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The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken – The Masterful Biography of the Critic and Champion Who Shaped the Roaring Twenties
When H. L. Mencken talked, everyone listened -- like it or not. In the Roaring Twenties, he was the one critic who mattered, the champion of a generation of plain-speaking writers who redefined the American novel, and the ax-swinging scourge of the know-nothing, go-getting middle-class philistines whom he dubbed the "booboisie." Some loved him, others loathed him, but everybody read him. Now Terry Teachout takes on the man Edmund Wilson called "our greatest practicing literary journalist," brilliantly capturing all of Mencken's energy and erudition, passion and paradoxes, in a masterful biography of this iconoclastic figure and the world he shaped.
410 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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477 people want to read
About the author
Terry Teachout
25 books45 followersTerry Teachout is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the chief culture critic of Commentary. His latest book, "Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong," will be published on December 2 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. He blogs about the arts at www.terryteachout.com. His other books include "The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken," "All in the Dances: A Brief Life of George Balanchine," and "A Terry Teachout Reader." "
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July 29, 2008
“I never wash my hands after taking a leak. That’s the cleanest part of me.” – H.L. Mencken.
H.L. Mencken was Hunter S. Thompson before Hunter S. Thompson was Hunter S. Thompson.
In fact, I decided to look into this H.L. character upon coming across a passing comment referring to him in Gonzo. HST was a fan. Well, perhaps not a fan, but certainly aware of him, aware of Mencken’s contribution to American letters and therefore an influence and forefather of Thompson’s own potent prose and inimitable personality.
H. L. Mencken paved the road that Hunter S. Thompson came screaming down with his peyote-fueled typewriter of rage and style.
These two men, forefathers of modern journalism, have a lot in common and their similarities illuminate the world they were a part of and criticized so effectively. They were both journalists, columnists, and editors, fierce critics of culture and politics.
As Teachout shares in The Skeptic, “Mencken responded to Prohibition by selling his car and using the proceeds to purchase a large stock of “the best wines and liquors I could find,” stored in a homemade basement vault whose door bore a custom-painted sign emblazoned with a skull and crossbones: “This vault is protected by a device releasing Chlorine Gas under 200 pounds pressure. Enter it at your own Risk.” HST would have been proud.
H.L. Mencken gained widespread popularity and exposure with the infamous Scopes trial and HST gained notoriety while covering the ’72 Presidential Campaign. Both men’s success was intimately tied with magazines.
“I note what you say about your aspiration to edit a magazine,” Mencken wrote to William Saroyan in 1936. “I am sending you by this mail a six-chambered revolver. Load it and fire every one into your head. You will thank me after you get to Hell and learn from other editors how dreadful their job was on earth.”
And as all great men seem to be, both H.L. Mencken and Hunter S. Thompson were flawed. Mencken was an anti-Semite and Thompson a homophobe.
However useful an introduction to H.L. Mencken Teachout’s biography was, I did find it significantly lacking in two particular arenas.
First of all, it failed to share an adequate amount of Mencken’s own prose. Once the myth and drug-fascination with Hunter S. Thompson has waned, his legacy will be his words. And no matter how intriguing of a character Mencken was in his own right, his heritage seems to be the same. So I wanted more of Mencken’s writing.
Second, Mencken was an important American writer who had a significant influence on modern journalism and I wish Teachout had provided more of an analysis and study of Mencken’s lasting presence in our contemporary era. The closest Teachout got was a mere parenthetical aside: “Had they [conservatives] known of the extent to which his [Mencken] work in the twenties helped lay the intellectual groundwork for the America-hating adversary culture of the sixties, they might have repudiated him altogether.” But this second objection is probably more a manifestation of my own bias and interest in the similarities between Mencken and Thompson.
Though each man harbored intense and undeniable prejudices of the first order, they pursued sham and hypocrisy in all arenas of public life with unflagging diligence. But Mencken, faithfully secular, touched on religion too, which I haven’t come across much by HST on the topic. Did he weigh in on religion ever?
At the end of The Skeptic, Teachout sees in Mencken “a skepticism so extreme as to issue in philosophical incoherence.” But Teachout ultimately concludes that Mencken’s relevance and success is not a function of his particular convictions but rather of “the firmly balanced prose rhythms and vigorous diction in which they are couched. It is, in short, a triumph of style.”
The same can be said of HST. Despite HST’s failure to write that great novel, or to extend his initial success any further than the 70s, he lined up words in an order like no one else did. And for that, The Skeptic must be considered a success in that it makes me want to stop reading criticism and biographies of Mencken and instead turn to his books much in the same way that I was wearied by Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise and instead wanted to listen to the music.
As always, it’s best to shut up and listen.
H.L. Mencken was Hunter S. Thompson before Hunter S. Thompson was Hunter S. Thompson.
In fact, I decided to look into this H.L. character upon coming across a passing comment referring to him in Gonzo. HST was a fan. Well, perhaps not a fan, but certainly aware of him, aware of Mencken’s contribution to American letters and therefore an influence and forefather of Thompson’s own potent prose and inimitable personality.
H. L. Mencken paved the road that Hunter S. Thompson came screaming down with his peyote-fueled typewriter of rage and style.
These two men, forefathers of modern journalism, have a lot in common and their similarities illuminate the world they were a part of and criticized so effectively. They were both journalists, columnists, and editors, fierce critics of culture and politics.
As Teachout shares in The Skeptic, “Mencken responded to Prohibition by selling his car and using the proceeds to purchase a large stock of “the best wines and liquors I could find,” stored in a homemade basement vault whose door bore a custom-painted sign emblazoned with a skull and crossbones: “This vault is protected by a device releasing Chlorine Gas under 200 pounds pressure. Enter it at your own Risk.” HST would have been proud.
H.L. Mencken gained widespread popularity and exposure with the infamous Scopes trial and HST gained notoriety while covering the ’72 Presidential Campaign. Both men’s success was intimately tied with magazines.
“I note what you say about your aspiration to edit a magazine,” Mencken wrote to William Saroyan in 1936. “I am sending you by this mail a six-chambered revolver. Load it and fire every one into your head. You will thank me after you get to Hell and learn from other editors how dreadful their job was on earth.”
And as all great men seem to be, both H.L. Mencken and Hunter S. Thompson were flawed. Mencken was an anti-Semite and Thompson a homophobe.
However useful an introduction to H.L. Mencken Teachout’s biography was, I did find it significantly lacking in two particular arenas.
First of all, it failed to share an adequate amount of Mencken’s own prose. Once the myth and drug-fascination with Hunter S. Thompson has waned, his legacy will be his words. And no matter how intriguing of a character Mencken was in his own right, his heritage seems to be the same. So I wanted more of Mencken’s writing.
Second, Mencken was an important American writer who had a significant influence on modern journalism and I wish Teachout had provided more of an analysis and study of Mencken’s lasting presence in our contemporary era. The closest Teachout got was a mere parenthetical aside: “Had they [conservatives] known of the extent to which his [Mencken] work in the twenties helped lay the intellectual groundwork for the America-hating adversary culture of the sixties, they might have repudiated him altogether.” But this second objection is probably more a manifestation of my own bias and interest in the similarities between Mencken and Thompson.
Though each man harbored intense and undeniable prejudices of the first order, they pursued sham and hypocrisy in all arenas of public life with unflagging diligence. But Mencken, faithfully secular, touched on religion too, which I haven’t come across much by HST on the topic. Did he weigh in on religion ever?
At the end of The Skeptic, Teachout sees in Mencken “a skepticism so extreme as to issue in philosophical incoherence.” But Teachout ultimately concludes that Mencken’s relevance and success is not a function of his particular convictions but rather of “the firmly balanced prose rhythms and vigorous diction in which they are couched. It is, in short, a triumph of style.”
The same can be said of HST. Despite HST’s failure to write that great novel, or to extend his initial success any further than the 70s, he lined up words in an order like no one else did. And for that, The Skeptic must be considered a success in that it makes me want to stop reading criticism and biographies of Mencken and instead turn to his books much in the same way that I was wearied by Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise and instead wanted to listen to the music.
As always, it’s best to shut up and listen.
March 3, 2015
H. L. Mencken (1880-1956) is not a name familiar to most Americans today. If he is remembered at all, most know him only as the model for the character of the reporter in the play Inherit the Wind. Nevertheless, there was a time when Mencken was one of America's most influential news reporters and cultural critics -- "the leading journalist of the Jazz Age." He began his professional career as the "boy wonder" journalist for the Baltimore newspapers.
