What do you think?
Rate this book
The Vintage Mencken
In the 1920's the initials H.L.M. were as celebrated in the United States as G.B.S. in Britain. Mencken was the Daniel come to judgment, in an opulent and easygoing time, on the fatty degeneration of American idealism.
His success was enormous, and because he was overpraised for the wrong things, there was soon in eager attendance a band of critics (many of whom are unfit to punctuate his copy) waiting to debunk the great debunker and propagate the now fashionable notion that he was a mountebank who died with the dodo.
Alistair Cooke has put together this wholly new anthology, in its author's seventy-fifth year, as evidence of his belief that Mencken remains, on the contrary, one of the great American humorists and "the master craftsman of daily journalism in the twentieth century."
This collection is meant therefore to revive the oldsters, and acquaint the youngsters, with the glory that was Mencken.
His success was enormous, and because he was overpraised for the wrong things, there was soon in eager attendance a band of critics (many of whom are unfit to punctuate his copy) waiting to debunk the great debunker and propagate the now fashionable notion that he was a mountebank who died with the dodo.
Alistair Cooke has put together this wholly new anthology, in its author's seventy-fifth year, as evidence of his belief that Mencken remains, on the contrary, one of the great American humorists and "the master craftsman of daily journalism in the twentieth century."
This collection is meant therefore to revive the oldsters, and acquaint the youngsters, with the glory that was Mencken.
240 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1955
83 people are currently reading
1417 people want to read
About the author
H.L. Mencken
636 books728 followersHenry 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)
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)
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews
February 13, 2023
The Vintage Mencken is a short, representative compilation of the writings of H.L. Mencken, the legendary reporter, satirist and social critic. Compiled in the '50s by BBC commentator Alistair Cooke, it's a decent introduction to Mencken's unique style of unleavened cynicism, scabrous wit and unhidden elitism. Mencken's pieces here discuss the ramshackle but lively Baltimore he grew up in (my favorite piece of the collection, with an appetite-whetting description of crab boils and fish fries), the state of police at the turn-of-the-century, America's preparations for the Great War and a failed coup d'etat in Cuba, political conventions from 1920 through 1948, social movements like women's suffrage, Prohibition and the Progressive Party and the perpetually mediocre (or worse) state of American government and culture. If not for his polished prose, Mencken might seem like a highfalutin gadfly; he has little regard for anything or anyone in the United States, for better or worse. He's quite funny, and often insightful, when he's ridiculing the religious bigotry embodied by the Scopes Monkey Trial, the corrupt complacency of '20s Republicans, the pro-communist naivety of Henry Wallace's Progressives or the naïve faith of mainstream liberals in social progress. His ventures into cultural commentary, like his essay on the works of Theodore Dreiser or an account of his friendship with Rudolph Valentino, are often quite perceptive. But it's hard to swallow Mencken's unalloyed elitism, which is "politically incorrect" at best and outright bigoted at worst. Cooke mostly elides his overtly racist writings, but there's still Mencken's imprecations that democracy is not only flawed, but altogether worthless; that America wants for an inherited aristocracy; he mocks poor rural Americans and speculates that they enjoy poverty because they're too stupid to know better; he ridicules women's suffrage and laments that he can't sell female athletes into sexual slavery (!). In several essays reflecting his time and background, Mencken ridicules Abraham Lincoln as a tyrant and argues that the Confederacy's defeat was a tragedy, for it slew America's only true idealists - a commentary not only factually mendacious and morally repugnant, but filled with ignorant speculation about the noble Southern oligarchy we lost at Appomattox. For every clever bon mot there's a tedious, knee-jerk slur that makes Mencken's work hard to read in 2023. Readers must acknowledge Mencken's influence and importance, but determine for themselves how many of his shortcomings they can stomach.
June 15, 2019
I can’t bring myself to rewrite the long review I just accidentally deleted. Suffice to say that the more you read these well-written, lacerating essays, the less you (I mean me) like Mencken. I no longer wonder why I never read much of his stuff before, except in very short, pithy quotes. His rants against Democracy are funny, until you realize that the things he hates that you (I mean I) hate (stupidity, plutocrats, crass populism, religious oppression, quackery) are equal in his mind with things that I (and maybe you) like: The Gettysburg Address, F.D.R., public education, and Democracy in general. He loves the Aristocrat—something there needs to be in the U.S. and there isn’t--and hates the populace.
It all would be easier to take if you didn’t see how he misses the point—most clearly in the essay “The Libido for the Ugly.” This rant about how awful housing and architecture are on the train from Pittsburgh to Greensburg is based on his conclusion that all the people along that train line (in 1927) choose to live in ugly houses because they want to, being stupid. The fact that he may be wrong, or privileged, or stupid for assuming that a steelworker or coal miner has a lot of choice doesn’t ever occur to him. He is so certain when he shoots at a target that he always obliterates it. Even when he praises, it’s hard to see why he likes what he likes, except in the case of music, or old Baltimore. The biographical stuff is the best stuff in here (as Alistair Cooke realizes in his intro). Small doses of the rest, only.
