(no subject)
The new snobbism:
There was a time not long ago when a snob was a snob and as easy to recognize as a cock pheasant. In the days when Ward Allister was the arbiter of Newport society and when there were precisely four hundred souls in New York worth knowing and only "nobodies" lived west of the Alleghenies, snobbishness was a nice clean-cut business that made careers for otherwise unoccupied women and gave purpose to otherwise barren lives...It is customary, i believe to classify the art snobs, the literary snobs, and the musical snobs with the intellectual snobs, but it seems to me that they belong in a limbo between the emotional and the intellectual categories, with plenty of latitude to permit them to jump either way...all the way from the traditionalist or permanent value snobs to the modern or "I always keep an open mind group"... the art snob can be recognized in the home(i.e. your home) by the quick look he gives the pictures on your walls, quick but penetrating, as though he were undressing them. this is followed either by complete and obviously pained silence or by a comment such as "That's really a very pleasant little watercolor you have there."In his own house his manner is also slightly deprecating. If you admire a print on his wall, he is likely to say "I'm glad you like it. It's really not bad considering it is such a late impression."...The literary snob has not only read the book you are reading, but takes pleasure in telling you the names of all the earlier and more obscure books by the same author, and why each one was superior to the better known one that has come to your attention...It rides horses and is rare in southern California, except for Pasadena.
YAY Russel Lynes
There was a time not long ago when a snob was a snob and as easy to recognize as a cock pheasant. In the days when Ward Allister was the arbiter of Newport society and when there were precisely four hundred souls in New York worth knowing and only "nobodies" lived west of the Alleghenies, snobbishness was a nice clean-cut business that made careers for otherwise unoccupied women and gave purpose to otherwise barren lives...It is customary, i believe to classify the art snobs, the literary snobs, and the musical snobs with the intellectual snobs, but it seems to me that they belong in a limbo between the emotional and the intellectual categories, with plenty of latitude to permit them to jump either way...all the way from the traditionalist or permanent value snobs to the modern or "I always keep an open mind group"... the art snob can be recognized in the home(i.e. your home) by the quick look he gives the pictures on your walls, quick but penetrating, as though he were undressing them. this is followed either by complete and obviously pained silence or by a comment such as "That's really a very pleasant little watercolor you have there."In his own house his manner is also slightly deprecating. If you admire a print on his wall, he is likely to say "I'm glad you like it. It's really not bad considering it is such a late impression."...The literary snob has not only read the book you are reading, but takes pleasure in telling you the names of all the earlier and more obscure books by the same author, and why each one was superior to the better known one that has come to your attention...It rides horses and is rare in southern California, except for Pasadena.
YAY Russel Lynes