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A Mencken Chrestomathy
To read H. L. Mencken is to be confronted with the sad realization that most of what we find in newspapers and journals today is mere sludge. While an Alexander Cockburn or a Christopher Hitchens can churn out a brilliant, at times almost sublime piece of invective, the sad fact is that for all their talent, they are mere polemicists. Mencken, however, was a true contrarian, and, for that reason, he had far more scope for his talents. It would be quite fair to call him a true American genius whose range and Mark Twain-like skepticism leave the reader sometimes convulsed with laughter, sometimes completely enraged, but always transfixed with admiration.
In this volume of more than 600 pages, Mencken has collected more than 100 choice passages, ranging from men, women, and southerners to religion, politics, music, literature, and the arts. This selection is a pure delight, and, while not every piece entertains, one cannot help but be awed by this true polymath and regret not having him around today.
Edited and annotated by H.L.M., this is a selection from his out-of-print writings. They come mostly from books—the six of the PREJUDICES series, A BOOK OF BURLESQUES, IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN, NOTES ON DEMOCRACY, MAKING A PRESIDENT, A BOOK OF CALUMNY, TREATISE ON RIGHT AND WRONG—but there are also magazine and newspaper pieces that never got between covers (from the American Mercury, the Smart Set, and the Baltimore Evening Sun) and some notes that were never previously published at all.
Readers will find edification and amusement in his estimates of a variety of Americans—Woodrow Wilson, Aimee Semple McPherson, Roosevelt I and Roosevelt II, James Gibbons Huneker, Rudolph Valentino, Calvin Coolidge, Ring Lardner, Theodore Dreiser, and Walt Whitman. Those musically inclined will enjoy his pieces on Beethoven, Schubert, and Wagner, and there is material for a hundred controversies in his selections on Joseph Conrad, Thorstein Veblen, Nietzsche, and Madame Blavatsky.
The author chose selections form his out of print writings: his books, magazines and newspaper pieces.
(from Barnes & Noble)
In this volume of more than 600 pages, Mencken has collected more than 100 choice passages, ranging from men, women, and southerners to religion, politics, music, literature, and the arts. This selection is a pure delight, and, while not every piece entertains, one cannot help but be awed by this true polymath and regret not having him around today.
Edited and annotated by H.L.M., this is a selection from his out-of-print writings. They come mostly from books—the six of the PREJUDICES series, A BOOK OF BURLESQUES, IN DEFENSE OF WOMEN, NOTES ON DEMOCRACY, MAKING A PRESIDENT, A BOOK OF CALUMNY, TREATISE ON RIGHT AND WRONG—but there are also magazine and newspaper pieces that never got between covers (from the American Mercury, the Smart Set, and the Baltimore Evening Sun) and some notes that were never previously published at all.
Readers will find edification and amusement in his estimates of a variety of Americans—Woodrow Wilson, Aimee Semple McPherson, Roosevelt I and Roosevelt II, James Gibbons Huneker, Rudolph Valentino, Calvin Coolidge, Ring Lardner, Theodore Dreiser, and Walt Whitman. Those musically inclined will enjoy his pieces on Beethoven, Schubert, and Wagner, and there is material for a hundred controversies in his selections on Joseph Conrad, Thorstein Veblen, Nietzsche, and Madame Blavatsky.
The author chose selections form his out of print writings: his books, magazines and newspaper pieces.
(from Barnes & Noble)
627 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1949
218 people are currently reading
9529 people want to read
About the author
H.L. Mencken
636 books727 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)
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June 14, 2007
Over the years I've read bits and pieces of this collection of bits and pieces. I was most fascinated with it when I was in my early twenties. My father was a big reader and he would, on occasion, ask me to get THE MENCKEN CHRESTOMATHY out of his study so he could read a passage to me and my brothers.
I'm fairly certain Mencken compiled this himself and that it was published shortly before a stroke ended his ability to write. One has to know something about American newspapers and magazines of the early-to-mid-twentieth century to really relate to this stuff.
Briefly, Mencken was an American newspaperman of the most hardworking sort. He reported, edited, published, etc. Around 1918 or so he began to write literary criticism and political commentary. He caricatured Woodrow Wilson as the hand-wringing, prudish "Archangel Woodrow." He essentially called Wilson a liar for running on a promise not to involve the United States in the First World War and then going ahead and involving it anyway. Young, educated readers related to Mencken in much the same way college students in 2007 relate to Jon Stewart. Mencken championed writers who had been censored. He skewered pompous politicians, bombastic ministers and grandiose businessmen. At the same time, he put together a serious, if, nevertheless, amusing multivolume work called THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE, which is still in print. So: Mencken was something of a dynamo. But when the stock market crashed and the establishment he ridiculed was collapsing, Mencken fell into disfavor. His conservatism became more and more obvious to a readership seeking the socialism of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mencken the Darwinist who had made Williams Jennings Bryan a laughing stock in his Scopes Monkey Trial reporting, was, by the time World War Two started, an archconservative who publically reviled Roosevelt and who chose not to write a word about the Nazis. He had personally felt the sting of anti-German bigotry during World War One and he used this grievance as a justification for his silence about Nazism. He signed a petition to help Jewish refugees, but this gesture wasn't much from a man whose words would have reached men in power.
So, why should we read anything by him? Because he is a master of comic form. When he attacks a politician, an idea or an institution, he is not actually trying to change the reader's mind. He is simply trying to cause him to collapse in the corner laughing.
He builds comic suspense better than anyone except Twain and has a slapstick sensibility which is still unbeaten. Such a devotion to humor is something of a virtue, perhaps Mencken's only one.
I'm fairly certain Mencken compiled this himself and that it was published shortly before a stroke ended his ability to write. One has to know something about American newspapers and magazines of the early-to-mid-twentieth century to really relate to this stuff.
