says William Makepeace Thackeray in one of the many essays in definition in his witty Book of Snobs, is one who “sleeps in white kid gloves, and commits dangerous excesses upon green tea.'”

Since 1847, white kids and excessive drinking of green tea have gone out of fad, but snobs are in again, and so is writing about them. The latest snobographer to revive the discussion is Russell Lynes, an editor of Harper’s who set himself up in a magazine article last year as an arbiter of high, low and middle brows. In Snobs, Arbiter Lynes patters along in Thackeray’s large footsteps, rather like a shrill but amiable terrier at the end of a 100-year leash. His bark is sure to get plenty of attention, and his bite, though not very sharp, may even penetrate a few skins.

“Snobbery,” writes Lynes, “has emerged in a whole new set of guises” in recent years. Among them: the Tolerance Snob (“has a special predilection for getting his name printed on letterheads”), the Pot Luck Snob (Casserole Division), the Great-Out-of-Doors Snob, the Freudian Snob (“I have more inhibitions than anyone”), the Efficiency Snob (“answers the phone by barking just his last name”), the Physical Prowess Snob, the Eternal Verities Snob (Back to the Land Division), the Conservative Dress Snob (“The buttons on the sleeves of his jacket actually unbutton”).

The snobbiest snob of all, says Lynes, is the Reverse Snob or Anti-Snob Snob: “This is the snob who finds snobbery so distasteful that he (or she) is extremely snobbish about nearly everybody since nearly everybody is a snob about something.” Lynes finds himself guilty above all of Reverse Snobbism. “I am sure there is no greater snob,” he concludes archly, “than a snob who thinks he can define a snob.”

It would serve the author right for his false modesty if his readers agreed. But they may also be grateful for a brisk introduction to the minor social science of Snob Psychology.