During the nine years, from 1914 to 1923, when he and drama critic George J. Nathan co-edited The Smart Set magazine, he reviewed roughly two thousand novels, most of which he considered the work of "100 percent dunderheads." He was justly famous for his harsh reviews -- a selection of which have been reprinted in the book Smart Set Criticism. He was also, however, largely responsible for bringing the works of Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sinclair Lewis to the attention of America’s reading public. He was one of the first critics to recognize The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as being a great novel and played a major role in establishing its status as being perhaps "The great American novel". It was also during this period that he wrote his classic, The American Language (1919).
Subsequently he and Nathan cofounded The American Mercury, which under his editorship from 1923 thru 1933, became one of the most widely read and influential publications in America. As a journalist, his coverage of the Scopes "monkey trial" helped make it the true "trial of the Century" long before O.J.. In the thirties he was a leading critic of the New Deal and an important voice for isolationism and apologist for Hitler.
All this is covered in Terry Teachout's The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, but in Teachout's own words, "this is a life of Mencken, not the life." Rather than trying to present an objective and detailed account of a life, this biography is more the author's personal take on his subject. Teachout explores the reasons for Mencken's successes, his failures, and his ultimate standing in American literary and social history, as well as for the controversy that he continues to be able to provoke to the present day. He quotes Mencken amply, but not excessively, showing him at both his best and his worst.
Mencken was born in the Nineteenth Century and his mindset never quite made it into the Twentieth Century. He spent much of the second half of his life defending ideas that history was busily sweeping aside. He railed against the growing power of the federal government in the early years of the Roosevelt administration; insisted on an elitist brand of politics that favored the "superior man," and generally agitated against progressive domestic causes. He urged, perhaps with ironic intent, that capital punishment be turned into a public entertainment.
He was a dedicated isolationist on world affairs. Of German ancestry, he always remained an admirer of all things German. That admiration included a near slavish devotion to the elitist philosophy of Nietzsche. It also extended to German militarism, even during the two World Wars.
At the same time, Mencken had a passionate, unbending devotion to individual liberty and an undying hostility to those who, for whatever motives, sought to control others' lives or limit their freedom. His opposition to middle class conformity may have had its roots in an elitist worldview, but it was nonetheless liberating for anyone who did not wish to conform. Mencken was almost solely responsible for transforming the term Puritanism from a self-congratulatory brag to a condemnation.
Teachout finds the greatest weakness in Mencken's thought to be his "extreme skepticism" and "permanent opposition." This excess of skepticism resulted in his often failing to acknowledge genuine cultural progress. Furthermore, Teachout argues that it renders Mencken's thought ultimately "incoherent" as any sort of consistent whole. Given that Mencken was a journalist and not a philosopher, this incoherence doesnt seem like such a terrible failing to me. Do we care whether Walter Chronkite's thought was coherent as a body or is it enough that he reported the facts as best he could at the time?
The epilog of the book goes a long way toward explaining the peculiar position that Mencken occupies in American letters. His is a curiously ambiguous reputation -- accepted by neither the conservative nor the liberal establishment, despite his strong affinities with each. Teachout takes the view that Mencken’s success was a "triumph of style." Form and content, he asserts, are "inseparable" in Mencken's work. The result of this marriage of content with style ultimately expresses the fundamental characteristics of the "American temperament" -- "witty and abrasive, self-confident and self-contradictory." Certainly, I must agree that Mencken had style and that whether he was expressing ideas that I find admirable or ones I find repulsive, he did so with remarkable energy and with great mastery of the English language -- or as he would prefer, of the American language.
During the nine years, from 1914 to 1923, when he and drama critic George J. Nathan co-edited The Smart Set magazine, he reviewed roughly two thousand novels, most of which he considered the work of "100 percent dunderheads." He was justly famous for his harsh reviews -- a selection of which have been reprinted in the book Smart Set Criticism. He was also, however, largely responsible for bringing the works of Sherwood Anderson, Willa Cather, Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Sinclair Lewis to the attention of America’s reading public. He was one of the first critics to recognize The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn as being a great novel and played a major role in establishing its status as being perhaps "The great American novel". It was also during this period that he wrote his classic, The American Language (1919).
Subsequently he and Nathan cofounded The American Mercury, which under his editorship from 1923 thru 1933, became one of the most widely read and influential publications in America. As a journalist, his coverage of the Scopes "monkey trial" helped make it the true "trial of the Century" long before O.J.. In the thirties he was a leading critic of the New Deal and an important voice for isolationism and apologist for Hitler.
All this is covered in Terry Teachout's The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, but in Teachout's own words, "this is a life of Mencken, not the life." Rather than trying to present an objective and detailed account of a life, this biography is more the author's personal take on his subject. Teachout explores the reasons for Mencken's successes, his failures, and his ultimate standing in American literary and social history, as well as for the controversy that he continues to be able to provoke to the present day. He quotes Mencken amply, but not excessively, showing him at both his best and his worst.
Mencken was born in the Nineteenth Century and his mindset never quite made it into the Twentieth Century. He spent much of the second half of his life defending ideas that history was busily sweeping aside. He railed against the growing power of the federal government in the early years of the Roosevelt administration; insisted on an elitist brand of politics that favored the "superior man," and generally agitated against progressive domestic causes. He urged, perhaps with ironic intent, that capital punishment be turned into a public entertainment.
He was a dedicated isolationist on world affairs. Of German ancestry, he always remained an admirer of all things German. That admiration included a near slavish devotion to the elitist philosophy of Nietzsche. It also extended to German militarism, even during the two World Wars.
At the same time, Mencken had a passionate, unbending devotion to individual liberty and an undying hostility to those who, for whatever motives, sought to control others' lives or limit their freedom. His opposition to middle class conformity may have had its roots in an elitist worldview, but it was nonetheless liberating for anyone who did not wish to conform. Mencken was almost solely responsible for transforming the term Puritanism from a self-congratulatory brag to a condemnation.
Teachout finds the greatest weakness in Mencken's thought to be his "extreme skepticism" and "permanent opposition." This excess of skepticism resulted in his often failing to acknowledge genuine cultural progress. Furthermore, Teachout argues that it renders Mencken's thought ultimately "incoherent" as any sort of consistent whole. Given that Mencken was a journalist and not a philosopher, this incoherence doesnt seem like such a terrible failing to me. Do we care whether Walter Chronkite's thought was coherent as a body or is it enough that he reported the facts as best he could at the time?
The epilog of the book goes a long way toward explaining the peculiar position that Mencken occupies in American letters. His is a curiously ambiguous reputation -- accepted by neither the conservative nor the liberal establishment, despite his strong affinities with each. Teachout takes the view that Mencken’s success was a "triumph of style." Form and content, he asserts, are "inseparable" in Mencken's work. The result of this marriage of content with style ultimately expresses the fundamental characteristics of the "American temperament" -- "witty and abrasive, self-confident and self-contradictory." Certainly, I must agree that Mencken had style and that whether he was expressing ideas that I find admirable or ones I find repulsive, he did so with remarkable energy and with great mastery of the English language -- or as he would prefer, of the American language.
November 15, 2020
"Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, as read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head, and is thrown willy-nilly into a meager and exclusive aristocracy. And here, more than anywhere else that I know of or have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly- the unending procession of governmental extortions and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of theological buffooneries, of aesthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, grotesqueries, and extravagances-is so inordinately gross and preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows" (p. 184)
HL Mencken (1880-1956) is perhaps Americas most famous literary journalist and most famous for his ability to satirize American society (as he called them, the 'booboisie') and criticize those lofty puritans of old. He is also famous for writing about the American vernacular and using it in a idiosyncratic way to emphasize its originality.
Mencken was born in Baltimore to parents of German ancestry. His father - August Mencken - had his own cigar factory. "(August) was a high-tariff Republican who ran a militantly nounion shop and viewed the eight-hour day as "a project of foreign nihilists to undermine and wreck the American Republic"" (p. 25). August was a self-made man who managed to bestow his values onto his son (although HL to run the cigar factory). Event though Mencken went on to become a world famous journalist, he continued to live in the same house his whole life.
Mencken was a voracious reader at an early age and his most formative reading experience turned out to be Mark Twain. This showed how one can satirize society and to discover the power of the vernacular to do so. The rest of his life was really the story of a workaholic whose primary calling seemed to be to weed out hypocrisy and to try to right all the wrongs of society. I was drawn to him because I had read many of his quotes and has read he was a libertarian. This turned out not to be the whole truth as he was an Germanophile who had a romantic view of Wilhelmine Germany while being strongly against England.
The biography is well written but I found myself mostly interested in the early days of Mencken as it reminded me of myself. I was curious to find out how come he stayed true to his values all his life despite the major changes which occurred in America. One possible explanation is a certain lack of curiosity and a strong belief in oneself.
The biography is interesting for those who want to see the America of yesterday whose remnants are still with us today.
