Judge — June 2, 1928 — page 6: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "Intimate Glimpses of the Boobus Intelligentsius" This satirical cartoon depicts intellectuals meeting to select the best "Book of the Month" Club selection. The title references H.L. Mencken's famous term "Boobus Americanus" (describing average Americans), here mockingly applied to "intelligentsius" — pretentious intellectuals affecting sophistication. The scene shows well-dressed men in a library setting engaged in what appears to be serious deliberation. The satire targets the Book of the Month Club's then-popular practice of having panels of "experts" choose books for subscribers. Judge ridicules these self-appointed arbiters of taste as pretentious pseudo-intellectuals, suggesting their selections reflect affected elitism rather than genuine literary merit. The cartoon mocks both the Club's gatekeeping authority and the vanity of intellectuals who claimed cultural authority over American reading habits.