It all would be easier to take if you didn’t see how he misses the point—most clearly in the essay “The Libido for the Ugly.” This rant about how awful housing and architecture are on the train from Pittsburgh to Greensburg is based on his conclusion that all the people along that train line (in 1927) choose to live in ugly houses because they want to, being stupid. The fact that he may be wrong, or privileged, or stupid for assuming that a steelworker or coal miner has a lot of choice doesn’t ever occur to him. He is so certain when he shoots at a target that he always obliterates it. Even when he praises, it’s hard to see why he likes what he likes, except in the case of music, or old Baltimore. The biographical stuff is the best stuff in here (as Alistair Cooke realizes in his intro). Small doses of the rest, only.
October 17, 2020
Can’t say I vastly enjoyed Mencken. I appreciate witty insults and poking fun at ridiculous people and things, but when those people and things are 100-150 years old and I don’t know them well enough to decide whether I agree, and you slog through a mountain of mockery from a guy who didn’t have Jesus and didn’t love his audience, and he isn’t terribly funny after all, then I lose some serious morale. Born under Jove, and baptized, Mencken would be a hoot.
November 22, 2012
Not being American, I was not been brought up hearing the name of H L Mencken. My first awareness of him came from epigrammatic gobbets that got into books of quotations. For example, there is the epitaph which (I discover) he wrote for himself in 1921, long before he died in 1956: “If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have a thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl”. Or, “Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.” Many of these gems are found in the pages of Alistair Cooke’s eclectic collection of his essays, but they do not, in truth, encapsulate the man.
Mencken’s essays convey an aroma of whisky and cigars. One imagines him, when not actually writing, regaling friends with acid anecdotes. He is wildly opinionated, able to hold forth on any topic.
He has, for example, a disdain for adultery, condemning one Theodore Dreisden who believed that a “strong, successful man” would ordinarily have several women in tow. Menken gives, in refutation, a list of “strong, successful men” who were monogamous.
Menken writes with approval of George Washington who was a “land-grabber, a promoter of stock companies, and exploiter of mine and timber’. Washington was also a lover of whisky who today “would be ineligible for any office of honor or profit”.
Menken praises the police, from whom he has learned “that sharp wits can lurk in unpolished skulls”. “Their one salient failing, taking them as a class, was their belief that any person who had been arrested, even on mere suspicion was unquestionably and ipso facto guilty.”
Permeating everything is his florid language. For example, his essay, “Star-Spangled Men” considers the chests of military men that bear glittering medals of “every hue in the rainbow, the spectroscope, the kaleidoscope – imperial purples, sforzando reds, wild Irish greens, romantic blues, loud yellows and oranges, rich maroons, sentimental pinks, all the half-tones from ultra-violet to infrared, all the vibrations from the impalpable to the unendurable”. The medals, he speculates, “tell of butcheries in foreign and domestic parts – mountains of dead Filipinos, Mexicans, Haitians, Dominicans, West Virginian miners, perhaps even Prussians”. As with the military, so with civilians. “Rank by rank, (Americans) became Knights of Phthias, Odd Fellows, Red Men, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Knights Templar, Patriarchs Militant, Elks, Moose, Woodmen of the World, Foresters, Hoo-hoos, Ku Kluxers – and in every new order there were thirty-two degrees, and for every degree there was a badge, and for every badge there was a yard of ribbon.” Thus the words pour out.
Though he had his causes, Menken marched to his own drum. Cooke's selection does little to steer the reader to discover what might be his overarching views. One does not find here the same single-minded coherence that permeates the writing of his contemporary, George Orwell. Nevertheless, it seems appropriate that Menken’s final essay, written just before he fell sick, should oppose a “relic of Ku Kluxery”, an attempt to stop the black citizens of Maryland playing tennis with the white ones. “A free citizen in a free state,” he wrote, “has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will.” If a theme does emerge, therefore, it is Menken’s preference for tolerance and personal freedom, and his dislike of humbug.
This collection of essays was compiled by Alistair Cooke as a tribute by one great writer to another. It is worth a look.
Mencken’s essays convey an aroma of whisky and cigars. One imagines him, when not actually writing, regaling friends with acid anecdotes. He is wildly opinionated, able to hold forth on any topic.
He has, for example, a disdain for adultery, condemning one Theodore Dreisden who believed that a “strong, successful man” would ordinarily have several women in tow. Menken gives, in refutation, a list of “strong, successful men” who were monogamous.
Menken writes with approval of George Washington who was a “land-grabber, a promoter of stock companies, and exploiter of mine and timber’. Washington was also a lover of whisky who today “would be ineligible for any office of honor or profit”.
Menken praises the police, from whom he has learned “that sharp wits can lurk in unpolished skulls”. “Their one salient failing, taking them as a class, was their belief that any person who had been arrested, even on mere suspicion was unquestionably and ipso facto guilty.”
Permeating everything is his florid language. For example, his essay, “Star-Spangled Men” considers the chests of military men that bear glittering medals of “every hue in the rainbow, the spectroscope, the kaleidoscope – imperial purples, sforzando reds, wild Irish greens, romantic blues, loud yellows and oranges, rich maroons, sentimental pinks, all the half-tones from ultra-violet to infrared, all the vibrations from the impalpable to the unendurable”. The medals, he speculates, “tell of butcheries in foreign and domestic parts – mountains of dead Filipinos, Mexicans, Haitians, Dominicans, West Virginian miners, perhaps even Prussians”. As with the military, so with civilians. “Rank by rank, (Americans) became Knights of Phthias, Odd Fellows, Red Men, Nobles of the Mystic Shrine, Knights Templar, Patriarchs Militant, Elks, Moose, Woodmen of the World, Foresters, Hoo-hoos, Ku Kluxers – and in every new order there were thirty-two degrees, and for every degree there was a badge, and for every badge there was a yard of ribbon.” Thus the words pour out.