Briefly, Mencken was an American newspaperman of the most hardworking sort. He reported, edited, published, etc. Around 1918 or so he began to write literary criticism and political commentary. He caricatured Woodrow Wilson as the hand-wringing, prudish "Archangel Woodrow." He essentially called Wilson a liar for running on a promise not to involve the United States in the First World War and then going ahead and involving it anyway. Young, educated readers related to Mencken in much the same way college students in 2007 relate to Jon Stewart. Mencken championed writers who had been censored. He skewered pompous politicians, bombastic ministers and grandiose businessmen. At the same time, he put together a serious, if, nevertheless, amusing multivolume work called THE AMERICAN LANGUAGE, which is still in print. So: Mencken was something of a dynamo. But when the stock market crashed and the establishment he ridiculed was collapsing, Mencken fell into disfavor. His conservatism became more and more obvious to a readership seeking the socialism of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Mencken the Darwinist who had made Williams Jennings Bryan a laughing stock in his Scopes Monkey Trial reporting, was, by the time World War Two started, an archconservative who publically reviled Roosevelt and who chose not to write a word about the Nazis. He had personally felt the sting of anti-German bigotry during World War One and he used this grievance as a justification for his silence about Nazism. He signed a petition to help Jewish refugees, but this gesture wasn't much from a man whose words would have reached men in power.
So, why should we read anything by him? Because he is a master of comic form. When he attacks a politician, an idea or an institution, he is not actually trying to change the reader's mind. He is simply trying to cause him to collapse in the corner laughing.
He builds comic suspense better than anyone except Twain and has a slapstick sensibility which is still unbeaten. Such a devotion to humor is something of a virtue, perhaps Mencken's only one.
March 16, 2018
The Anglo-Saxon of the great herd is, in many important respects, the least civilized of white men and the least capable of true civilization. His political ideas are crude and shallow. He is almost totally devoid of esthetic feeling. The most elementary facts about the physical universe alarm him, and incite him to put them down.
H.L. Mencken at the Baltimore Sun
I've decided to abandon reading this. Mencken writes extremely well. He uses lots of different words, some obscure (like "chrestomathy", the use of which is explained in detail in Mencken's Preface – the editor didn't want it); but what he does with those words is not easy to judge.
After being initially amused, I became irritated, a bit bored, found it harder to pick up. And it is very long, so I decided that I could pick it up now and then, but would officially clear it off the "currently reading" shelf and move on.
The subtitle references "his choicest writings". Not likely. There is nothing in this 1949 book from any of his earlier collections that were still in print – only things that that had either never appeared in book form before (eg, items written for the Baltimore Sun), or from books then out of print. Presumably many books that were still selling had a few "choice" items?
The format of the book is simple. Thirty-one chapters, each with a topic name. Heck, I may as well list them. Each piece in the chapter also has a name, followed by the source, then the text.
Selections range from a single paragraph to many pages.
There's no index. The TOC has every item in it, which helps. But too bad anyway.
amusement
I enjoyed the first three chapters: Homo Sapiens, Types of Men, Women. Mencken at his best – acerbic, witty, outspoken. Either I wasn't reading critically, or these pieces didn't really express some of his more disturbing thoughts. Presumably Mencken was misogynistic to a degree, not unusual in his day for a popular humorist. But in these chapters are found many comparisons between men and women, most resulting in women coming off the better of the two. For example, the first item in the chapter Women is called "The Feminine Mind". It's a long one, opening like this:
In these chapters, especially the first two, Mencken is primarily concerned with elucidating his contempt for the normal male of the species; and comparisons of that abject specimen to the female of the species is one of the chief examples he uses to justify this contempt.
Assuming that last sentence is not pure imagining on my part, it starts explaining my subsequent …
irritation
with the book. Mencken's central thesis being the doltishnesh of the average man, he seems to conclude that the institutions, the ideals, the aspirations of the male segment of humanity are infected with the same characteristics as the subjects from which they issue. That is, he is a (good-natured) pessimist about homo sapiens.
Now it's true that these are, actually, profound questions. Mencken knows they are, though as a popular writer the profundity is not something he emphasizes. He doesn't like democracy. He thinks governance should be provided by an aristocracy. Yes, probably an intellectual aristocracy – a la Plato? – but an aristocracy nevertheless. The common person is not capable of making good decisions about important things.
And I guess that I like to think of myself as an optimist about humans. But I certainly could be wrong.
on democracy
on religion
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Pyramid
Next review: Life: The Science of Biology
Older review: Phedre
Previous library review: Time Will Darken It
Next library review: Anthem
H.L. Mencken at the Baltimore Sun
I've decided to abandon reading this. Mencken writes extremely well. He uses lots of different words, some obscure (like "chrestomathy", the use of which is explained in detail in Mencken's Preface – the editor didn't want it); but what he does with those words is not easy to judge.
After being initially amused, I became irritated, a bit bored, found it harder to pick up. And it is very long, so I decided that I could pick it up now and then, but would officially clear it off the "currently reading" shelf and move on.
The subtitle references "his choicest writings". Not likely. There is nothing in this 1949 book from any of his earlier collections that were still in print – only things that that had either never appeared in book form before (eg, items written for the Baltimore Sun), or from books then out of print. Presumably many books that were still selling had a few "choice" items?
The format of the book is simple. Thirty-one chapters, each with a topic name. Heck, I may as well list them. Each piece in the chapter also has a name, followed by the source, then the text.
Selections range from a single paragraph to many pages.
There's no index. The TOC has every item in it, which helps. But too bad anyway.
amusement
I enjoyed the first three chapters: Homo Sapiens, Types of Men, Women. Mencken at his best – acerbic, witty, outspoken. Either I wasn't reading critically, or these pieces didn't really express some of his more disturbing thoughts. Presumably Mencken was misogynistic to a degree, not unusual in his day for a popular humorist. But in these chapters are found many comparisons between men and women, most resulting in women coming off the better of the two. For example, the first item in the chapter Women is called "The Feminine Mind". It's a long one, opening like this:
A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phrase makes it, feminine intuition. The marks of that so-called intuition are simply a sharp and accurate perception of reality, a habitual immunity to emotional enchantment, a relentless capacity for distinguishing clearly between the appearance and the substance. The appearance, in the normal family circle, is a hero, a magnifico, a demigod. The substance is a poor mountebank.Yes, there is that four word opening, "A man's women folk". The possessive. Yet the rest of the thought expressed suggests the possession may be nothing more than the man's mistaken impression of things.
