Commonplace Book

'Maybe Hemingway was nothing but a snob at bottom. Well, maybe. But what a daft word that is, "snob," scratching at no more than the surface of the desires that move men and women to desperate humiliations. "He's a snob, she's a snob, they're snobs" - everyone goes round squealing forever, frothing at the mouth with the fruity word, snob, snob, snob - and actually it describes nothing, it describes nobody. But it's a nice fruity word, all the same.'

from The "Lost Generation", a piece in Babes in the Wood by Michael Arlen