HL Mencken (1880-1956) is perhaps Americas most famous literary journalist and most famous for his ability to satirize American society (as he called them, the 'booboisie') and criticize those lofty puritans of old. He is also famous for writing about the American vernacular and using it in a idiosyncratic way to emphasize its originality.
Mencken was born in Baltimore to parents of German ancestry. His father - August Mencken - had his own cigar factory. "(August) was a high-tariff Republican who ran a militantly nounion shop and viewed the eight-hour day as "a project of foreign nihilists to undermine and wreck the American Republic"" (p. 25). August was a self-made man who managed to bestow his values onto his son (although HL to run the cigar factory). Event though Mencken went on to become a world famous journalist, he continued to live in the same house his whole life.
Mencken was a voracious reader at an early age and his most formative reading experience turned out to be Mark Twain. This showed how one can satirize society and to discover the power of the vernacular to do so. The rest of his life was really the story of a workaholic whose primary calling seemed to be to weed out hypocrisy and to try to right all the wrongs of society. I was drawn to him because I had read many of his quotes and has read he was a libertarian. This turned out not to be the whole truth as he was an Germanophile who had a romantic view of Wilhelmine Germany while being strongly against England.
The biography is well written but I found myself mostly interested in the early days of Mencken as it reminded me of myself. I was curious to find out how come he stayed true to his values all his life despite the major changes which occurred in America. One possible explanation is a certain lack of curiosity and a strong belief in oneself.
The biography is interesting for those who want to see the America of yesterday whose remnants are still with us today.
November 19, 2017
I've long known the basic facts about H.L. Mencken, that he was a crusty commentator from Baltimore, and that he was a religious skeptic. I've always thought that, if I knew more about Mencken I would become a fan, or an enthusiast. But reading this very well-crafted biography by Terry Teachout proved that that's not the case. While I can admire a skeptic, and feel that skepticism is a valuable trait, I don't feel the same way about cynicism, and Mencken seems to me to be more of a cynic than a skeptic. I find that there's very little to admire about Mencken when you consider his anti-Semitism, which he denies as frequently as he demonstrates, his apparent preference for totalitarianism over democracy, his preference for Germany over America despite two devastating world wars instigated by his preferred country, and his false equivalency in thinking that FDR was just as evil as Hitler.
So while I didn't really like Mencken, I did enjoy this book about him. I'd have given it four stars if I rated books on how well they were written and researched instead of on how much I enjoyed it. The reason I'm giving it only three is because much of the book was about Mencken's published criticism of his contemporary authors, and since I don't read much fiction, I wasn't really able to appreciate or evaluate Mencken's opinions of the authors, or Teachout's opinions of Mencken's opinions. And that's not on Teachout, it's on me. I did appreciate the insight that Teachout provided, both on Mencken's writing and on his behavior. He did everything that I think a good biographer should do, he described the world his subject lived in and the influences that the world had on his subject, and vice versa.
I also enjoyed learning about the state of newspaper and magazine publishing in the first half of the 20th Century.
So while I didn't really like Mencken, I did enjoy this book about him. I'd have given it four stars if I rated books on how well they were written and researched instead of on how much I enjoyed it. The reason I'm giving it only three is because much of the book was about Mencken's published criticism of his contemporary authors, and since I don't read much fiction, I wasn't really able to appreciate or evaluate Mencken's opinions of the authors, or Teachout's opinions of Mencken's opinions. And that's not on Teachout, it's on me. I did appreciate the insight that Teachout provided, both on Mencken's writing and on his behavior. He did everything that I think a good biographer should do, he described the world his subject lived in and the influences that the world had on his subject, and vice versa.
I also enjoyed learning about the state of newspaper and magazine publishing in the first half of the 20th Century.
April 5, 2018
The mark of a good biographer is one who makes you want to learn more about their subject. With Henry Louis Mencken I find that Terry Teachout has done just that. I want to read Mencken's works even though as I learned here, many have been revised on order to appear somewhere else or in a collection. So be it.
Mencken spent most of his life in Baltimore working for and running various publications. He showed up locally to Chattanooga for the Scopes Monkey Trial. He traveled to Germany a number of times exploring the land of his heritage. How he described them and how he wrote about them is what made Mencken one of the great writers of the 20th century.
Teachout asks in the epilogue 'But who now admires H.L. Mencken? And what is the nature of his continuing influence on American life and letters?'
I do for one. Mencken's belief was that 'a great newspaper that seeks to lead people rather not follow,' a belief that to Mencken passed on as reality somewhere around FDR and WWII when America was herded into compliance. Certainly in an age of 'fake news' Mencken would be suspect, but his pen was always leading and not following. Mencken had views that would not sound proper today, but that doesn't mean that one cannot learn something from him.
I'll probably need to own a copy as the notes in the back of the book require inspection, time, and marking up which I cannot do as this is a library copy.
If you are curious about the newspaper and magazine business of the last century this is as good a place to start as any.
Mencken spent most of his life in Baltimore working for and running various publications. He showed up locally to Chattanooga for the Scopes Monkey Trial. He traveled to Germany a number of times exploring the land of his heritage. How he described them and how he wrote about them is what made Mencken one of the great writers of the 20th century.
Teachout asks in the epilogue 'But who now admires H.L. Mencken? And what is the nature of his continuing influence on American life and letters?'
I do for one. Mencken's belief was that 'a great newspaper that seeks to lead people rather not follow,' a belief that to Mencken passed on as reality somewhere around FDR and WWII when America was herded into compliance. Certainly in an age of 'fake news' Mencken would be suspect, but his pen was always leading and not following. Mencken had views that would not sound proper today, but that doesn't mean that one cannot learn something from him.
I'll probably need to own a copy as the notes in the back of the book require inspection, time, and marking up which I cannot do as this is a library copy.
If you are curious about the newspaper and magazine business of the last century this is as good a place to start as any.
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May 5, 2016Mencken was an arch-Tory, Kaiser-hugging antisemitic asshole and a brilliant satirist; heir to a style that runs from Twain through him to gun-crazed, abusive asshole brilliant satirist Hunter S. Thompson, and every subsequent internet smartass.
Teachout is an admirer and a professed Tory which makes the punches he lands all the more devastating.
Teachout is an admirer and a professed Tory which makes the punches he lands all the more devastating.
April 5, 2020
"To see through all things is the same as not to see." CS Lewis
For several decades HL Mencken's sharp, acerbic prose served to delight and annoy a large segment of the American public. Wittily iconoclastic, his attacks on revered American institutions and traditions were effective, memorable and highly quotable. He made a strong case throughout his career that the world was run by and for idiots. But he was a product of his times, prone to prejudices and blind spots, and--like many people of strong wills and stronger opinions--he tended to cling to his beliefs even in the presence of strong contradictory evidence.
Born in Baltimore in the latter 19th century, Mencken was the son of a cigar factory owner who believed there were two kinds of people: those who paid their bills and those who did not. An autodidact, Mencken read voraciously but perhaps not widely, and had a tendency to find confirmation for his own ideas in the writings of great minds. Mark Twain was one of his strongest influences, and he had a great admiration for the novelist Joseph Conrad and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The death of Mencken's father released him from the obligation to pursue the family business. Free to follow his own desires, he felt guilt about his reaction. He remained steadfastly loyal to his mother for the rest of her life, and to his brother August thereafter. Mencken was a confirmed and driven workaholic, working long hours as writer, editor, and correspondent, his only outside relaxation being music, where his tastes ran to the classical.
First and foremost a newspaperman--he even had an early childhood fascination with printing sets--Mencken did both eyewitness reporting and opinion pieces. He delighted in exposing the foibles of both political parties, and his coverage of the Scopes trial still colors our perception of that moment in history. Together with George Jean Nathan, he created two highly influential magazines, THE SMART SET and AMERICAN MERCURY, as well as BLACK MASK. Detective fiction writers Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler made their debut in the latter, but Mencken had little hands on involvement with that periodical. Lucky for them, because in his editorial capacity Mencken ran a very tight ship, and the articles submitted by lesser authors often took on Mencken's style and point of view. Mencken was one of the first to appreciate and publish such authors as Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, and Sherwood Anderson. Later in life Mencken turned to humorous reminiscences, and many such essays were published in THE NEW YORKER.
Among Mencken's many targets were Christianity, democracy, and puritanism, and he took pleasure in exposing the shortcomings and contradictions of what he called the booboisie. He supported Germany during the first World War and had to go underground, figuratively and in one instance literally, when he buried some of his correspondence in his backyard. In a time when Beethoven was banned from American concerts and German-Americans were anglicizing their names to avoid public scrutiny and prejudice, Mencken's views were not welcome. He viewed blacks as inferior, but published several black writers in his magazines. His attitude toward Jews was equally dichotomous: negative statements about them in general, but having friendships and partnerships with individuals. He was a strong advocate for freedom of the press, fighting Bostonian censorship even when doing so endangered his financial success, and championing a novel by Dreiser that Mencken knew was badly written.