In these chapters, especially the first two, Mencken is primarily concerned with elucidating his contempt for the normal male of the species; and comparisons of that abject specimen to the female of the species is one of the chief examples he uses to justify this contempt.
Assuming that last sentence is not pure imagining on my part, it starts explaining my subsequent …
irritation
with the book. Mencken's central thesis being the doltishnesh of the average man, he seems to conclude that the institutions, the ideals, the aspirations of the male segment of humanity are infected with the same characteristics as the subjects from which they issue. That is, he is a (good-natured) pessimist about homo sapiens.
Now it's true that these are, actually, profound questions. Mencken knows they are, though as a popular writer the profundity is not something he emphasizes. He doesn't like democracy. He thinks governance should be provided by an aristocracy. Yes, probably an intellectual aristocracy – a la Plato? – but an aristocracy nevertheless. The common person is not capable of making good decisions about important things.
And I guess that I like to think of myself as an optimist about humans. But I certainly could be wrong.
on democracy
on religion
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .
Previous review: Pyramid
Next review: Life: The Science of Biology
Older review: Phedre
Previous library review: Time Will Darken It
Next library review: Anthem
June 3, 2010
"A Mencken Chrestomathy" was originally published in 1948, when H L Mencken was 68, shortly before a stroke ended his writing career. It's my favorite collection of Mencken's writings, possibly because he selected the contents himself. He had been a journalist, literary critic and cultural gadfly for many years, and much of his best work is here. It's perfect bathroom reading!
December 21, 2025
”Those who explore the ensuing pages will find them marked by a certain ribaldry, even when they discuss topics commonly regarded as grave. I do not apologize for this, for life in the Republic has always seemed to me to be far more comic than serious…
I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.”
from the Preface
”One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.”
* * * * *
Curmudgeonly. Misanthropic. Cynical. Elitist. The uber-skeptic of American letters. Mencken was classist to the extreme — he ranked men in nine levels, from first rate to ninth rate, with only the first rate counting as worthy. He was stubbornly opinionated, inflexible and uncompromising in his ideas. He wielded satire as a blade, and scorn as a cudgel. He was a dedicated contrarian who reveled in demolishing common wisdom and infuriating those who believed it.
* * * * *
”Evil is that which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.”
”Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. There is a flavor of the pathological in it.”
”The most curious social convention of the age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.”
* * * * *
H.L. Mencken was in the American mold of Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce, but turned up to eleven. (He also prefigured such acid-tongued wits as Christopher Hitchens and Gore Vidal.) Unlike Twain, who discreetly held back his most incendiary screeds for postmortem publication, Mencken published his most venomous satire continuously, pugnaciously riding into the lists against philistine sentimentality, boobish religiosity, and other American sacred cows with clockwork regularity. His erudite contrarianism won him a significant following during the 1920s, though his star began to fade during the Depression era of the ‘30s.
Mencken is hard to categorize by today’s standards. At his core he was a conservative in the classic sense. He was opposed to all things socialist, including Roosevelt and his New Deal, but also scorned democracy which he saw as empowering unworthy men. He was a brilliant, appreciative critic of classical art and music, but had only scorn for and no comprehension of jazz or modern art. He was a brilliant critic of the old world as he found it, with almost no feel for the future. He had no room for religious superstition of any kind, and attacked its usually respected status with gleeful abandon. He took a jaundiced view of most all politicians and government, and heaped scorn on American jingoism.
* * * * *
”[Monogamy] is the most effective of all available antidotes to the alarms and the terrors of passion. Monogamy, in brief, kills passion, and passion is the most dangerous of all the surviving enemies to what we call civilization.”
”The great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No moral man (that is moral in the YMCA sense) has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a sympathy worth hearing, nor a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.”
”Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.”
* * * * *
Mencken himself made the selections for this collection from a wide range of his works that were then out of print. They range from views on government, religion, jurisprudence, and social conventions. He profiles various individuals, both some still famous and others now obscure. He includes a large sample of his criticism, particularly on music and literature. These contents are eclectic, contrarian, humorous, infuriating, brilliant, and utterly unique.
I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.”
from the Preface
”One horse-laugh is worth ten thousand syllogisms.”
* * * * *
Curmudgeonly. Misanthropic. Cynical. Elitist. The uber-skeptic of American letters. Mencken was classist to the extreme — he ranked men in nine levels, from first rate to ninth rate, with only the first rate counting as worthy. He was stubbornly opinionated, inflexible and uncompromising in his ideas. He wielded satire as a blade, and scorn as a cudgel. He was a dedicated contrarian who reveled in demolishing common wisdom and infuriating those who believed it.
* * * * *
”Evil is that which one believes of others. It is a sin to believe evil of others, but it is seldom a mistake.”
”Faith may be defined briefly as an illogical belief in the occurrence of the improbable. There is a flavor of the pathological in it.”
”The most curious social convention of the age in which we live is the one to the effect that religious opinions should be respected.”
* * * * *
H.L. Mencken was in the American mold of Mark Twain and Ambrose Bierce, but turned up to eleven. (He also prefigured such acid-tongued wits as Christopher Hitchens and Gore Vidal.) Unlike Twain, who discreetly held back his most incendiary screeds for postmortem publication, Mencken published his most venomous satire continuously, pugnaciously riding into the lists against philistine sentimentality, boobish religiosity, and other American sacred cows with clockwork regularity. His erudite contrarianism won him a significant following during the 1920s, though his star began to fade during the Depression era of the ‘30s.
