Prejudices First Series

by H.L. Mencken

This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of the original. Due to its age, it may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages. Because we believe this work is culturally important, we have made it available as part of our commitment for protecting, preserving, and promoting the world's literature in affordable, high quality, modern editions that are true to the original work.

Genres: Nonfiction, Journalism, Essays

250 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1919

About the author

Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken became one of the most influential and prolific journalists in America in the 1920s and '30s, writing about all the shams and con artists in the world. He attacked chiropractors and the Ku Klux Klan, politicians and other journalists. Most of all, he attacked Puritan morality. He called Puritanism, "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

At the height of his career, he edited and wrote for The American Mercury magazine and the Baltimore Sun newspaper, wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column for the Chicago Tribune, and published two or three books every year. His masterpiece was one of the few books he wrote about something he loved, a book called The American Language (1919), a history and collection of American vernacular speech. It included a translation of the Declaration of Independence into American English that began, "When things get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are not trying to put nothing over on nobody."

When asked what he would like for an epitaph, Mencken wrote, "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."

(from American Public Media)

Reviews

[Michael Fredette · Rating 4 out of 5]

A volume of literary criticism featuring Mencken's noted acerbic style. The reviews are irreverent, iconoclastic, and nakedly elitist; although he does seem fair-minded. The middle-brow, the Puritanical, the didactic, and the dull are utterly destroyed. My regional pride was hurt as William Allen White ("The Sage of Emporia") was flayed by Mencken; although I have to admit I didn't even know William Allen White (a journalist and newspaper publisher) wrote fiction. Mencken evaluates the legacy of Jack London, and suggests that the Call of the Wild and parts of the autobiographical John Barleycorn are among our best popular fiction; although he faults him for over-publishing and bringing ouy works that are not fully realized, novel that, today, are barely remembered. Additionally in this volume, he celebrates Poe, Twain, George Bernard Shaw, and Whitman. The official who fired Whitman from his government post because he was (apparently) scandalized by Leaves of Grass, is the target of particularly withering contempt.

[Varmint · Rating 5 out of 5]

find myself returning to mencken every year. he makes cynicism and hate feel refreshing. consider this review a blanket endorsement of veerythings he wrote. though "the cult of hope"in prejudices stands out.

[Mike Bright · Rating 3 out of 5]

This seems like a collection of newspaper/magazine columns from H. L. Mencken, the famed critic. Most were written in the late 1800s and early 1900s, so I did not recognize most of the artists' names or most of the cultural references. In that sense, it was an interesting historical lens.

Mencken's writing is lively and witty. However, in one of the essays about half way through he admits that newspapers and magazines tend to focus on the negative because people respond more (and buy more copies) to that. He clearly shows that in his writing, as he is quite critical and often derogatory towards most of his subjects. Even the people he likes, he only likes for part of their output, and the rest is garbage.

I will give Mencken credit for knowing a lot more vocabulary from the Oxford English Dictionary (and I know a fair bit). However, I suspect he regularly makes words up.

He is quite negative about all religions, although conversant with various Christian denominations. He is usually negative about capitalism, communism, government in general, and especially academics. Although I can't comment on most of the art he criticizes, I do strongly disagree with his views on most of the things mentioned. Admittedly, he may make a lot of these critiques for effect more than personal conviction.

It was a mildly interesting book and a view into a lifestyle foreign to me, but I am not motivated to read more of his collecitons.

[Jamie · Rating 4 out of 5]

A collection of literary criticism essays from the early years of Mencken's prominence in the late 1910's. I'd like to think I'm more well-read than most, but it's difficult to get everything out of criticism when the subject is barely known to you, and about half of Mencken's subjects here have been, at least to me, lost to time. That said, it was a fun and interesting read. 3.5/5

[Tim McKay · Rating 3 out of 5]

10% valuable insights and 90% bitching

[Chris H. · Rating 5 out of 5]

A blast.

[Tristram Shandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

„[T]he ineradicable peasant suspicion of the man who is having a better time in the world”

Yuck! What a grossly arrogant statement! It’s exactly this elitist kind of thinking that is responsible for so many problems in the world, and which, at the same time, masks an ingrained inferiority complex on the part of those who adhere to it.

This might be a stock reaction of the typical do-gooders who have raised the pennant of equality so high as to obstruct any ray of light that might fall into their eyes and from there eventually find its way into skulls crammed full with should’s and even fuller with shouldn’t’s. H.L. Mencken will probably remain a most sinister bogeyman to those who have subscribed – or made their tick – to the tenets of political correctness. Mencken’s erudition and cultivation as well as his wonderfully sarcastic style of writing will also serve as straws to break the afore-mentioned camels’ backs. In his essay “The Genealogy of Etiquette” he has a go at modern politics and its underlying ideologies, en passant unveiling the mechanisms according to which modern democracy functions, and one might still entertain one’s doubts, were it not for this passage:

The late war, very unpopular at the start, was “sold” to them, as the advertising phrase has it, by representing it as a campaign for the salvation of democracy, half religious and wholly altruistic. So represented to them, they embraced it; represented as the highly obscure and complex thing it actually was, it would have been beyond their comprehension, and hence abhorrent to them.”

Mencken was referring to World War I here, but the statement as such seems timeless. Of course, following Mencken in his pessimism as to the wisdom of “the people”, one might still come to different conclusions and rather strive to ameliorate the democratic system by investing more time and resources in learning and Bildung rather than by flatly rejecting it. Be that as it may, I feel inclined to fully subscribe to his analysis of the problem, such as in this sentence gleaned from his essay “The Late Mr. Wells”:

”And under all the rumble-bumble of bad ideas is the imbecile assumption of the jitney messiah at all times and everywhere: that human beings may be made over by changing the rules under which they live, that progress is a matter of intent and foresight, that an Act of Parliament can cure the blunders and check the practical joking of God.”

What a sure way of dissolving all sense of personal responsibility and increasing unwaning trust in “those in charge”!

Mencken’s collection of essays “Prejudices, First Series” is an inspiring and a very amusing enterprise. Make sure, however, to use an annotated edition, like the collection of Mencken’s “Prejudices” published by the Library of America, unless you are very familiar with contemporary American culture. Otherwise there will be a lot of names and references that might remain meaningless to you and thus require further research. All in all, it was well worth my while reading even those essays that at first sight did not sound too interesting to me as there was nearly always a gem of sarcasm and bitter truth hidden somewhere, and apart from that Mencken knew how to state his opinion in an unforgettable way.

[Jan-Len · Rating 3 out of 5]

I confined myself to the essays on religion, love, death, and psychology. I decided to explore Mencken knowing that his writing was admired by Christopher Hitchens. I am not disappointed and I leave with the memory of some truly meaningful ideas and passages. I just feel that the compilation of essays could have been more thoughtfully compiled. Think Hitchens with "Love, Poverty and War". That said, a collection is intended to cover as broad a spectrum of interests as possible so the criticism may be off the mark.

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you are not laughing yourself to sleep each night there is something seriously wrong with you. Is that how the quotation goes? I think it is O.K. now and then to feel like the whole world's a bunch of ninkompoops annd that guys like us should go grab a beer and say to hell with it.