His position during and after World War II was perhaps his greatest failure of comprehension. Mencken, like Charles Lindbergh and other prominent Americans, was an isolationist. Unlike Lindbergh, however, Mencken did not change his position once America entered the war. He viewed Hitler as a fool and rabble rouser rather than an evil force in the world, and seems to have had equal dislike for FDR. Mencken's reputation and influence declined thereafter, though his later humorous writings continued to be appreciated.
Mencken's sharp and uncompromising criticism of American culture and its puritan roots was perhaps his greatest and most enduring accomplishment. A persistent cynicism blinded him to the necessity to defeat Hitler; Mencken saw stupidity and mendacity on all sides, but ignored the greater magnitude of evil that came to dominate the country of his ancestors. Born in the Victorian era, he was prisoner to the prejudices of that time. His negative view of democracy, though clever and insightful, is flawed in its failure to provide any viable alternative. Mencken was capable of pushing Humpty Dumpty off the wall with enthusiasm and elan, but he had no interest in putting him back together again.
Teachout does an excellent job as biographer, admiring Mencken without indulging in hero worship and pointing out his faults without sinking into the shrill moral outrage that seems endemic to our time.Not only that, but Teachout himself is an excellent writer, capable of original and entertaining turns of phrase. He speaks of the political crusader Dreiser "snuffling out causes like a truffle-hunting pig," and describes Mencken as "inching up the greasy pole of fame," while his writing style sometimes had "a tendency to over-egg the pudding." This biography is one exceptional writer's appreciation of another: clear-eyed, evenly stated, and memorably written.
For several decades HL Mencken's sharp, acerbic prose served to delight and annoy a large segment of the American public. Wittily iconoclastic, his attacks on revered American institutions and traditions were effective, memorable and highly quotable. He made a strong case throughout his career that the world was run by and for idiots. But he was a product of his times, prone to prejudices and blind spots, and--like many people of strong wills and stronger opinions--he tended to cling to his beliefs even in the presence of strong contradictory evidence.
Born in Baltimore in the latter 19th century, Mencken was the son of a cigar factory owner who believed there were two kinds of people: those who paid their bills and those who did not. An autodidact, Mencken read voraciously but perhaps not widely, and had a tendency to find confirmation for his own ideas in the writings of great minds. Mark Twain was one of his strongest influences, and he had a great admiration for the novelist Joseph Conrad and the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. The death of Mencken's father released him from the obligation to pursue the family business. Free to follow his own desires, he felt guilt about his reaction. He remained steadfastly loyal to his mother for the rest of her life, and to his brother August thereafter. Mencken was a confirmed and driven workaholic, working long hours as writer, editor, and correspondent, his only outside relaxation being music, where his tastes ran to the classical.
First and foremost a newspaperman--he even had an early childhood fascination with printing sets--Mencken did both eyewitness reporting and opinion pieces. He delighted in exposing the foibles of both political parties, and his coverage of the Scopes trial still colors our perception of that moment in history. Together with George Jean Nathan, he created two highly influential magazines, THE SMART SET and AMERICAN MERCURY, as well as BLACK MASK. Detective fiction writers Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler made their debut in the latter, but Mencken had little hands on involvement with that periodical. Lucky for them, because in his editorial capacity Mencken ran a very tight ship, and the articles submitted by lesser authors often took on Mencken's style and point of view. Mencken was one of the first to appreciate and publish such authors as Willa Cather, Sinclair Lewis, Theodore Dreiser, and Sherwood Anderson. Later in life Mencken turned to humorous reminiscences, and many such essays were published in THE NEW YORKER.
Among Mencken's many targets were Christianity, democracy, and puritanism, and he took pleasure in exposing the shortcomings and contradictions of what he called the booboisie. He supported Germany during the first World War and had to go underground, figuratively and in one instance literally, when he buried some of his correspondence in his backyard. In a time when Beethoven was banned from American concerts and German-Americans were anglicizing their names to avoid public scrutiny and prejudice, Mencken's views were not welcome. He viewed blacks as inferior, but published several black writers in his magazines. His attitude toward Jews was equally dichotomous: negative statements about them in general, but having friendships and partnerships with individuals. He was a strong advocate for freedom of the press, fighting Bostonian censorship even when doing so endangered his financial success, and championing a novel by Dreiser that Mencken knew was badly written.
His position during and after World War II was perhaps his greatest failure of comprehension. Mencken, like Charles Lindbergh and other prominent Americans, was an isolationist. Unlike Lindbergh, however, Mencken did not change his position once America entered the war. He viewed Hitler as a fool and rabble rouser rather than an evil force in the world, and seems to have had equal dislike for FDR. Mencken's reputation and influence declined thereafter, though his later humorous writings continued to be appreciated.
Mencken's sharp and uncompromising criticism of American culture and its puritan roots was perhaps his greatest and most enduring accomplishment. A persistent cynicism blinded him to the necessity to defeat Hitler; Mencken saw stupidity and mendacity on all sides, but ignored the greater magnitude of evil that came to dominate the country of his ancestors. Born in the Victorian era, he was prisoner to the prejudices of that time. His negative view of democracy, though clever and insightful, is flawed in its failure to provide any viable alternative. Mencken was capable of pushing Humpty Dumpty off the wall with enthusiasm and elan, but he had no interest in putting him back together again.
Teachout does an excellent job as biographer, admiring Mencken without indulging in hero worship and pointing out his faults without sinking into the shrill moral outrage that seems endemic to our time.Not only that, but Teachout himself is an excellent writer, capable of original and entertaining turns of phrase. He speaks of the political crusader Dreiser "snuffling out causes like a truffle-hunting pig," and describes Mencken as "inching up the greasy pole of fame," while his writing style sometimes had "a tendency to over-egg the pudding." This biography is one exceptional writer's appreciation of another: clear-eyed, evenly stated, and memorably written.
January 12, 2008
H.L. Mencken is, for me, one of the more fascinating literary figures of the 20th century. He was considered, in every sense of the word, a cynic - which he himself described as "one, who when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin." He was someone who resented the theological populism of such political charlatans as William Jennings Bryan, and who was always wary of zealots - whether on the far left or right. But with sadness, I would add that his prescience has propelled that cynicism into realism in this country with all the force of a sonic boom. His ability to splice satire with comical anecdotes in his writings on American culture and politics was an art form few have ever managed to replicate.
Terry Teachout has woven a supremely interesting and enlightening biography of Mencken - drawing on archives at Johns Hopkins University and the Enoch Pratt Library of Baltimore, among others. It is arguably the most thorough, comprehensive and well-written analysis of Mencken ever compiled - and that includes Charles A. Fecher's thoughtful appraisal: "Mencken: A Study of His Thought."
I am a member of The Mencken Society - based in Mencken's home town of Baltimore - the city he had such great affection for. My lasting impression of Mencken is that he was insightful, honest, humorous, and tenacious in the face of his critics (and he had plenty of those!). America's political climate nowadays, in my opinion, is ripe for a resurgence of the criticism that only a Mencken can offer.
Teachout has penned a learned and painstakingly well-researched (many of the primary source documents were never before available to scholars) appraisal of every aspect of Mencken, his personal and professional life, his journalism, literary and social criticism, and a critique of his thought. I would recommend it to anyone who is concerned about the rapidly tightening link between theology and politics in present-day America.
Terry Teachout has woven a supremely interesting and enlightening biography of Mencken - drawing on archives at Johns Hopkins University and the Enoch Pratt Library of Baltimore, among others. It is arguably the most thorough, comprehensive and well-written analysis of Mencken ever compiled - and that includes Charles A. Fecher's thoughtful appraisal: "Mencken: A Study of His Thought."
I am a member of The Mencken Society - based in Mencken's home town of Baltimore - the city he had such great affection for. My lasting impression of Mencken is that he was insightful, honest, humorous, and tenacious in the face of his critics (and he had plenty of those!). America's political climate nowadays, in my opinion, is ripe for a resurgence of the criticism that only a Mencken can offer.
Teachout has penned a learned and painstakingly well-researched (many of the primary source documents were never before available to scholars) appraisal of every aspect of Mencken, his personal and professional life, his journalism, literary and social criticism, and a critique of his thought. I would recommend it to anyone who is concerned about the rapidly tightening link between theology and politics in present-day America.