Mencken is hard to categorize by today’s standards. At his core he was a conservative in the classic sense. He was opposed to all things socialist, including Roosevelt and his New Deal, but also scorned democracy which he saw as empowering unworthy men. He was a brilliant, appreciative critic of classical art and music, but had only scorn for and no comprehension of jazz or modern art. He was a brilliant critic of the old world as he found it, with almost no feel for the future. He had no room for religious superstition of any kind, and attacked its usually respected status with gleeful abandon. He took a jaundiced view of most all politicians and government, and heaped scorn on American jingoism.
* * * * *
”[Monogamy] is the most effective of all available antidotes to the alarms and the terrors of passion. Monogamy, in brief, kills passion, and passion is the most dangerous of all the surviving enemies to what we call civilization.”
”The great artists of the world are never puritans, and seldom even ordinarily respectable. No moral man (that is moral in the YMCA sense) has ever painted a picture worth looking at, or written a sympathy worth hearing, nor a book worth reading, and it is highly improbable that the thing has ever been done by a virtuous woman.”
”Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.”
* * * * *
Mencken himself made the selections for this collection from a wide range of his works that were then out of print. They range from views on government, religion, jurisprudence, and social conventions. He profiles various individuals, both some still famous and others now obscure. He includes a large sample of his criticism, particularly on music and literature. These contents are eclectic, contrarian, humorous, infuriating, brilliant, and utterly unique.
Read
December 17, 2019When I first read Mencken, I was about 16, and I hated the middle-class, middle-American, evangelical-heavy culture around me, as well as the ongoing Bush regime -- needless to say, I was a natural audience.
This says something. Because really, despite the fact that he was a middle-aged man, he was still an atheist edgelord teenager with a Nietzsche boner who didn't much care for women and who liked to use words like "chrestomathy," and kept the line between satire and sincerity deliberately vague. I honestly wonder why he hasn't been taken up by Internet dorks. Maybe it's because they don't have the attention span for anything beyond Sargon of Akkad videos and supercuts of Christopher Hitchens zingers. Maybe it's because there's a wit and a humor at Mencken's core that is lacking in the dead seriousness of online mewling. Maybe it's his outdated references to once-towering figures likes Ingersoll and Cabell. Maybe it's because Mencken was enough of a human that he could really befriend Christians and Marxists and other people he considered philosophical enemies.
On the one hand, I find myself rolling my eyes constantly reading Mencken. On the other hand, I have to realize that like Nietzsche, Mencken was extremely prone to misinterpretation, and the worst things he said were held out as exemplars. If he was alive today, we would be assaulted with videos like "Mencken OWNS feminists!!!" on one side and with Buzzfeed articles like "The Toxic Mencken Fandom: Why I Won't Be Reading The American Language" on the other. And as a 33 year old man with my own life, I would be paying him little mind, even if I enjoyed his aphorisms and admired him in my youth.
This says something. Because really, despite the fact that he was a middle-aged man, he was still an atheist edgelord teenager with a Nietzsche boner who didn't much care for women and who liked to use words like "chrestomathy," and kept the line between satire and sincerity deliberately vague. I honestly wonder why he hasn't been taken up by Internet dorks. Maybe it's because they don't have the attention span for anything beyond Sargon of Akkad videos and supercuts of Christopher Hitchens zingers. Maybe it's because there's a wit and a humor at Mencken's core that is lacking in the dead seriousness of online mewling. Maybe it's his outdated references to once-towering figures likes Ingersoll and Cabell. Maybe it's because Mencken was enough of a human that he could really befriend Christians and Marxists and other people he considered philosophical enemies.
On the one hand, I find myself rolling my eyes constantly reading Mencken. On the other hand, I have to realize that like Nietzsche, Mencken was extremely prone to misinterpretation, and the worst things he said were held out as exemplars. If he was alive today, we would be assaulted with videos like "Mencken OWNS feminists!!!" on one side and with Buzzfeed articles like "The Toxic Mencken Fandom: Why I Won't Be Reading The American Language" on the other. And as a 33 year old man with my own life, I would be paying him little mind, even if I enjoyed his aphorisms and admired him in my youth.
July 25, 2008
People need to read more Mencken.
"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."
"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."
April 12, 2012
H. L. Mencken is one of those famous American writers that I'd heard about but never bothered to check out until after I watched The Wire, which is set in his native Baltimore and whose last episode had an epigraph by him. He's a worthy successor to Mark Twain in many ways: a strong background in journalism, biting satire, excellent with language, full of quotable zingers, and a very perceptive chronicler of life in America. The difference is that Mencken never made his mark with the kind of epochal novel like Huckleberry Finn that Twain did, contenting himself with a career as a high-minded literary critic and belletrist. One of the reasons is probably his personality: he was much more cynical and contemptuous of the average person than Twain was; even the title of this anthology ("chrestomathy" means both literally "things useful to know" and figuratively "a choice selection of an author's best works") conveys something of his complete disregard for the typical vocabulary and educational level of his readers – if you want to read Mencken, you'll either keep a dictionary handy or he'll gladly talk right over your head. He personally selected all the articles that appear in this volume, divided into categories (religion, music criticism, politics, literature, etc) and his range is as impressive as his erudition. It's almost impossible to pick out a favorite selection since they're all so good, but I particularly enjoyed his reporting on the Scopes evolution trial. Highly recommended.
May 26, 2017
In Mencken's Chrestomathy his witty writing predictably revolve around three separate but related themes; his belief in the clear superiority of one race over another, his aristocratic elitism, and gleeful advocacy for eugenics.
See this ghoulish passage from his "Eugenic Note:"
The Renaissance, it seems to me, is easily and sufficiently explained by the fact that the Black Death, raging from 1334 to 1351, exterminated such huge masses of the European proletariat that the average intelligence and enterprise of the race were greatly lifted, and that this purged and improved society suddenly functioned splendidly because it was no longer hobbled from below. (p377)
Gross.
