Bookish Battles Video Response: Snobbery!

You’re 28. That’s not old!

Hello Steve. Many people dismiss the reading of romance books. People will say “Why not read fantasy, historical novels, science fiction, biographies, classic literature ?” They will tell you reading romance is trashy smut and not worth reading. There is nothing of value in reading romance. I am a reader of romance and it’s like people feel that romance isn’t literature.

I do dismiss some categories precisely because I don’t want to waste my time. I know I cannot get to everything so I stick to what I prefer. But of course I don’t think those categories are inferior.
And you’re right these Booktubers are terrible. They keep shoving books in my face!! I need infinite time and infinite money.

Ah I thought you would pick up on this one and extend the discussion.

the more i read, the less snobby i get. Reading is for fun...thats all

I was telling Scott earlier a memory I have from college. It was the first day of one of my writing courses and we were all going around introducing ourselves and sharing our favorite books. The first two or three people listed well-known and loved classics and made sure everyone knew they considered modern writing “garbage.” After that, no one wanted to list anything other than a classic as their favorite... myself included. I said Pride and Prejudice, though I wanted to say The Redemption of Althalus. Nowadays, I would happily say my favorite book and tell those first three why they’re snobs... this was a GREAT video, Steve. -Becky

Hyperbole?!?! You ?!?! Nah...

This was such an amazing video, Steve and it is a perfect explanation of snobbery and why it is wrong. I explain book snobbery as " if you believe what you are reading is superior to what I am reading and you think less of me for it you are a snob." I have been waiting for this video. It was so, so good.
Scott.

Do you then think Trump should/shouldn't have been banned on Twitter?

One perfect example: comic books! Intellectual snobs love to dismiss them. Also agree completely about moral snobbery being the worst kind. Cancel culture = the opposite of thinking.

One of the strongest personal reactions I get through reading a lot goes even beyond humility; every time I finish a book I'm forced to realize how much it is I have yet to read and learn. Humility would be nice but it's something more akin to humiliation. I don't see how snobbery is even possible. (Is that being snobbish about snobbery??) I was a kid the last time a read a romance novel, but I wouldn't hesitate to read one if the interest arose. A lack of interest in the subject matter of course isn't the same as categorical dismissal.

Here in the SF Bay area we are surrounded by these "moral " types, it has made it nearly impossible to enjoy any reading book group, they are there in unison. Great topic and advice!

But... Isn't only listening to John Philip Sousa a form of snobbery?

hahhaa!!! @ the moral snobs!!! So on point! You are very brave for mentioning the killer mob that is plaguing booktube

10k!! Wow nicely done Steve!

I'm nodding along with all your points. So many personal examples to write down here. Unfortunately snobbery is everywhere.

good video. i believe a slightly better response to the romance snob is: "hell, yeah! you see this cover?? i pity anyone who wouldn't want to read it. now if you'll excuse me, this is far more interesting than you are.. ahem!"

Great response!
I remember being shocked when a friend of mine in high school told me he'd only read classics from now on, because there wasn't enough time to get to everything and he valued those higher than other books. Already then this struck me as odd. I didn't think of snobbery at the time, just about how many other wonderful reading experiences he would deprive himself of - I wonder if he still thinks that way 🤔

I've been slightly snobbish about crime fiction/mystery and romance in the past, but I'm branching out now. Still need to find a mystery to try.

That Heinrich Heine quote ♥

Your discussion maps nicely to the correct understanding of the theory of evolution. There are no more/less evolved species (just as there are no better/worse literary genres), and every species (genre) represents one way of fitting into or corresponding to the world.

We used to have a university professor who wrote on his website that he only read non-fiction and that he never read fiction... I remember how surprised I was to read it and how it made me look at that person in a new light. I still struggle to understand why a person would limit themselves like that, what kind of an impression he was trying to make and did he not realize how, if I may say so, narrow-minded it showed him to be.
Thank you for the video Steve, 37 minutes flew by way too fast!

I confess, some time ago, I was a book snob. But as I get older, I realize that life is short. 10 minutes is all we have. :) If one is reading a book that is a source of joy and pleasure then the one is doing is right. It is not my place to decide the value of what they are reading. I feel bad that I used to behave and think that way but I learned better.

One of the most odious moral catchphrases is ‘that’s cringe!’, which is the kind of disgust response that these same people would dismiss in a Christian as no basis for moral judgements, but unlike Christians, these moral censors have the perfect worldview, and thus perfect moral instincts, so their moral instincts are always 100% unimpeachably correct. If they cringe at your book, then your book must burn.

There tends to be a trick done by snobs where greatest books in a genre are said to ‘transcend’ the genre, as a way to explain away the fact of literary masterpieces in every genre. “Lonesome Dove” doesn’t really count as a western. “Jane Eyre” is more than a gothic romance. “The Lord of the Rings” isn’t just mere fantasy. When, in fact, those books are every bit as much members of their genres as anything off a drugstore spinner rack.

In the beginners mind there are many possibilities in the experts mind there are few.

I agree with so much with this. I commend you for struggling against your own snobbery. I know from personal experience how difficult it is to project confidence without appearing snobbish.


What you say about subjective snobbery recalls to mind Allen Bloom's "Closing of the American Mind." To give others permission to believe whatever they wish is a vailed insistence that one's own beliefs can never be questioned. Bloom was very much against the 1970-90s movement, "I'm okay, you're okay" (especially among liberal college students) in that it paved the way for lazy thought and moral decline. My students hated Allen Bloom dismissing him as "arrogant" which was their word for "snob." It didn't help Bloom's case when he dismissed the music of the Rolling Stones. No doubt because he came of age before their time. You are right that some student groups today have done a 180 and have become in their "cancel culture" incapable of listening to anyone who does not share their extreme ideology. Students seem to have an especially difficult time with ambiguity or entertaining alternative ideas as they are at the stage in life when they crave certainty.