Though he had his causes, Menken marched to his own drum. Cooke's selection does little to steer the reader to discover what might be his overarching views. One does not find here the same single-minded coherence that permeates the writing of his contemporary, George Orwell. Nevertheless, it seems appropriate that Menken’s final essay, written just before he fell sick, should oppose a “relic of Ku Kluxery”, an attempt to stop the black citizens of Maryland playing tennis with the white ones. “A free citizen in a free state,” he wrote, “has an inalienable right to play with whomsoever he will.” If a theme does emerge, therefore, it is Menken’s preference for tolerance and personal freedom, and his dislike of humbug.
This collection of essays was compiled by Alistair Cooke as a tribute by one great writer to another. It is worth a look.
March 3, 2019
I am definitely conflicted about Mencken. He certainly has more than the usual of native wit, and is unafraid to call out a humbug of any type. At times he seems arrogant and completely incapable of seeing the other side of the coin. His particular animus of course is towards evangelical Christianity, what he seems to mean by the repeated derisive use, often as an adjective, of "Chautauqua." However, he does reveal a sympathy for traditional church architecture.
At times he is uproariously funny.
At times I agree with him, until the next sentence.
At times it seems impossible to tell whether he is being ridiculous and tongue-in-cheek or radical and outrageous. Since he loves to be contrarian, what is his real tone?
For instance, he says "What it [democracy] needs beyond everything is a party of liberty. It produces, true enough, occasional libertarians, just as despotism produces occasional regicides, but it treats them in the same drum-head way. It will never have a party of them until it invents and installs a genuine aristocracy, to breed them and secure them."
See, I was totally with him until the last sentence, which was a real kick in the face.
Is he being absurd here, suggesting that only aristocracy can establish liberty?
Is this is suggestion that liberty will never really be advocated?
Is he serious, as elsewhere he seems to suggest a very elitist view of society based on his support of Nietzsche's Übermensch idea? If so, how does he even justify his apparent support of the idea of personal liberty?
But this is Mencken. This will happen to you over and over.
Ironically, he is at his most nonpartisan when he writes of politics, and I found that I agreed with him much of the time here. He gets Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, Cleveland, Coolidge, and the party machine politics dead on.
His earlier writings lend an implication of racial prejudice, particularly in some references to Jews. Not hostilely and explicitly, but suggested. His essay on "The Anglo-Saxon" however is a ripping mockery of those who took pride in their "Anglo-Saxon heritage." In fairness to Mencken regarding his apparent prejudice, there was not much sensitivity in that time to such issues, and such things were often treated jocularly that would end careers today. But it is at times jarring. In his later writings he comes out boldly and clearly for equality, notably in the essay entitled "Mencken's Last Stand" which decries the city policy segregating games in the park which sent people to jail for a game of integrated tennis.
The cover is hideous and I can't say that it improved my feelings about the book, however unfair that may be.
Do not open unless you can deal with a measure of pomposity and tremendous confidence that Mencken knew he was right. There cannot be another person on earth who agreed with Mencken about everything, because he was so strongly opinionated about so many things in such heterodox ways.
At times he is uproariously funny.
At times I agree with him, until the next sentence.
At times it seems impossible to tell whether he is being ridiculous and tongue-in-cheek or radical and outrageous. Since he loves to be contrarian, what is his real tone?
For instance, he says "What it [democracy] needs beyond everything is a party of liberty. It produces, true enough, occasional libertarians, just as despotism produces occasional regicides, but it treats them in the same drum-head way. It will never have a party of them until it invents and installs a genuine aristocracy, to breed them and secure them."
See, I was totally with him until the last sentence, which was a real kick in the face.
Is he being absurd here, suggesting that only aristocracy can establish liberty?
Is this is suggestion that liberty will never really be advocated?
Is he serious, as elsewhere he seems to suggest a very elitist view of society based on his support of Nietzsche's Übermensch idea? If so, how does he even justify his apparent support of the idea of personal liberty?
But this is Mencken. This will happen to you over and over.
Ironically, he is at his most nonpartisan when he writes of politics, and I found that I agreed with him much of the time here. He gets Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr, Cleveland, Coolidge, and the party machine politics dead on.
His earlier writings lend an implication of racial prejudice, particularly in some references to Jews. Not hostilely and explicitly, but suggested. His essay on "The Anglo-Saxon" however is a ripping mockery of those who took pride in their "Anglo-Saxon heritage." In fairness to Mencken regarding his apparent prejudice, there was not much sensitivity in that time to such issues, and such things were often treated jocularly that would end careers today. But it is at times jarring. In his later writings he comes out boldly and clearly for equality, notably in the essay entitled "Mencken's Last Stand" which decries the city policy segregating games in the park which sent people to jail for a game of integrated tennis.
The cover is hideous and I can't say that it improved my feelings about the book, however unfair that may be.
Do not open unless you can deal with a measure of pomposity and tremendous confidence that Mencken knew he was right. There cannot be another person on earth who agreed with Mencken about everything, because he was so strongly opinionated about so many things in such heterodox ways.