The Mencken Chrestomathy is a collection of Mencken's writings that he thinks are representative of his best work on different subjects.
What struck me as representative of Mencken's faults and strengths as a writer were his views on what makes for good criticism.
A writer could easily improve his writing through reading Mencken, but not I think by following Mencken's advice on what makes for good writing. I think that any artist, writer, or individual that follows Mencken's advice on what makes for good writing or art will end up living anxiously.
For Mencken truly good criticism is not mere reviewing. A mere review only objectively presents the facts of the matter. True criticism transcends the need for facts, it exists for itself, it is its own act of creation:
"The motive of the critic who is really worth reading -the only critic whom, indeed, it may be said truthfully that it is at all possible to read him, save as an act of mental penitence- is something quite different. That motive is not the motive of a pedagogue, but the motive of the artist. [...] What, then, was my motive in writing about Mr. Dreiser so copiously? My motive [...] was simply and solely to sort out and give coherence to the ideas of Mr. Mencken, and to put them into suave and ingratiating terms, and to discharge them with a flourish, and maybe with a phrase of pretty song into the dense fog that blanketed the Republic. [...] The critic is always being swallowed up by the creative artist" (p429-431)
So in the spirit of Mencken I won't be 'merely' reviewing his Chrestomathy.
Instead, I will use Mencken to show why the concept of Originality is dumb, because it is impossible and limiting, and also dangerous, because relies on the same silly ideas necessary to believe in eugenics.
Did you know that Mencken was an early popularizer of Nietzsche in America? And that he presented his own "pretty song to the Republic" about Nietzsche's philosophy as Nietzsche own views rather than Mencken's spin on Nietzsche?
Mencken is responsible for a good deal of odd ideas people have about Nietzsche. Nietzsche didn't advocate for an "Ubermensch" of individualist aristocrats. But Mencken certainly did in both their names.
This is the natural result of Mencken's ideal that the critic is supposed to ignore an artists intent when reviewing their work in order to create a new work of art.
Mencken echoes his contemporary, Oscar Wilde, who also made similar argument that the best critics were 'artists' first:
Wilde: "[The highest criticism is a] record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. [...] [This criticism] treats the work of art simply as a starting-point for a new creation. It does not confine itself [...] to discovering the real intention of the artist and accepting that as final. [...] It is only by intensifying his own personality that the critic can interpret the personality and work of others, and the more strongly this personality enters into the interpretation the more real the interpretation becomes, the more satisfying, the more convincing, and the more true. [...] If you wish to understand others you must intensify your own individualism."
For Both Mencken and Wilde good criticism is an original individualistic work of art rather than a derivative review. I smile at this because both men views on originality are entirely derivative of their time...
Both Mencken and Wilde tacitly assume the Romantic idea that originality is the ideal in art. Mencken sees all good art as the work of an original genius: "The notion that any respectable work of art can have a communal origin is wholly nonsensical. " (p471)
But originality was not considered a goal in art, or life, until after the 18th century. For the good reason that there is no such thing as original idea. The idea of the uninfluenced lone genius creating original work is a misleading Romantic myth. Even the vaunted Shakespeare was not "original" in the Romantic sense. As Shakespeare proudly admitted, he re-purposed traditional stories to write his plays. Why do more work than you need to? Why pretend to be special? Celebrate your influences!
When you have an excessive need to present yourself as an original individual you prevent yourself from being able to learn.
The value that Mencken and Wilde place on originality causes both men to question the point of teaching and learning for anyone other than the individualistic critic:
OSCAR WILDE: The development of the race depends on the development of the individual, and where self-culture has ceased to be the ideal, the intellectual standard is instantly lowered, and, often, ultimately lost. If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself [...] you rise from the table richer [...] [But try] to sit next to a man who has spent his life in trying to educate others! What a dreadful experience that is! How appalling is that ignorance which is the inevitable result of the fatal habit of imparting opinions! How limited in range the creature's mind proves to be! How it wearies us, and must weary himself, with its endless repetitions and sickly reiteration! How lacking it is in any element of intellectual growth? In what a vicious circle it always moves!
MENCKEN: "We cannot hope to fill the schools with persons of high intelligence, for persons of high intelligence simply refuse to spend their lives teaching such banal things as spelling and arithmetic. Among the teachers male we may safely assume that 95% are of low mentality, else they would depart for more appetizing pastures. And even among the teachers female the best are inevitably weeded out by marriage, and only the worst (with a few romantic exceptions) survive." (p306)
I'd join in with both men if they were only lampooning condescending pedants. But they seem to aim at a different mark. Both men take issue with learning in general rather than with the specific issue of condescending pedants like themselves.
Mencken and Wilde's scorn for teachers and learning makes sense if we see it as a reflection of their need to show themselves as original artistic geniuses. For how original can you be if everyone else knows what you do?
A critic who can write and teach well without pretension is dangerous for Mencken and Wilde's ideal critic. Such a Socrates type threatens how Mencken and Wilde's ideal artist/critic self identifies.
While I think good reviews should include the reviewers own thoughts, the point is not to be "original." Rather, I think the reviewer should use himself as objectively as he does what he is reviewing. A good critic strives to equally weigh his own thoughts and the authors intent.
I see Wilde and Mencken as Dandies. Dandies were the original status anxious hipsters.
Just like the modern artsy hipster who reclaims the unfashionable before everyone else finds it fashionable, Mencken and Wilde's ideal critic defines themselves through the unfashionable 'counterculture' they learn before the masses sully it.
Mencken and Wilde's ideal critic need others not to know what the critic knows.
Otherwise the critic's originality and self identity will be threatened. Both men's ideal critic does not teach and denigrates teaching, not because teaching is actually boring or easy, but rather because teaching threatens to make their ideal critic unoriginal.