I think Bloom would disagree with you regarding "there being no hierarchy of aesthetic creation" since he believed that some cultures are superior to others especially when it came to their intellectual and artistic achievements. "Where are the philosophers of the Zulus?" he asked. I wonder what your view would be here. Is culture a specific-enough genre where the examples can be ranked? If we designate groups of people by the genres of "religion" or "race" are we being specific enough to rank their constituents? I doubt it. Yet I don't have too much trouble saying that the tenets of Christianity are superior to those religions practicing human sacrifice. I say this even though I don't agree with most Christian belief.


The genre boundary by which things can or cannot be compared and ranked seems problematic in that what constitutes a genre in of itself is somewhat subjective. I have heard you dismiss a poem primarily because it didn't rhyme --that it was prose masquerading as poetry. It seems to me that rhyming and non-rhyming poetry are aesthetically different animals and therefore need to be evaluated differently. Then again, are we now creating sub-genres; progressively narrowing the boundaries by which we then can trash what we don't like? I've heard you criticize not only examples of abstract art (another sub-genre) but seemingly abstract art in general where you define it in such a way to render it open to especially strident critique compared to other art. The case of a New Yorker cover comes to mind in which you employed the hackneyed standard "A child could do this." In common parlance this idea, "that a child could do it, " is the quintisential nature of abstract art. Your reaction to the New Yorker cover puzzled me because not only must abstract art be evaluated by different standards than representational art, but it is a very difficult to do abstract art well. I know as I have repeatedly failed at it. I was also taken back because the art you were denouncing was an example of silk screen print making for which most practitioners of the craft would be far more accepting.

Anyway just some thought about the difficulty in establishing the boundaries for criticism and acceptance. I used to be of the mind that most things in life were subjective and yet being at the same time an extremely judgmental person. Now I'm coming to see that we can be more objective in our evaluations while nevertheless striving to be less judgmental towards my inferiors.

Thanks for the videos. They never disappoint.

I just finished reading my favourite abstract artist Wassily Kandisnky's book - Concerning the spiritual in art. He belonged to the Bauhaus school and unfortunately, most of his works were destroyed by the Nazis. Wassily wrote about the problems of limiting perception with a need for "well-ordered security." I have accepted my dot existence and am perfectly okay with that. Wonderful Vlog.

Two points. First, I so appreciate your discussion about redemption!! I just read a book about Alice Walker’s The Color Purple whose author points to Walker’s interest in the redemption arc. I had realized the presence of that idea before, of course, but had not given it that label. I think it is my favorite theme ever.

2–I totally agree that it is snobbish to place genres into a hierarchy. But why can we only compare individual books within particular genres rather than across genre? Are genres that inviolable? As a corollary, where is the line between making personal reading priorities and dismissing genres categorically? The extremes of that issue are clear, but so often I think I fall closer to the blurry middle.

Good video. Thanks for the discussion.

For a moment in my late teens I was not only a snob but a dude-bro. Now THAT is *cringe*! For all the books I read in the decade since, it was often the books that fell outside the walls I'd put up that thrilled me the most, which only further instigated the extension of my borders. Now as a much, much more open reader, I find that a major part of why I read is to discover all the good and great books that the snobby parts of me would have precluded my ever getting to. It's such an exciting adventure!!!

Clearly you have never had the privilege of reading my third grade essay on what I did on my summer vacation.

I’ve been, and still am, guilty of certain types of snobbishness. When I was in college, I wouldn’t look at a whole slew of books because they were “on the wrong side of the aisle.” The right side of the aisle was the classics. At the time, I would have said that all the rest was worthless, which was wrong. Now I would say that you are much more likely to find something worthwhile in the classics aisle, because they have withstood a test of time. Thus, it’s a better investment of your limited reading time to stick with those books. Not everyone is like you, with the ability to read (nearly) everything that’s published.

Similarly, I dismissed the books my girlfriend read, saying she only read books with “Wind” in the title (bodice ripping romances from the early eighties). I gave her several chances to prove me wrong, and everything she loved I found tedious. Thus, I still have some prejudice against modern romance. But I would frame it this way. My impression is that the audience of these books are almost entirely uncritical. I’m willing to admit that there might be some gems there, but the prospecting is just too difficult for me to undertake. I haven’t found any reliable guide that will direct me to the good stuff that might exist within that genre. For some reason, I have found it significantly easier to find the good entry points into SFF, Mysteries, and even Westerns.

Oddly, I have been completely unable to find any reliable entry into contemporary literary fiction. The worst thing is to look into the reviews of people who like these books. Thus, I basically ignore these books, while admitting that some of them might be books.

Agree 100% on moral snobbery.

I mostly agree with everything you say, but my only trepidation would be how to put books into definitive genres. For science fiction or romance it may be simple, but what if genres cross over, or a book defies categorization? For example, what genre would Moby Dick fit into, or Middlemarch? I don’t think “classic” as a genre would work unless it was defined as works from Ancient Rome/Greece.

I’ve reached the sobering age where I’m not certain I’ll get to all the books in my house, much less all the books in existence.

A very good video, many thanks. I agree that comparing genres is more about snobbery than anything else - but what about comparing books within the same genre? Is it just a matter of personal taste, with "A is better than B" really meaning "I like A more than I like B"? Or are there criteria that are more objective? To me, if A has been read and appreciated by more people over a longer time than B, that would seem a reasonable way of defining "better". What do you think?

Wow, great video !!!!!

so... art is art..

Hear, hear! I share your disdain for notion of a hierarchy of aesthetics. You're right, too few people relish the subjectivity of art.

Proud snob here. Tremble before me!