Read
July 27, 2017Yeah, I mean, he’s funny and he’s got some fabulous one liners but on balance he’s a classic troll, cantankerous for its own sake and to prove his individuality, obsessed with personal vendettas which were likely pointless at the time and are now utterly opaque (how much do you know about the American political scene of say, 1926? Because it turns out I don’t actually know anything either). It’s sort of illegitimate to compare a newspaperman to a ‘straight’ writer, their primary obligation is to be constantly saying shit of some kind, but his record as revealed here is pretty weak and that’s coming from someone essentially sympathetic to pre-WWII ideas of American isolationism. Will I Keep It: No.
June 28, 2024
H.L Mencken was a satirist of the early 20th century who specialized in shredding the hypocrisy that passes for American morality. He did his best work in the period from 1910 through 1930, when, thanks to Woodrow Wilson, the American century began. Mencken hated all moralizers, most of whom he believed to be frauds (those few genuinely moral types were probably stupid).
Wilson was one such fraud, derided by Mencken for simplifying the issues of the era into a morality play, made of "a grand series of moral...and theological maxims which now lodges imperishably in the cultural heritage of the American people". This culture went on to conquer the world.
Mencken had an Alfred E. Newman part in his hair and heart full of hate. Like so many great satirists, he was a nasty little reactionary. His contempt was Nietzschean in style, a man he helped introduce to American letters. He had no respect for the weak; he blamed America's defects on our lack of an aristocracy. For Mencken, aristocracy was an inborn trait, intellectual above all. He dismissed the rich as plutocrats, unable to achieve greatness. The plutocrat had to pander to the crowd, and so he was a mirror image of the hooting yokels below. Only an aristocrat had the strength to stand alone; because, ironically, his courage was protected by his class.
Mencken was a reactionary: he frequently mourned the confederacy. But he was no fascist. His revulsion toward the crowd kept him away from mass politics. If he'd been a German, he would've spent the war filling notebooks with bitter scribbles (published by NYRB).
Ayn Rand wrote Mencken a swooning letter in 1934, after word got to her that he'd said a mildly positive comment about her first novel. She called him the "greatest representative of a philosophy to which I want my dedicate my whole life". Funny: Ayn Rand is a perfect speciesism of all that Mencken hated about America. He said this about the tycoons whom Rand spent her life flattering: "the plutocracy, in a democratic state, tends inevitably, despite its theoretical infamy, to take the place of the missing aristocracy, and even to be mistaken for it".
Wilson was one such fraud, derided by Mencken for simplifying the issues of the era into a morality play, made of "a grand series of moral...and theological maxims which now lodges imperishably in the cultural heritage of the American people". This culture went on to conquer the world.
Mencken had an Alfred E. Newman part in his hair and heart full of hate. Like so many great satirists, he was a nasty little reactionary. His contempt was Nietzschean in style, a man he helped introduce to American letters. He had no respect for the weak; he blamed America's defects on our lack of an aristocracy. For Mencken, aristocracy was an inborn trait, intellectual above all. He dismissed the rich as plutocrats, unable to achieve greatness. The plutocrat had to pander to the crowd, and so he was a mirror image of the hooting yokels below. Only an aristocrat had the strength to stand alone; because, ironically, his courage was protected by his class.
Mencken was a reactionary: he frequently mourned the confederacy. But he was no fascist. His revulsion toward the crowd kept him away from mass politics. If he'd been a German, he would've spent the war filling notebooks with bitter scribbles (published by NYRB).
Ayn Rand wrote Mencken a swooning letter in 1934, after word got to her that he'd said a mildly positive comment about her first novel. She called him the "greatest representative of a philosophy to which I want my dedicate my whole life". Funny: Ayn Rand is a perfect speciesism of all that Mencken hated about America. He said this about the tycoons whom Rand spent her life flattering: "the plutocracy, in a democratic state, tends inevitably, despite its theoretical infamy, to take the place of the missing aristocracy, and even to be mistaken for it".
October 10, 2025
I enjoy reading Mencken, always have. He always writes well and with a sly wit that comes through at the weirdest times. However, I don't think anyone should take anything he wrote all that seriously. He was a newspaper man, meaning he wanted to shock or pat readers on the head. Basically, whatever will sell papers. He could put together some beautiful writing, especially his autobiographical pieces. Also, enjoy his reporting pieces quite a bit.
This is not a great collection, Cooke was trying to give you an overview of all his different types of writings. He does, but since he was trying to find pieces that haven't already been republished, he was working with a smaller pool. Though I would still recommend
This is not a great collection, Cooke was trying to give you an overview of all his different types of writings. He does, but since he was trying to find pieces that haven't already been republished, he was working with a smaller pool. Though I would still recommend
December 13, 2017
H.L. Mencken's brilliance shines through to the modern day
This book compiles wisdom written nearly a century ago.
And yet -
Some of it feels as if it was written by a modern-day humorist. Mencken's wit and talent are not in question - but some of the themes he take on are so broad that they are still on topic today.
This book compiles wisdom written nearly a century ago.
And yet -
Some of it feels as if it was written by a modern-day humorist. Mencken's wit and talent are not in question - but some of the themes he take on are so broad that they are still on topic today.
March 31, 2016
Quotes:
"The struggle of man, as he sees it, is more than impotent; it is gratuitous and purposeless. There is, to his eye, no grand ingenuity, no skillful adaptation of means to end, no moral (or even dramatic) plan in the order of the universe. He can get out of it only a sense of profound and inexplicable disorder. The waves which batter the cockleshells change their direction at every instant. Their navigation is a vast adventure, but intolerably fortuitous and inept - a voyage without chart, compass, sun or stars. . . . But to look into the blackness steadily, of course, is almost beyond the endurance of man. In the very moment that its impenetrability is grasped the imagination begins attacking it with pale beams of false light. All religions, I daresay, are thus projected from the questioning soul of man, and not only all religions, but also all great agnosticisms."