Because nonconformist originality is so high valued Mencken and Wilde's ideal critic, like many modern hispters, must live with perpetual status anxiety.
What if the hipster critics lonely knowledge of 'counterculture' becomes common knowledge? This is exactly what the hipster critic fears and hopes will happen. Fears because they need to be special, but also hopes because loneliness is lonely.
The ideal hipster critic must shame and loathe learning.
At the start of this review I argued that three separate but equal themes exist in Mencken's writings.
1. his belief in the clear superiority of one race over another.
2. his aristocratic elitism.
3. his advocacy for eugenics.
Consider this passage combining all three:
"It is a commonplace that nearly all Negroes who rise above the general are of mixed blood, usually with the white predominating. I know a great many Negroes, and it would be hard for me to think of an exception. What is too often forgotten is that this white blood is not the blood of the poor whites but that of the old gentry." (p192)
These beliefs are united by the idea that who we are is essentially fixed.
Either by race, class, character, intelligence and so on. For Mencken these things cannot change. This is why Mencken perpetually refers to orders of men, the 'first-rate', 'second-rate' and so on.
If you think that people can't change it's strange not to advocate for Eugenics.
If who we are is fixed and teaching and learning are both impossibilities, the selective breeding and culling of humans like cattle seems a sensible moral imperative.
If we consider eugenics a repulsive and outdated idea, we would do well to think the same way about the value of originality as an idea and ideal.
It's no accident that Mencken combines his love of 'original' art and eugenics:
"[A bad author who is also a family man] defends his manufacture of magazine serials and movie scenarios on the grounds that he has a wife, and is in honor bound to support her. I have seen a few such wives. I dispute the obligation... As for the biological byproducts of this fidelity, I rate them even lower. Show me 100 heads of ordinary children who are worth one 'Heart of Darkness,' and I'll subside. As for 'Lord Jim,' I would not swap it for all the brats born in Trenton, N.J., since the Spanish War." (p18)
The ideal of originality only makes sense if you can be comfortable with the same ideas that support eugenics.
And yet...
There are so many gems strewn throughout the Mencken Chrestomathy. When Mencken stayed off politics he regularly made me laugh. His comedic timing is excellent, and his command of the English language is stupendous. Mencken knows how to give the reader an amusing, if also often disturbing, tour through whatever.
In fairness to Mencken, his ghoulish views were to some extent simply representative of his era. Mencken was not a unique bigot, but he was unique in his ability to express his views with clarity and force. Any reader who can tolerate Mencken's unsavory ideas will certainly learn how to better write their own.
Click Here for a Rich Text Version of this Review with Pictures and Links to Sources, etc
See this ghoulish passage from his "Eugenic Note:"
The Renaissance, it seems to me, is easily and sufficiently explained by the fact that the Black Death, raging from 1334 to 1351, exterminated such huge masses of the European proletariat that the average intelligence and enterprise of the race were greatly lifted, and that this purged and improved society suddenly functioned splendidly because it was no longer hobbled from below. (p377)
Gross.
The Mencken Chrestomathy is a collection of Mencken's writings that he thinks are representative of his best work on different subjects.
What struck me as representative of Mencken's faults and strengths as a writer were his views on what makes for good criticism.
A writer could easily improve his writing through reading Mencken, but not I think by following Mencken's advice on what makes for good writing. I think that any artist, writer, or individual that follows Mencken's advice on what makes for good writing or art will end up living anxiously.
For Mencken truly good criticism is not mere reviewing. A mere review only objectively presents the facts of the matter. True criticism transcends the need for facts, it exists for itself, it is its own act of creation:
"The motive of the critic who is really worth reading -the only critic whom, indeed, it may be said truthfully that it is at all possible to read him, save as an act of mental penitence- is something quite different. That motive is not the motive of a pedagogue, but the motive of the artist. [...] What, then, was my motive in writing about Mr. Dreiser so copiously? My motive [...] was simply and solely to sort out and give coherence to the ideas of Mr. Mencken, and to put them into suave and ingratiating terms, and to discharge them with a flourish, and maybe with a phrase of pretty song into the dense fog that blanketed the Republic. [...] The critic is always being swallowed up by the creative artist" (p429-431)
So in the spirit of Mencken I won't be 'merely' reviewing his Chrestomathy.
Instead, I will use Mencken to show why the concept of Originality is dumb, because it is impossible and limiting, and also dangerous, because relies on the same silly ideas necessary to believe in eugenics.
Did you know that Mencken was an early popularizer of Nietzsche in America? And that he presented his own "pretty song to the Republic" about Nietzsche's philosophy as Nietzsche own views rather than Mencken's spin on Nietzsche?
Mencken is responsible for a good deal of odd ideas people have about Nietzsche. Nietzsche didn't advocate for an "Ubermensch" of individualist aristocrats. But Mencken certainly did in both their names.
This is the natural result of Mencken's ideal that the critic is supposed to ignore an artists intent when reviewing their work in order to create a new work of art.
Mencken echoes his contemporary, Oscar Wilde, who also made similar argument that the best critics were 'artists' first:
Wilde: "[The highest criticism is a] record of one's own soul. It is more fascinating than history, as it is concerned simply with oneself. [...] [This criticism] treats the work of art simply as a starting-point for a new creation. It does not confine itself [...] to discovering the real intention of the artist and accepting that as final. [...] It is only by intensifying his own personality that the critic can interpret the personality and work of others, and the more strongly this personality enters into the interpretation the more real the interpretation becomes, the more satisfying, the more convincing, and the more true. [...] If you wish to understand others you must intensify your own individualism."
For Both Mencken and Wilde good criticism is an original individualistic work of art rather than a derivative review. I smile at this because both men views on originality are entirely derivative of their time...