July 29, 2008
Excellent biography. Teachout makes a persuasive case that the newspaper man whom we associate with the roaring 20s was very much a product of the 19th century. Mencken is a very interesting figure. Simply to enter the life and thought of this German-American Baltimorean is worthwhile in itself. It is particularly interesting--and often humorous--to see the many ways in which Mencken, despite his own criticism, was himself something of a middle-class philistine. In addition, the Puritanical "booboisie" that he attacked ninety years ago as products of a Victorianism that would not die appear to have long outlived Mencken as well. Perhaps in some ways we have left some of the "religion" behind, but our reformist impulse and moralistic conquests are alive and well. The America that makes up the background to this biography is familiar. It seems as if in many ways little has changed in the U.S. of A. It also seems that Mencken was very much an American, despite his apparent disdain for aspects of American culture. Without a doubt there was a strong love-hate relationship between Mencken and "America", as there is, usually to a lesser extent, for us all.
February 14, 2019
Teachout, aside from some prolix sentences that are difficult to follow, wrote a fascinating and readable "life" of Mencken. Some of Teachout's views are dubious, such as his opinion of authors Mencken properly dismissed or authored faint praise and his view that Mencken's putative anti-Semitism "cannot be reasonably denied". Ayn Rand, the more consistent, more triumphant fan of Mencken's who integrated reason and individualism (his greatest virtues) into an actual philosophy, is scarcely mentioned. Teachout also comes across as a conventional "liberal" despite his association with "National Review" and invalidly criticizes Mencken's actually liberal views. For these and other reasons, this is not the definitive Mencken biography, but it's one that should be read.
Read
November 2, 2015This is a well researched, balanced biography of a complex figure. I've always loved Mencken's book of quotations, which makes most other books of quotations seem pale and wishy-washy, so although I haven't read much of Mencken's own writing, I can't say I was too surprised to learn of either the man's best or worst attributes. This is not a biography that really delves into Mencken's psychology, but it shows him in his context and often in his own words, and does so quite successfully.
May 6, 2024
Before reading this biography, H.L. Mencken was little more than a name to me. I knew he was a journalist with an acid tongue-pen-typewriter, and I knew he lived in Baltimore. This book goes a long way towards filling in a lot of blanks about a remarkable man who lived an amazing life. Was Mencken always admirable? No way. Was he always right in his judgments? Of course not. But he seemed to always be entertaining, witting and thoughtful. This book certainly gives him his due and even makes a case why he's still relevant today (that is, about 2000 when the book was written).
Actually, Mencken's hatred of the stupidity of the average American, especially evangelicals, and their susceptibility to the lies of politicians rings pretty relevant today. He would have been railing against the MAGA crowd for a decade, though probably would have had to live under police protection due to hourly death threats and swatting. It's actually kind of amazing what he got away with writing a hundred years ago. Politicians had thicker skin than the thick-headed Republicans of today.
This bio makes the case that Mencken changed journalism and then changed American writing in general, and the case seems fairly strong. He wasn't the first person to write in an American vernacular, and in fact his favorite author was Mark Twain, the greatest vernacular writer of them all. But he was able to produce it on a daily, weekly, monthly basis for decades, filling newspaper and magazine columns and about a dozen books with his remarkable style. The biography liberally quotes from his writings, and the stuff is remarkable. Mencken could pile on the nouns and give a perfect picture of the people he was skewering -- and make you laugh at the same time.
Mencken loved American vernacular because he sought to roust pretense and pretentiousness at every turn, and using plain language was part of his method. But he was appealing to an educated slice of the public that already held its "inferiors" in contempt, and so he wrote with the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary at his disposal. The result is a stunning highwire verbal (written) act. And all the while he was fighting against people who said one thing and did another, or who did dumb things right from the start and stubbornly stayed with them. At his height, or perhaps just after it, he covered the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, in which the people who don't believe in evolution were exposed as idiots. And sadly, we're back at that point with moronic things like the Museum of Noah's Ark somewhere in Bible country today.
The book also gives a great deal of space to Mencken's flaws as a thinker and moral being. These can be summed up in an arrogant attitude that a handful of special people (himself included) were destined to rule the world. That was his understanding of Darwin, and it was a popular view at the time. If life is a competition, those with the most power and resources were obviously the "best" people because that's how they got to the top. No sense in helping the downtrodden, who were just getting in the way of progress. This led to eugenics, forced sterilization, Nazism, and justified things like segregation. And Mencken was onboard for all of it. His private writings were worse than his public ones, and if anything I think this book goes too light on him as an excuse-maker for Hitler and an anti-Semite. Ironically, according to the author of the biography, while Mencken was self-taught (finished high school and started as a journalist at 18) and his learning was remarkable, the fact that he learned only what he cared about left him with a lopsided understanding of the world that a few force-fed general education courses in college might have fixed. Then again, given his arrogance, the courses might not have changed anything.
The book also delves into his private life, but gently, and I'm ok with that. In addition to an astonishingly prodigious writing output, Mencken played piano with friends every Saturday night for 40 years to play classical music, unless he was out of town on assignment. I can't get together with the guys twice a year for poker! Remarkable that he had the discipline and the talent. He didn't marry until about age 50, when he finally was subdued by the love of his life, though, tragically, she died five years later. The sections about his wife and his music help to humanize a guy who mostly was a whirlwind of nastiness and snark, who dropped friends in a moment's notice, and didn't even like Democracy very much.
Actually, Mencken's hatred of the stupidity of the average American, especially evangelicals, and their susceptibility to the lies of politicians rings pretty relevant today. He would have been railing against the MAGA crowd for a decade, though probably would have had to live under police protection due to hourly death threats and swatting. It's actually kind of amazing what he got away with writing a hundred years ago. Politicians had thicker skin than the thick-headed Republicans of today.
This bio makes the case that Mencken changed journalism and then changed American writing in general, and the case seems fairly strong. He wasn't the first person to write in an American vernacular, and in fact his favorite author was Mark Twain, the greatest vernacular writer of them all. But he was able to produce it on a daily, weekly, monthly basis for decades, filling newspaper and magazine columns and about a dozen books with his remarkable style. The biography liberally quotes from his writings, and the stuff is remarkable. Mencken could pile on the nouns and give a perfect picture of the people he was skewering -- and make you laugh at the same time.
Mencken loved American vernacular because he sought to roust pretense and pretentiousness at every turn, and using plain language was part of his method. But he was appealing to an educated slice of the public that already held its "inferiors" in contempt, and so he wrote with the Oxford Unabridged Dictionary at his disposal. The result is a stunning highwire verbal (written) act. And all the while he was fighting against people who said one thing and did another, or who did dumb things right from the start and stubbornly stayed with them. At his height, or perhaps just after it, he covered the Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee, in which the people who don't believe in evolution were exposed as idiots. And sadly, we're back at that point with moronic things like the Museum of Noah's Ark somewhere in Bible country today.
The book also gives a great deal of space to Mencken's flaws as a thinker and moral being. These can be summed up in an arrogant attitude that a handful of special people (himself included) were destined to rule the world. That was his understanding of Darwin, and it was a popular view at the time. If life is a competition, those with the most power and resources were obviously the "best" people because that's how they got to the top. No sense in helping the downtrodden, who were just getting in the way of progress. This led to eugenics, forced sterilization, Nazism, and justified things like segregation. And Mencken was onboard for all of it. His private writings were worse than his public ones, and if anything I think this book goes too light on him as an excuse-maker for Hitler and an anti-Semite. Ironically, according to the author of the biography, while Mencken was self-taught (finished high school and started as a journalist at 18) and his learning was remarkable, the fact that he learned only what he cared about left him with a lopsided understanding of the world that a few force-fed general education courses in college might have fixed. Then again, given his arrogance, the courses might not have changed anything.
The book also delves into his private life, but gently, and I'm ok with that. In addition to an astonishingly prodigious writing output, Mencken played piano with friends every Saturday night for 40 years to play classical music, unless he was out of town on assignment. I can't get together with the guys twice a year for poker! Remarkable that he had the discipline and the talent. He didn't marry until about age 50, when he finally was subdued by the love of his life, though, tragically, she died five years later. The sections about his wife and his music help to humanize a guy who mostly was a whirlwind of nastiness and snark, who dropped friends in a moment's notice, and didn't even like Democracy very much.
March 30, 2020
I can’t say I admire Mencken. I don’t really admire anyone from the 20th century save mother Theresa and a few others. It seems the one great evil of all “great” men and women from that time period was that they learned they could get away with bad behavior, and they did. Eisenhower and FDR were busy seducing secretaries while sending men to die in war. Stuff like that.