"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more be elected President of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of soft illusion."
"No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt - a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve. This doubt, it must be obvious, is always more than justified, for no man is worthy of unlimited reliance - his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation."
"The special quality which makes an artist ... might almost be defined, indeed, as an extraordinary capacity for irritation, a pathological sensitiveness to environmental pricks and stings. He differs from the rest of us mainly because he reacts sharply and in uncommon manner to phenomena which leave the rest of us unmoved, or, at most, merely annoy us vaguely. He is, in brief, a more delicate fellow than we are, and hence less fitted to prosper and enjoy himself under the conditions of life which he and we must face alike. Therefore, he takes to artistic endeavor, which is at once a criticism of life and an attempt to escape from life."
"The weak spot in his reasoning, if I may presume to suggest such a thing, was his tacit assumption that the voice of the legislature was the voice of the people. There is, in fact, no reason for confusing the people and the legislature: the two, in these later years, are quite distinct. The legislature, like the executive, has ceased, save indirectly, to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature, in the main, of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game."
"The struggle of man, as he sees it, is more than impotent; it is gratuitous and purposeless. There is, to his eye, no grand ingenuity, no skillful adaptation of means to end, no moral (or even dramatic) plan in the order of the universe. He can get out of it only a sense of profound and inexplicable disorder. The waves which batter the cockleshells change their direction at every instant. Their navigation is a vast adventure, but intolerably fortuitous and inept - a voyage without chart, compass, sun or stars. . . . But to look into the blackness steadily, of course, is almost beyond the endurance of man. In the very moment that its impenetrability is grasped the imagination begins attacking it with pale beams of false light. All religions, I daresay, are thus projected from the questioning soul of man, and not only all religions, but also all great agnosticisms."
"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth. A Galileo could no more be elected President of the United States than he could be elected Pope of Rome. Both high posts are reserved for men favored by God with an extraordinary genius for swathing the bitter facts of life in bandages of soft illusion."
"No man ever quite believes in any other man. One may believe in an idea absolutely, but not in a man. In the highest confidence there is always a flavor of doubt - a feeling, half instinctive and half logical, that, after all, the scoundrel may have something up his sleeve. This doubt, it must be obvious, is always more than justified, for no man is worthy of unlimited reliance - his treason, at best, only waits for sufficient temptation."
"The special quality which makes an artist ... might almost be defined, indeed, as an extraordinary capacity for irritation, a pathological sensitiveness to environmental pricks and stings. He differs from the rest of us mainly because he reacts sharply and in uncommon manner to phenomena which leave the rest of us unmoved, or, at most, merely annoy us vaguely. He is, in brief, a more delicate fellow than we are, and hence less fitted to prosper and enjoy himself under the conditions of life which he and we must face alike. Therefore, he takes to artistic endeavor, which is at once a criticism of life and an attempt to escape from life."
"The weak spot in his reasoning, if I may presume to suggest such a thing, was his tacit assumption that the voice of the legislature was the voice of the people. There is, in fact, no reason for confusing the people and the legislature: the two, in these later years, are quite distinct. The legislature, like the executive, has ceased, save indirectly, to be even the creature of the people: it is the creature, in the main, of pressure groups, and most of them, it must be manifest, are of dubious wisdom and even more dubious honesty. Laws are no longer made by a rational process of public discussion; they are made by a process of blackmail and intimidation, and they are executed in the same manner. The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle - a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game."
August 7, 2007
Very fine writing, particularly when he stays away from generic... well, news pieces. I'm more interested in his particular opinions and expression of them than some account of 1920s zeitgeist (the articles about fish prices and police etc etc? Oh god, kill me now.), so obviously that's coloring my view quite a bit, but still. Anthony Lane's reminiscent of him in some ways, though Mencken doesn't have his glee.
June 26, 2008
What can I say that critics haven’t been saying about him for a hundred years? Mencken lacerates more nonsense and makes more sense--common and uncommon--than everyone else that has lived or is to be born. Possibly the most respected journalist of all time. Father of muckraking, destroyer of popular myths, creator of unpopular truths. If you don’t like H.L.M. I probably won‘t like you.
There, I bet no one said that before.
There, I bet no one said that before.
September 20, 2007
The curmudgeonly, incomparable Mencken is always a sheer delight to read _ a breath of fresh air amid so much writing that's so canned and predictable. Even when he's wrong about something, he's wonderfully, delightfully wrong _ and only wants to make you read more.
December 25, 2019
A 4.4 rounded up for such gems as 'The Art Eternal' and 'Blind Spot.'
July 17, 2019
After the recent depressing and often illiterate election, it seemed a good time to read Mencken. With the recent candidates sounding like schoolyard bickerers it was a pleasure to read someone who could insult with such eloquence. Mencken was a voice of old style conservatism, before the meaning of that word was hijacked by the current crop. Agree with him or not, he is worth reading just to taste his joy in the magic of the American language. Sadly, a lot of his comments about the vacuous nature of political leadership in the 1920's still ring true as critiques of today. A sampling follows:
"The patriot is a bigot, and more often than not, a bounder and a poltroon. The man of physical bravery is often on a level, intellectually, with a Baptist clergyman."