Both Mencken and Wilde tacitly assume the Romantic idea that originality is the ideal in art. Mencken sees all good art as the work of an original genius: "The notion that any respectable work of art can have a communal origin is wholly nonsensical. " (p471)
But originality was not considered a goal in art, or life, until after the 18th century. For the good reason that there is no such thing as original idea. The idea of the uninfluenced lone genius creating original work is a misleading Romantic myth. Even the vaunted Shakespeare was not "original" in the Romantic sense. As Shakespeare proudly admitted, he re-purposed traditional stories to write his plays. Why do more work than you need to? Why pretend to be special? Celebrate your influences!
When you have an excessive need to present yourself as an original individual you prevent yourself from being able to learn.
The value that Mencken and Wilde place on originality causes both men to question the point of teaching and learning for anyone other than the individualistic critic:
OSCAR WILDE: The development of the race depends on the development of the individual, and where self-culture has ceased to be the ideal, the intellectual standard is instantly lowered, and, often, ultimately lost. If you meet at dinner a man who has spent his life in educating himself [...] you rise from the table richer [...] [But try] to sit next to a man who has spent his life in trying to educate others! What a dreadful experience that is! How appalling is that ignorance which is the inevitable result of the fatal habit of imparting opinions! How limited in range the creature's mind proves to be! How it wearies us, and must weary himself, with its endless repetitions and sickly reiteration! How lacking it is in any element of intellectual growth? In what a vicious circle it always moves!
MENCKEN: "We cannot hope to fill the schools with persons of high intelligence, for persons of high intelligence simply refuse to spend their lives teaching such banal things as spelling and arithmetic. Among the teachers male we may safely assume that 95% are of low mentality, else they would depart for more appetizing pastures. And even among the teachers female the best are inevitably weeded out by marriage, and only the worst (with a few romantic exceptions) survive." (p306)
I'd join in with both men if they were only lampooning condescending pedants. But they seem to aim at a different mark. Both men take issue with learning in general rather than with the specific issue of condescending pedants like themselves.
Mencken and Wilde's scorn for teachers and learning makes sense if we see it as a reflection of their need to show themselves as original artistic geniuses. For how original can you be if everyone else knows what you do?
A critic who can write and teach well without pretension is dangerous for Mencken and Wilde's ideal critic. Such a Socrates type threatens how Mencken and Wilde's ideal artist/critic self identifies.
While I think good reviews should include the reviewers own thoughts, the point is not to be "original." Rather, I think the reviewer should use himself as objectively as he does what he is reviewing. A good critic strives to equally weigh his own thoughts and the authors intent.
I see Wilde and Mencken as Dandies. Dandies were the original status anxious hipsters.
Just like the modern artsy hipster who reclaims the unfashionable before everyone else finds it fashionable, Mencken and Wilde's ideal critic defines themselves through the unfashionable 'counterculture' they learn before the masses sully it.
Mencken and Wilde's ideal critic need others not to know what the critic knows.
Otherwise the critic's originality and self identity will be threatened. Both men's ideal critic does not teach and denigrates teaching, not because teaching is actually boring or easy, but rather because teaching threatens to make their ideal critic unoriginal.
Because nonconformist originality is so high valued Mencken and Wilde's ideal critic, like many modern hispters, must live with perpetual status anxiety.
What if the hipster critics lonely knowledge of 'counterculture' becomes common knowledge? This is exactly what the hipster critic fears and hopes will happen. Fears because they need to be special, but also hopes because loneliness is lonely.
The ideal hipster critic must shame and loathe learning.
At the start of this review I argued that three separate but equal themes exist in Mencken's writings.
1. his belief in the clear superiority of one race over another.
2. his aristocratic elitism.
3. his advocacy for eugenics.
Consider this passage combining all three:
"It is a commonplace that nearly all Negroes who rise above the general are of mixed blood, usually with the white predominating. I know a great many Negroes, and it would be hard for me to think of an exception. What is too often forgotten is that this white blood is not the blood of the poor whites but that of the old gentry." (p192)
These beliefs are united by the idea that who we are is essentially fixed.
Either by race, class, character, intelligence and so on. For Mencken these things cannot change. This is why Mencken perpetually refers to orders of men, the 'first-rate', 'second-rate' and so on.
If you think that people can't change it's strange not to advocate for Eugenics.
If who we are is fixed and teaching and learning are both impossibilities, the selective breeding and culling of humans like cattle seems a sensible moral imperative.
If we consider eugenics a repulsive and outdated idea, we would do well to think the same way about the value of originality as an idea and ideal.
It's no accident that Mencken combines his love of 'original' art and eugenics:
"[A bad author who is also a family man] defends his manufacture of magazine serials and movie scenarios on the grounds that he has a wife, and is in honor bound to support her. I have seen a few such wives. I dispute the obligation... As for the biological byproducts of this fidelity, I rate them even lower. Show me 100 heads of ordinary children who are worth one 'Heart of Darkness,' and I'll subside. As for 'Lord Jim,' I would not swap it for all the brats born in Trenton, N.J., since the Spanish War." (p18)
The ideal of originality only makes sense if you can be comfortable with the same ideas that support eugenics.
And yet...
There are so many gems strewn throughout the Mencken Chrestomathy. When Mencken stayed off politics he regularly made me laugh. His comedic timing is excellent, and his command of the English language is stupendous. Mencken knows how to give the reader an amusing, if also often disturbing, tour through whatever.
In fairness to Mencken, his ghoulish views were to some extent simply representative of his era. Mencken was not a unique bigot, but he was unique in his ability to express his views with clarity and force. Any reader who can tolerate Mencken's unsavory ideas will certainly learn how to better write their own.
Click Here for a Rich Text Version of this Review with Pictures and Links to Sources, etc
August 26, 2015
His writing is beautiful and his ideas well thought out and expressed, though I disagree with most of them. I'm giving the book two (perhaps two and a half) stars because, literarily speaking, it was lovely. I can not, however, say that I enjoyed reading it. He is unendingly scathing, caustic, and cynical. The back cover promised "edification and amusement," and while I was occasionally amused, I was certainly not edified or uplifted in any way. I can't imagine how anyone could be uplifted by his bleak and condescendingly arrogant outlook on, well, everything.