Mencken appears to be no exception. The thing I like about Mencken that made me want to read this biography was that he was an autodidact. He lived the education I want for my children. He skipped college because he knew he could learn on his own better than anything a teacher could give him. Not that I think teachers aren’t important (who else is writing great books if not great teachers) I just think that’s basically true. We don’t really learn anything that we don’t commit ourselves to learning. So it was interesting reading about the life of someone who took that principle to heart.
But Mencken was clearly a jerk and an elitist. So my praise ends there. His writing output is beyond impressive. But he was basically a boring person.
If I was rating this book solely on my impression of Mencken both as a subject and a human being it would be a lot lower. His story doesn’t have much to it. He was a writer for newspapers and journals. The end. But Terry Teachout somehow kept me returning to this 350 page biography. Look through my reading list. There’s almost no non-fiction recently and almost no biographies. So that alone should tell you that I considered this an extremely readable and interesting book. But if you have no previous interest in Mencken it might be a bit too much to bite off.
One last note. I think a major flaw in modern biography is that the authors are so obsessed with readability. The biographies become basically narrative fiction where the person is the most important being in the cosmos. They add intrigue and cliff hangers and all the conventions of fiction to get you hooked. David Mccullough and Ron Chernow seem to be the exceptions. And there’s nothing wrong with that was of writing. It just seems cheap. I’m reading a biography to get a more complex version of the Wikipedia page. Connect the dots, analyze the writing, make connections, but don’t make me feel like I’m reading a gossip column. Those books tend to focus exclusively on sex. If you’re 40 pages in to a biography and 10 affairs have already been mentioned then you’re reading what I’m talking about. Teachout wrote an academic but readable book. It’s informative and enjoyable and exactly what I want in a biography.
But it was so weird reading the preface which was dated September 7, 2001. And I know Teachout lives in New York City.....Just something I noticed.
Mencken appears to be no exception. The thing I like about Mencken that made me want to read this biography was that he was an autodidact. He lived the education I want for my children. He skipped college because he knew he could learn on his own better than anything a teacher could give him. Not that I think teachers aren’t important (who else is writing great books if not great teachers) I just think that’s basically true. We don’t really learn anything that we don’t commit ourselves to learning. So it was interesting reading about the life of someone who took that principle to heart.
But Mencken was clearly a jerk and an elitist. So my praise ends there. His writing output is beyond impressive. But he was basically a boring person.
If I was rating this book solely on my impression of Mencken both as a subject and a human being it would be a lot lower. His story doesn’t have much to it. He was a writer for newspapers and journals. The end. But Terry Teachout somehow kept me returning to this 350 page biography. Look through my reading list. There’s almost no non-fiction recently and almost no biographies. So that alone should tell you that I considered this an extremely readable and interesting book. But if you have no previous interest in Mencken it might be a bit too much to bite off.
One last note. I think a major flaw in modern biography is that the authors are so obsessed with readability. The biographies become basically narrative fiction where the person is the most important being in the cosmos. They add intrigue and cliff hangers and all the conventions of fiction to get you hooked. David Mccullough and Ron Chernow seem to be the exceptions. And there’s nothing wrong with that was of writing. It just seems cheap. I’m reading a biography to get a more complex version of the Wikipedia page. Connect the dots, analyze the writing, make connections, but don’t make me feel like I’m reading a gossip column. Those books tend to focus exclusively on sex. If you’re 40 pages in to a biography and 10 affairs have already been mentioned then you’re reading what I’m talking about. Teachout wrote an academic but readable book. It’s informative and enjoyable and exactly what I want in a biography.
But it was so weird reading the preface which was dated September 7, 2001. And I know Teachout lives in New York City.....Just something I noticed.
January 30, 2023
"If you want to remember after I am gone, smile at a homely girl".---H.L. Mencken
When I was a houseguest of the U.S. government the librarian informed only four other people besides me had ever checked out this book. This amused me but did not surprise me. H.L. Mencken went from being the most famous journalist and all-around non-fiction writer in America from the Twenties to the Forties to a total has-been today. Some literate folk still quote him, but with a glance towards their backs lest they be accused of being racists and anti-semites. New York City has a conservative "H.L. Mencken Club", and the last time I checked the President was a Jew. Has this man actually read Mencken, particularly his diary? Whether Mencken was on the left or the right depends on which Mencken decade you choose. The Mencken of the Twenties championed teaching evolution in the public schools and opposed Prohibition. (He also once wrote of President Harding, "Harding's speeches are so bad that a kind of grandeur seeps into them".) The Mencken of the Thirties ferociously attacked the New Deal, for promoting "statism", and U.S. preparations for war against Germany and Japan. To give this devil his due, Mencken promoted the realist school of American literature---Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, and above all Theodore Dreiser, a personal friend---while loathing their leftist politics. Mencken, like Gore Vidal later, was at his best when on the attack, as in his immortal column "William Jennings Bryan, R.I. P", since Bryan represented everything Mencken hated, from organized religion to democracy. Mencken went into decline after 1945 when his views on race, religion, and government were no longer in fashion, and into eclipse when his diaries, totaling tens of thousands of pages, finally saw the light of day in the 1980s-1990s. Turns out the private Mencken was even more rancid than the public figure; there is not one mention of the Holocaust in these pages and no entry for December 7, 1941. THE SKEPTIC does an outstanding job of elucidating the life of a critical figure in American life of the last century, by turns brilliant and vile.
When I was a houseguest of the U.S. government the librarian informed only four other people besides me had ever checked out this book. This amused me but did not surprise me. H.L. Mencken went from being the most famous journalist and all-around non-fiction writer in America from the Twenties to the Forties to a total has-been today. Some literate folk still quote him, but with a glance towards their backs lest they be accused of being racists and anti-semites. New York City has a conservative "H.L. Mencken Club", and the last time I checked the President was a Jew. Has this man actually read Mencken, particularly his diary? Whether Mencken was on the left or the right depends on which Mencken decade you choose. The Mencken of the Twenties championed teaching evolution in the public schools and opposed Prohibition. (He also once wrote of President Harding, "Harding's speeches are so bad that a kind of grandeur seeps into them".) The Mencken of the Thirties ferociously attacked the New Deal, for promoting "statism", and U.S. preparations for war against Germany and Japan. To give this devil his due, Mencken promoted the realist school of American literature---Upton Sinclair, Sinclair Lewis, and above all Theodore Dreiser, a personal friend---while loathing their leftist politics. Mencken, like Gore Vidal later, was at his best when on the attack, as in his immortal column "William Jennings Bryan, R.I. P", since Bryan represented everything Mencken hated, from organized religion to democracy. Mencken went into decline after 1945 when his views on race, religion, and government were no longer in fashion, and into eclipse when his diaries, totaling tens of thousands of pages, finally saw the light of day in the 1980s-1990s. Turns out the private Mencken was even more rancid than the public figure; there is not one mention of the Holocaust in these pages and no entry for December 7, 1941. THE SKEPTIC does an outstanding job of elucidating the life of a critical figure in American life of the last century, by turns brilliant and vile.
November 15, 2018
Not sure how this came to my book shelf, but I've seen Mencken's name on a bunch of witty anti-trump memes and wanted to learn more. I had some very vague impressions of him, but I was bit off base. One obituary remembered him as "critic of all." And that seems a fair and true statement. He was self educated, hated elitist ivy leaguers, hated politicians, hated government, democratic or otherwise. Loved what he thought the German people were. Thought Hitler was an idiot, but not worthy of any serious response. He was a bad friend, a bad boyfriend, but a good son, and when he married late in life, was, apparently, a good husband. He wrote mostly for the newspapers (primarily the Baltimore Sun), though he also wrote a good number of books, many of which sold well in his lifetime. He was, in general, anti-semitic, though in particular, he had many lifelong friends who were Jewish. He loved Mark Twain and thought him a superlative writer.
He was both simple and boorish, and forward thinking, hard working, and true to his ideals. His ideals were the problem. The biographer seems to want to blame his lack of formal education for his lack of nuance or deep thought. He just never changed his thoughts on anything. Once he had a belief (about an individual, a group, a party, anything) it was set in stone. That simply did not serve him well over his 60 odd years. There was no allowance for growth; and essentially, he didn't. His writing and journalist skills improved, but his thoughts and ideas really never changed. WHich is kind of sad.
Also, I think the Trump resistance who share the Mencken memes would be quite shocked to really understand the man they were quoting. He's not who we think he is from a couple well choosen lines.
Finally, as a book, this was a well written, well researched book. Very enjoyable to read, mostly because Mencken was really witty and funny. The story moved, and there was enough of balance between personal history and world/US history to give it all context.