"The Latin church, which I constantly find myself admiring, despite its frequent astounding imbecilities, has always kept clearly before it the fact that religion is not a syllogism, but a poem."
From his obituary of William Jennings Bryan..."He seemed only a poor clod like those around him, deluded by a childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things."
"The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle- a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism."
This collection, edited by Alistair Cooke, of Masterpiece Theater fame, is a good place to start if you have not read Mencken before. Read, enjoy and envy that a man could affirm so much through gleeful hatred.
"The patriot is a bigot, and more often than not, a bounder and a poltroon. The man of physical bravery is often on a level, intellectually, with a Baptist clergyman."
"The Latin church, which I constantly find myself admiring, despite its frequent astounding imbecilities, has always kept clearly before it the fact that religion is not a syllogism, but a poem."
From his obituary of William Jennings Bryan..."He seemed only a poor clod like those around him, deluded by a childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things."
"The typical lawmaker of today is a man wholly devoid of principle- a mere counter in a grotesque and knavish game. If the right pressure could be applied to him he would be cheerfully in favor of polygamy, astrology or cannibalism."
This collection, edited by Alistair Cooke, of Masterpiece Theater fame, is a good place to start if you have not read Mencken before. Read, enjoy and envy that a man could affirm so much through gleeful hatred.
March 31, 2010
With a rapier wit, H. L. Mencken captures the key moments and the everyday frustrations of early twentieth-century America. His sharp, elegant prose provides a portrait and running commentary of major and minor American figures, works, and occurrences. In this anthology Alistair Cooke claims to have gathered "the best of his [Mencken's:] work, putting the stress on the newspaper pieces that had outlived more pretentious stuff and on the memoirs in which emerged the beautiful, well-tempered, and funny style of his later years" (vii). Though the these pieces may represent the best of Mencken's work, the collection lacks the cohesive structure and organization present in Mencken's self-directed works. The failings of this text, though minor, are purely that of its editor. Perhaps in an effort to maintain invisibility, Cooke supplies little editorial direction: the headnotes remain skeletal; omissions lack explanation; and there are no transitions between selections, attempts at chapters, or sense of direction chronologically or thematically. One could argue that The Vintage Mencken may be enjoyed best by dissection, rather than attempting a singular consolidation. Regardless, it stands worthy for a place on the shelf.
February 18, 2011
Mencken, an erudite curmudgeon, is a sort of spiritual grandfather to Christopher Hitchens. A passable read, giving insight into the Zeitgeist of early 20th century USA, although I could have wished the editor would have selected the pieces more carefully. Some favourite quotes:
"The Latin Church, which I constantly find myself admiring, despite its frequent astounding imbecilities, has always kept clearly before it the fact that religion is not a syllogism, but a poem."
"I have the notion that the average auditor would guess that it (Wagner's Parsifal) was a musical setting for some lamentable fornication between a baritone seven feet in height and a soprano weighing three hundred pounds."
"-- the plutocracy in a democratic state, tends inevitably, .. to take the place of the missing aristocracy, and even to be mistaken for it. It is, of course, something quite different. It lacks all the essential character of a true aristocracy: a clean tradition, culture, public spirit, honesty, honor, courage.. It stands under no public duty; it is transient and lacks a goal. Its most puissant dignitaries of today came out of the mob only yesterday - and from the mob they bring all its peculiar ignobilities."
"The Latin Church, which I constantly find myself admiring, despite its frequent astounding imbecilities, has always kept clearly before it the fact that religion is not a syllogism, but a poem."
"I have the notion that the average auditor would guess that it (Wagner's Parsifal) was a musical setting for some lamentable fornication between a baritone seven feet in height and a soprano weighing three hundred pounds."
"-- the plutocracy in a democratic state, tends inevitably, .. to take the place of the missing aristocracy, and even to be mistaken for it. It is, of course, something quite different. It lacks all the essential character of a true aristocracy: a clean tradition, culture, public spirit, honesty, honor, courage.. It stands under no public duty; it is transient and lacks a goal. Its most puissant dignitaries of today came out of the mob only yesterday - and from the mob they bring all its peculiar ignobilities."
March 13, 2011
Looking for a primer in delivering an opinion -- or whole strings of opinions -- with caustic and seeming irrefutable logic? H. L. Mencken, up until The Wire, and arguably beyond, was the smartest source of social commentary ever to emanate from Baltimore, Maryland. Some of the long-revered newspaperman and editor's views may seem quaint (Mencken inexplicably devotes an essay to the unsightliness of the naked female body), but his railing against demonizing of ethnic Americans during wartime (in this case native-born Germans during World War I) and against craven politics hiding behind false religious virtue are up-to-the-moment bites of outraged common sense. The cable news channels and online aggregates are crawling with loudmouths who match Mencken's fervor, but if you know of any reasoned voices that approach his honest-to-goodness pillorying of public- and private-sector jackassery, please leave a source link in comments.
April 19, 2017
In The Vintage Mencken, Alistair Cooke gathered “mainly to introduce to a generation that never read him a writer who more and more strikes me as the master craftsman of daily journalism in the twentieth century.” On the other hand, this could well be an “I compiled this not to praise Mencken but to bury him” sort of deal, only this time honestly. “Mencken’s thunder,” after all, “issued from an unmaterial mind, but also from a full stomach.”
This collection stresses “the newspaper pieces that had outlived more pretentious stuff”, and I’m not sure but I think Cooke means Mencken’s more pretentious stuff. For Mencken “was overrated in his day as a thinker” but “underrated as a humorist”.
This collection stresses “the newspaper pieces that had outlived more pretentious stuff”, and I’m not sure but I think Cooke means Mencken’s more pretentious stuff. For Mencken “was overrated in his day as a thinker” but “underrated as a humorist”.
October 25, 2012
Mencken is an old timey sass-filled hoot. He's that guy you meet and think, "This guy does not like me, but he keeps talking at me as though he thinks I like him. Boy is he worked up about things." The greatest challenge to me is figuring out what Mencken would say if he were put in any time period other than his own. He was keyed in on his surroundings so perfectly, and had no problem shouting out what he thought. His opinions are harsh but funny, and brilliantly so. Love Mencken. Because he doesn't want you to.
December 2, 2008
Good Lord, this makes you want to WRITE! ...and laugh and sing and curse, but it makes you want to WRITE!
December 20, 2008
Mencken was an opinionated newspaper writer in the 1920s and 30s. I suspect that many of his pieces were written for shock value. I would recommend this if you enjoy old-fashioned satire.
November 12, 2019
Mencken really caught me off guard. He has something witty and intelligent to say about nearly everything important in life and nothing escapes unscathed. Democracy, men, women, religion, beer, every kind of art, school practices, and politics all go under the microscope and all come up sorely lacking. Jazz music is shit, Americans are cowards, The Gettysburg Address made no sense and appeals only to sentimental fools, movies are garbage, America and England have yet to make any worthwhile contributions to any form of art or philosophy, Communism is just as useless as Democracy, etc etc. I'm sure if your're reading this something in that list gave you a kneejerk reaction or a hearty chuckle. Mencken was not afraid to scold people for their failings, but at the same time it was always with a wink and a nod not to take it too seriously. Men should always be on the alert for superstitions polluting their judgement or letting a slick politician pour a sweet sounding poison in their ear. If you're going to sin, do it right and honorably and keep your conscience clean in the process. To be gobbled up by the masses or even be swayed in the slightest must have been an unthinkable nightmare to Mencken and to act nobly and honorably in one's own interest is a philosophy I can get behind.
June 18, 2020
Far from the work of genius I was somehow hoping for. My disappointment probably has as much to do with my expectations as the actual text here. Somehow I thought Mencken would go in more for assailing the comfortable. He does do this some—I particularly enjoyed the essay on William Jennings Bryan—but in this compilation we also find him punching down quite a bit. He despises democracy (and, to be fair, plutocrats). He lays out some frankly revolting praise of aristocrats. He thinks his country would be better off if the Confederates won the American Civil War.
Advancing such odious views might be easier to see past—most of the writing in this book is approach 100 years old, etc. etc.—if Mencken was more enjoyable as a writer. At the level of the sentence he can be quite good. In fact, my favorite part of the whole thing was the collection of epigrams that close the book. But the structure of the essays and columns themselves is often very sloppy. He goes on until he runs out of steam and then stops right in the middle of the tracks.
Advancing such odious views might be easier to see past—most of the writing in this book is approach 100 years old, etc. etc.—if Mencken was more enjoyable as a writer. At the level of the sentence he can be quite good. In fact, my favorite part of the whole thing was the collection of epigrams that close the book. But the structure of the essays and columns themselves is often very sloppy. He goes on until he runs out of steam and then stops right in the middle of the tracks.
October 5, 2020
Some of these century-old selections about political conventions, youthful ambition, or criticism of criticism are still riveting owing to Mencken's stylistic gifts.
And what a delight, if not a revelation, to read high-minded raillery against what in his time was called Puritan Christian morality and what in our time would be called something slightly but not noticeably different. The aristocracy stuff is unpopular of course, but I'd argue that the very existence of Goodreads puts at least one point in Mencken's favor.
The epigrams, and more besides after Mencken's peak around 1920, are preposterous; furthermore, it's not hard to tell that this pudgy grump was neither the adventuresome American, nor the German intellectual, he postured as. Like with most public culture critics too, one has the feeling that Mencken's eye wasn't for the beautiful or important in experience, but for the clever -- whatever garners titters and subscriptions. I'll leave the rest of the assessing, though, to the debate kids (their careers as op-ed journos or HR ghouls bright) and biographers.
And what a delight, if not a revelation, to read high-minded raillery against what in his time was called Puritan Christian morality and what in our time would be called something slightly but not noticeably different. The aristocracy stuff is unpopular of course, but I'd argue that the very existence of Goodreads puts at least one point in Mencken's favor.
The epigrams, and more besides after Mencken's peak around 1920, are preposterous; furthermore, it's not hard to tell that this pudgy grump was neither the adventuresome American, nor the German intellectual, he postured as. Like with most public culture critics too, one has the feeling that Mencken's eye wasn't for the beautiful or important in experience, but for the clever -- whatever garners titters and subscriptions. I'll leave the rest of the assessing, though, to the debate kids (their careers as op-ed journos or HR ghouls bright) and biographers.
August 22, 2025
In 1889 this little note appeared in the Baltimore Morning Herald:
This is the first text of Mencken printed. And although I might fool myself, I think I can detect a touch of genius in it.