He was both simple and boorish, and forward thinking, hard working, and true to his ideals. His ideals were the problem. The biographer seems to want to blame his lack of formal education for his lack of nuance or deep thought. He just never changed his thoughts on anything. Once he had a belief (about an individual, a group, a party, anything) it was set in stone. That simply did not serve him well over his 60 odd years. There was no allowance for growth; and essentially, he didn't. His writing and journalist skills improved, but his thoughts and ideas really never changed. WHich is kind of sad.
Also, I think the Trump resistance who share the Mencken memes would be quite shocked to really understand the man they were quoting. He's not who we think he is from a couple well choosen lines.
Finally, as a book, this was a well written, well researched book. Very enjoyable to read, mostly because Mencken was really witty and funny. The story moved, and there was enough of balance between personal history and world/US history to give it all context.
August 29, 2023
In what, at this writing, may be the latest autobiography on the famed polemical journalist H.L. Mencken, Terry Teachout exposes Mencken warts and all.
H.L. Mencken, (180-1956) was a self educated scholar, writer and editor known for his superb prose style and scathing cultural critiques of everything from religion to representative democracy. Teachout's book recognizes Mencken's genius and contributions to American letters while at the same time acknowledges his racist and anti-semitic views. Mencken wasn't a fascist or Neo-Nazi, according to Teachout, but rather some sort of proto-libertarian possessed of enduring prejudices. Much of this was exposed with the publication of his diaries in the late 1980's.
I'm surprised this book has received such poor reviews. Oddly, some of the lowest ratings flatter the book. At least one marginal review seemed to have been written not because the reader didn't like the book, but because it led him to dislike Mencken.
In any case, Teachout was a first rate intellectual and a superb writer. This book does him credit. And, while I'm terribly disappointed to learn of Mencken's bigotries, I'm going to take up reading some of his works. Some of his jabs at American culture seem as valid today as they were a hundred years ago...and they're very, very well.
H.L. Mencken, (180-1956) was a self educated scholar, writer and editor known for his superb prose style and scathing cultural critiques of everything from religion to representative democracy. Teachout's book recognizes Mencken's genius and contributions to American letters while at the same time acknowledges his racist and anti-semitic views. Mencken wasn't a fascist or Neo-Nazi, according to Teachout, but rather some sort of proto-libertarian possessed of enduring prejudices. Much of this was exposed with the publication of his diaries in the late 1980's.
I'm surprised this book has received such poor reviews. Oddly, some of the lowest ratings flatter the book. At least one marginal review seemed to have been written not because the reader didn't like the book, but because it led him to dislike Mencken.
In any case, Teachout was a first rate intellectual and a superb writer. This book does him credit. And, while I'm terribly disappointed to learn of Mencken's bigotries, I'm going to take up reading some of his works. Some of his jabs at American culture seem as valid today as they were a hundred years ago...and they're very, very well.
May 13, 2021
A strange firey man full of conviction but without any foundation for that conviction.
"While men can found nothing to be "wholly good, wholly desirable, wholly true". This unequivocal rejection of the possibility of ultimate truth, a position irreconcilable with his scientific rationalism, left him with nothing but a concept of " honor " as shallow as the Victorian idea of progress in which he believes so firmly ( and so paradoxically ). Though he was for the most part a genuinely honorable man, honor for Lincoln would seem to have been little more than a higher species of etiquette. In 1917 he wrote of himself: "his moral code... has been one item: keep your engagements" No more revealing thing has ever been said about H.L. Mencken"
But the man could write.
"While men can found nothing to be "wholly good, wholly desirable, wholly true". This unequivocal rejection of the possibility of ultimate truth, a position irreconcilable with his scientific rationalism, left him with nothing but a concept of " honor " as shallow as the Victorian idea of progress in which he believes so firmly ( and so paradoxically ). Though he was for the most part a genuinely honorable man, honor for Lincoln would seem to have been little more than a higher species of etiquette. In 1917 he wrote of himself: "his moral code... has been one item: keep your engagements" No more revealing thing has ever been said about H.L. Mencken"
But the man could write.
June 24, 2019
H.L. Mencken was one of those historical personalities that is frequently referenced in other books I've read and, since I only knew the basic details about his life, I felt I needed a better understanding of his impact on our language, journalism, and popular culture. This book delivers that, and I appreciated the author's well-researched work. (Terry Teachout, by the way, is currently the drama critic at the Wall Street Journal, and I enjoy reading him weekly.)
December 7, 2020
I read this because Mencken was a huge influence in the Jazz age, and friends with the likes of Fitzgerald and the rest. I don't like H.L. Mencken much is the thought I came away with after reading this book. I didn't find that the biographer did much to humanize him. Mencken came off like the crotchety old uncle whose racist views you have to listen to because he fought in WWI. Although I may at some time read some of Mencken's autobiographical writings, I am not particularly interested in reading one more middle class white guy's smug take on why anything he doesn't like is suspect, fake, or untrue, and how Hitler had some good ideas, even if he did take them too far - which is what seems to be the gist of good old Mencken's philosophy of life.
October 30, 2024
A very good, very readable biography of the author and critic. I am left wondering if author Terry Teachout fully engaged with Mencken’s marriage. I don’t mean to suggest that Teachout did not cover the event but rather it seemed that there was more to the long-term impact of the marriage and the loss of Sara to Mencken (or so it seems to this reader) than was discussed. Otherwise, an excellent and informative work.
May 2, 2022
I read Teachout's biography of Louis Armstrong a few years ago and was struck by how readable his prose was. The same holds for this biography of Mencken. Teachout elucidates his life, warts and all, and that of early 20th century Baltimore with a clarity, flow, and ease that makes reading about an interesting life, well, interesting.
February 27, 2026
I'm only twenty-three pages in, but this is great so far. It begins with F.D.R. getting the best of Mencken in front of hundreds of his journalist peers and pals. Also, after only twenty pages or so, I have a strong sense of the times as well as a summarized version of Mencken's life and output. I realize the cool kids dismiss biography, but it and memoir remain favorite prose categories for me.
I'm around page 60 now. It's still good, although I'm less overwhelmingly enthusiastic.
Page 73, and it is getting good again.
Enjoy Mencken's Twain-over-James reply to Henry's criticisms of H.L.'s prose:
https://kudera.blogspot.com/2026/02/a...
I'm around page 60 now. It's still good, although I'm less overwhelmingly enthusiastic.
Page 73, and it is getting good again.
Enjoy Mencken's Twain-over-James reply to Henry's criticisms of H.L.'s prose:
https://kudera.blogspot.com/2026/02/a...
January 12, 2022
To be clear, I am giving the book four stars, not its subject.
March 5, 2022
Terry Teachout was a great writer and this book is very well written. However, the more that I read, the more that I disliked H.L. Mencken.
March 26, 2019
It's really hard to recommend this to anyone but a die-hard Mencken fan. But I guess who else would even pick it up? I think the author does an admirable job in balancing what is admirable about Mencken with what honestly is pretty vile about him (he's a pretty strong anti-Semite) Teachout doesn't shy away from this, he addresses it head on, and goes a little deeper showing how Mencken was a pretty committed misanthrope who hated pretty much everyone, even people who were at one time his close friends.
I do wish he had shown/included a little more of Mencken's work, if you haven't read much before you don't get a lot here. But it could be said, go pick up a copy of his writings, this isn't that, it's a biography and that's a fair point. If you are interested in the magazine and newspaper publishing business in the early 19th century this has got a bit of that in it, but Mencken was such a peculiar person that how he lived and worked was pretty singular.
Mencken was an interesting character, he was extremely important and widely read for a period and then, mostly for his refusal to change, he faded from the spotlight. Much of his work is highly topical and so of limited interest now, but he was a fiery writer, not afraid to punch up and against the powerful so some of his work is still worth revisiting, warts and all.
I do wish he had shown/included a little more of Mencken's work, if you haven't read much before you don't get a lot here. But it could be said, go pick up a copy of his writings, this isn't that, it's a biography and that's a fair point. If you are interested in the magazine and newspaper publishing business in the early 19th century this has got a bit of that in it, but Mencken was such a peculiar person that how he lived and worked was pretty singular.
Mencken was an interesting character, he was extremely important and widely read for a period and then, mostly for his refusal to change, he faded from the spotlight. Much of his work is highly topical and so of limited interest now, but he was a fiery writer, not afraid to punch up and against the powerful so some of his work is still worth revisiting, warts and all.
October 4, 2013
In summation to this book which provides a good overview of Mencken's life, the author opines Mencken was "something more than a memorable stylist, if something less less than a truly wise man...One cannot help admiring the stubborn way in which..the self made philosopher grapples in his unpretentious, take-no-prisoners way with the permanent things:t he limits of art, the rule of law, the meaning of life. The simplicity one comes to realize, is inseparable from the message." Unfortunately, this attitude which I feel is condescending to the subject of the work is why this book does not justify more stars.