This is an excellent collection of Mencken prose. I especially like the autobiographical tales of his early youth. I have not yet read anything as lively about living in the middle of the 19th century in a poor neighborhood of an US industrial town.
Of course, Mencken has his idiosyncrasies, e.g. his dislike of FDR. Or of democracy. But overall I am impressed by his wisdom and his unique humor. And he is a cynic. “In all my years of search ... I have never met a thoroughly moral man who was honorable.”
Maybe the most surprising article is the The Anglo-Saxon a very harsh criticism of American culture.
A horse, a buggy and several sets of harness, valued all about $250, were stolen last night from the stable of Howard Quinlan, near Kingsville. The county police are at work on the case, but so far no trace of either thieves or booty has been found.
This is the first text of Mencken printed. And although I might fool myself, I think I can detect a touch of genius in it.
This is an excellent collection of Mencken prose. I especially like the autobiographical tales of his early youth. I have not yet read anything as lively about living in the middle of the 19th century in a poor neighborhood of an US industrial town.
Of course, Mencken has his idiosyncrasies, e.g. his dislike of FDR. Or of democracy. But overall I am impressed by his wisdom and his unique humor. And he is a cynic. “In all my years of search ... I have never met a thoroughly moral man who was honorable.”
Maybe the most surprising article is the The Anglo-Saxon a very harsh criticism of American culture.
October 5, 2025
This collection of essays was a bit hit and miss for me. Some were hilarious and insightful, others dragged a bit. It's a collection that is probably best appreciated slowly rather than all at once. He's someone I would happily pick up if I found him in a used bookstore for a good price, but not an author I'll deliberately hunt down.
Best quote:
"The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating. To the average man, doomed to some banal drudgery all his life long, they offer the only grand hazard that he ever encounters. Take them away and his existence would be as flat and secure as that of a moo-cow... Civilization has not made them a bit more safe than they were in Solomon's time; they are still inordinately menacing, and hence inordinately provocative, and hence inordinately charming."
Best quote:
"The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: they are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating. To the average man, doomed to some banal drudgery all his life long, they offer the only grand hazard that he ever encounters. Take them away and his existence would be as flat and secure as that of a moo-cow... Civilization has not made them a bit more safe than they were in Solomon's time; they are still inordinately menacing, and hence inordinately provocative, and hence inordinately charming."
December 13, 2024
My uncle gave me this book upon hearing that I’d been reading through Montaigne’s essays, and bonding over our shared passion for Doug Stanhope and Diogenes the Cynic.
Mencken sometimes goes into some eugenics stuff (sign of those times), but his commentary on hillbillies/white-trash is just too good. I had to set the book down a few times from laughing so hard! I think anyone who grew up in the Deep South or Midwest with a functional brain would confirm his remarks as mostly true- chuckles and yuks included. Also humorous is when he takes tangential jabs at Puritans and modern Evangelists for a paragraph or so before returning to the original topic.
Toward the end are some profound Bierce-like definitions, my favorite being:
"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
Mencken sometimes goes into some eugenics stuff (sign of those times), but his commentary on hillbillies/white-trash is just too good. I had to set the book down a few times from laughing so hard! I think anyone who grew up in the Deep South or Midwest with a functional brain would confirm his remarks as mostly true- chuckles and yuks included. Also humorous is when he takes tangential jabs at Puritans and modern Evangelists for a paragraph or so before returning to the original topic.
Toward the end are some profound Bierce-like definitions, my favorite being:
"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
June 6, 2017
Diverse and interesting collection
A lot of people are probably familiar with Mencken through one of his many witty aphorisms but, as this collection aptly demonstrates, his longer writings are also well worth reading. Divided into several sections based on topic, this book provides a good selection of pieces of varying lengths. There were so many great quotes, that I lost track. Personally, I love his approach to politics and religion, and there were plenty of applicable quotes in that regard. The only quibble I have is to do with this Kindle edition: Part of an essay on Oliver Wendell Holmes is missing, and the editing job could have been better. Other than that, this is a solid collection that is worth your time and money.
A lot of people are probably familiar with Mencken through one of his many witty aphorisms but, as this collection aptly demonstrates, his longer writings are also well worth reading. Divided into several sections based on topic, this book provides a good selection of pieces of varying lengths. There were so many great quotes, that I lost track. Personally, I love his approach to politics and religion, and there were plenty of applicable quotes in that regard. The only quibble I have is to do with this Kindle edition: Part of an essay on Oliver Wendell Holmes is missing, and the editing job could have been better. Other than that, this is a solid collection that is worth your time and money.
July 24, 2017
Great collection. Truly vintage Mencken.
I was fortunate enough to be encouraged to read Mencken by my favorite teacher of all time, Dr. Jim Stiver at the Uni. of South Carolina.
I was also able to visit Baltimore over the week of July 4th this year (2017). And I got to see the Mencken room in the Enoch Pratt Free Library as well.
Like Calvin Trillin of the NY Times, I have a number of books on or by Mencken. I don't always agree with him but no one turns a phrase quite the way he did.
I was fortunate enough to be encouraged to read Mencken by my favorite teacher of all time, Dr. Jim Stiver at the Uni. of South Carolina.
I was also able to visit Baltimore over the week of July 4th this year (2017). And I got to see the Mencken room in the Enoch Pratt Free Library as well.
Like Calvin Trillin of the NY Times, I have a number of books on or by Mencken. I don't always agree with him but no one turns a phrase quite the way he did.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 73 reviews