At many times, I wondered if the author really felt Mencken warranted a biography at this stage of history, and one gets the feeling the author believes himself more intelligent than Mencken, with forceful criticisms of his own. For example, he pretty much discounts all of Mencken's literary criticism and is especially harsh on Mencken's championing of Theodore Dreiser, wondering "What could Mencken have seen in such an oaf?" and stating flat out "...Dreiser is remembered, but not read." On the other hand, later Teachout opines that Mencken's wife, Sara Haardt, deserves to be remembered other than for being Mencken's wife, i.e., for her literary output. So Haardt must be more worthy of preservation than Dreiser?
Teachout also spends a lot of time discussing whether Mencken is an anti-Semite, although it should be clear by any reader of Mencken that he spoke candidly. Mencken published six volumes of books titled PREJUDICES and attacked all religions and many other social groups vehemently during his life, and per Richard Wright's Black Boy:"...what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it." In addition, apparently most of the damning, anti-semitic material is found in either diary or other autobiographical materials Mencken chose to permit to released decades after his death presumably because of the candid thoughts he lays out for posterity. Instead of discussing the issue of what Mencken could have thought of "such an oaf" as Dreiser, maybe he should have spent some time discussing why Mencken, who published a huge output of auto-biographical writing during his lifetime, released these viewpoints posthumously. After all, who does things like this? And do we really expect that people of Mencken's era would have come off better if they also had been as candid? I am intrigued by these questions and would have liked more comparison between opinions expressed during Mencken's lifetime and those released at different time-delayed stages after death. I guess instead of reading this biography, since apparently much of this material has been made available, I should have sourced more Mencken works to address my questions.
At many times, I wondered if the author really felt Mencken warranted a biography at this stage of history, and one gets the feeling the author believes himself more intelligent than Mencken, with forceful criticisms of his own. For example, he pretty much discounts all of Mencken's literary criticism and is especially harsh on Mencken's championing of Theodore Dreiser, wondering "What could Mencken have seen in such an oaf?" and stating flat out "...Dreiser is remembered, but not read." On the other hand, later Teachout opines that Mencken's wife, Sara Haardt, deserves to be remembered other than for being Mencken's wife, i.e., for her literary output. So Haardt must be more worthy of preservation than Dreiser?
Teachout also spends a lot of time discussing whether Mencken is an anti-Semite, although it should be clear by any reader of Mencken that he spoke candidly. Mencken published six volumes of books titled PREJUDICES and attacked all religions and many other social groups vehemently during his life, and per Richard Wright's Black Boy:"...what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it." In addition, apparently most of the damning, anti-semitic material is found in either diary or other autobiographical materials Mencken chose to permit to released decades after his death presumably because of the candid thoughts he lays out for posterity. Instead of discussing the issue of what Mencken could have thought of "such an oaf" as Dreiser, maybe he should have spent some time discussing why Mencken, who published a huge output of auto-biographical writing during his lifetime, released these viewpoints posthumously. After all, who does things like this? And do we really expect that people of Mencken's era would have come off better if they also had been as candid? I am intrigued by these questions and would have liked more comparison between opinions expressed during Mencken's lifetime and those released at different time-delayed stages after death. I guess instead of reading this biography, since apparently much of this material has been made available, I should have sourced more Mencken works to address my questions.
August 20, 2014
Fascinating read. Well researched, well written and very readable. I bought this book at the library used book sale for two reasons. I had seen a number of Mencken quotes used that seemed, in a round-about way to reflect my personal thinking about the way we live now. And I had heard that he stopped at the Owl Bar in the old Belvedere Hotel on Chase Street in Baltimore everyday for a martini. Every day. And that there was a plaque in the bar at the stool where he sat to nurse his chilled, stirred libation. The bar, and other public spaces are still open but the hotel was converted to condominiums. I visit the bar with a friend after our annual trek to the Visionary Art Museum and the martinis are excellent - quite large I would add. Mr Mencken was well known for his enjoyment of alcohol. I learned from reading the book that when prohibition was passed, he sold his car and purchased a cache of alcohol which he stored in his basement in a locked room with skull and crossbones and a warning on the door. So, I respect him for that. He also brewed his own beer, loved classical music and read and wrote voraciously. His nickname "the Sage of Baltimore" was well earned. I should probably read other writer's take on Mr. Mencken to get a more balanced perspective of this cantankerous man, who was not afraid to tell you what he thought - about everything.
December 2, 2007
Wow, what a character this guy was. I love biographies, and it's interesting to read one about someone I previously knew nothing about. Mencken was a prolific journalist, critic, enemy of both of the religious right and liberal left (before either was anything approaching fashionable), amateur philosopher, linguist, and general devil's advocate to just about any widely-held point of view in the 20's and 30's. And he was all of these things without a formal college education! To have only known him through his quotes (which I had up until now) was to miss out on the formative dimensions of one of the most fascinating characters of the 20th century. Like so many other great men, Mencken gives credence to the belief that we as human beings can be divinely brilliant one day, and pathetically misguided the next. In short, it gives hope to anyone who aspires to more than a life of anonymity, but doubts the potential of their own natural talents to achieve such a feat. I end with a favorite Mencken quote from the book, which after reading about him, I understand much more clearly:
Journalist: If you despise your countrymen so much, why do you continue to live in America?
Mencken: Why do men go to zoos?
Journalist: If you despise your countrymen so much, why do you continue to live in America?
Mencken: Why do men go to zoos?
Read
August 14, 2013'Some reviews have said that The Skeptic is more of an extended literary essay than a biography. That is not true: The Skeptic, while not comprehensive, is very good strictly on the level of basic biography. Ignoring the tendentious prologue and Teachout’s sermonizing in later chapters, The Skeptic serves as a good introduction to Mencken. But that alone is not enough to justify another Mencken biography, and Teachout did not set out to write just another book about “the sage of Baltimore.”
For this book to succeed, Teachout had to distinguish himself from past biographers by providing a special insight into Mencken’s life. Teachout hoped that his professional kinship with Mencken—for like him, Teachout is an experienced journalist and critic—would supply that insight, but it has not. Had Teachout taken Mencken on his own terms, even while disagreeing with him, The Skeptic might have succeeded and become the best Mencken biography yet. But as it is, the best that can be said of this book is that it is rather like Mencken’s own works on Shaw and Nietzsche: stylish, but not an important contribution to the understanding of its subject.'
Read the full review, "Mencken and His Enemies," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
For this book to succeed, Teachout had to distinguish himself from past biographers by providing a special insight into Mencken’s life. Teachout hoped that his professional kinship with Mencken—for like him, Teachout is an experienced journalist and critic—would supply that insight, but it has not. Had Teachout taken Mencken on his own terms, even while disagreeing with him, The Skeptic might have succeeded and become the best Mencken biography yet. But as it is, the best that can be said of this book is that it is rather like Mencken’s own works on Shaw and Nietzsche: stylish, but not an important contribution to the understanding of its subject.'
Read the full review, "Mencken and His Enemies," on our website:
http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
June 8, 2023
I like Terry teachout and this is a nice 21st Century biography of "Sage of Baltimore". He does an excellent job of covering Mencken's life in the 30s and 40s, which is when most writers on Mencken lose interest. One reason Mencken was so successful, and has remained relatively popular, is he knew where the 3rd Rails were, and when to shut up.
For example, when Hitler was oppressing the German Jews in the 1930s he wrote an editoral saying all the German-speaking Jews should be allowed to emigrate to the USA. And he attacked FDR for not changing the immigration laws.
However, he stated that Eastern European Jews would be happier in Russia. This created a firestorm of abuse from various Jewish Organizations. Mencken was smart enough to simply drop the subject and never write publically about Nazis and the Jews again. The same is true of WW2, once FDR was re-elected, Mecken stopped opposing the USA entry in WW2, resigned from the Sun Newspaper, and never published any political writings for the next 8 years. He knew when to speak out, and when censorship was too strong.
Wyndam Lewis and Celine weren't as smart.
For example, when Hitler was oppressing the German Jews in the 1930s he wrote an editoral saying all the German-speaking Jews should be allowed to emigrate to the USA. And he attacked FDR for not changing the immigration laws.
However, he stated that Eastern European Jews would be happier in Russia. This created a firestorm of abuse from various Jewish Organizations. Mencken was smart enough to simply drop the subject and never write publically about Nazis and the Jews again. The same is true of WW2, once FDR was re-elected, Mecken stopped opposing the USA entry in WW2, resigned from the Sun Newspaper, and never published any political writings for the next 8 years. He knew when to speak out, and when censorship was too strong.
Wyndam Lewis and Celine weren't as smart.
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