October 8, 2014
Mencken is a curious figure. He was an unabashed elitist with an absolute disdain for much of humanity. He was also a lover of civilization, or at least certain of civilization's highest accomplishments like classical music, literature, and science. He was a devout classist, sometimes marking nine or more gradations of men (usually men) from the first-rate (a very, very select few) down through the ninth-raters and beyond. Mencken's humanity was a pyramid and for him only the tip-top really mattered at all. But he could see Mark Twain was one of America's most significant artists, an artist for the ages, when many others could not, or could not see past Twain's public shtick. But jazz went right over his head, he could not hear it at all. I think perhaps he loved the past so much he was in some ways simply blind to the future, and thus by his own standards he was not a first-rate man. But he's still worth reading anyway.
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.
March 11, 2021
Muchos de los escritos son realmente inspiradores, a pesar de que algunos tienen ya casi 100 años, Mencken hace críticas que actualmente pueden ser extrapoladas de la cultura gringa del siglo XX a este siglo XXI en cualquier parte del mundo.
Recomiendo tener un poco de noción sobre la historia de Estados Unidos, debido a que el autor menciona diversos elementos de su cultura.
Este libro es una gran recopilación del pensamiento de Mencken, habla sobre política, sexo, ciencia, tecnología, etc. Mi única crítica es a los errores de traducción y edición. Tal vez merezca una relectura pero en el idioma original
Recomiendo tener un poco de noción sobre la historia de Estados Unidos, debido a que el autor menciona diversos elementos de su cultura.
Este libro es una gran recopilación del pensamiento de Mencken, habla sobre política, sexo, ciencia, tecnología, etc. Mi única crítica es a los errores de traducción y edición. Tal vez merezca una relectura pero en el idioma original
January 16, 2013
One of the all-time great curmudgeons/misanthropes of the early 20th century in the United States - I'm having a hard time thinking how to describe Mencken's writing style, so I'll paste the quotes from this book that I found on Goodreads - at least one of which demonstrates his rather un-PC sensibilities. Nonethelest, for those who can get past that, and appreciate scathing social and political critique written with literary whomphz, Mencken is essential reading - also fans of Isherwood and Merle Miller will most likely be a Mencken-o-phile.
“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey-cage.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
“The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. The objection to it is not that it is predominantly painful, but that it is lacking in sense.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
“The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
“All that the YMCA's horse and rings really accomplished was to fill me with an ineradicable distaste, not only for Christian endeavor in all its forms, but also for every variety of calisthenics, so that I still begrudge the trifling exertion needs to climb in and out of the bathtub, and hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
“If I had my way no man guilty of golf would be eligible to any office of trust or profit under the United States, and all female athletes would be shipped to the white-slave corrals of the Argentine.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
3 people liked it
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“Politicians seldom if ever get [into public office] by merit alone, at least in democratic states. Sometimes, to be sure, it happens, but only by a kind of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged… Will any of them venture to tell the plain truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the situation of the country, foreign or domestic? Will any of them refrain from promises that he knows he can’t fulfill — that no human being could fulfill? Will any of them utter a word, however obvious, that will alarm or alienate any of the huge pack of morons who cluster at the public trough, wallowing in the pap that grows thinner and thinner, hoping against hope?
Answer: maybe for a few weeks at the start… But not after the issue is fairly joined, and the struggle is on in earnest… They will all promise every man, woman and child in the country whatever he, she or it wants. They’ll all be roving the land looking for chances to make the rich poor, to remedy the irremediable, to succor the unsuccorable, to unscramble the unscrambleable, to dephlogisticate the undephlogisticable. They will all be curing warts by saying words over them, and paying off the national debt with money no one will have to earn. When one of them demonstrates that twice two is five, another will prove that it is six, six and a half, ten, twenty, n.
In brief, they will divest themselves from their character as sensible, candid and truthful men, and simply become candidates for office, bent only on collaring votes. They will all know by then, even supposing that some of them don’t know it now, that votes are collared under democracy, not by talking sense but by talking nonsense, and they will apply themselves to the job with a hearty yo-heave-ho. Most of them, before the uproar is over, will actually convince themselves. The winner will be whoever promises the most with the least probability of delivering anything.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
“Democracy is the art and science of running the circus from the monkey-cage.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
“The basic fact about human existence is not that it is a tragedy, but that it is a bore. It is not so much a war as an endless standing in line. The objection to it is not that it is predominantly painful, but that it is lacking in sense.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
“The value the world sets upon motives is often grossly unjust and inaccurate. Consider, for example, two of them: mere insatiable curiosity and the desire to do good. The latter is put high above the former, and yet it is the former that moves one of the most useful men the human race has yet produced: the scientific investigator. What actually urges him on is not some brummagem idea of Service, but a boundless, almost pathological thirst to penetrate the unknown, to uncover the secret, to find out what has not been found out before. His prototype is not the liberator releasing slaves, the good Samaritan lifting up the fallen, but a dog sniffing tremendously at an infinite series of rat-holes.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
“All that the YMCA's horse and rings really accomplished was to fill me with an ineradicable distaste, not only for Christian endeavor in all its forms, but also for every variety of calisthenics, so that I still begrudge the trifling exertion needs to climb in and out of the bathtub, and hate all sports as rabidly as a person who likes sports hates common sense.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
“If I had my way no man guilty of golf would be eligible to any office of trust or profit under the United States, and all female athletes would be shipped to the white-slave corrals of the Argentine.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
3 people liked it
like
“Politicians seldom if ever get [into public office] by merit alone, at least in democratic states. Sometimes, to be sure, it happens, but only by a kind of miracle. They are chosen normally for quite different reasons, the chief of which is simply their power to impress and enchant the intellectually underprivileged… Will any of them venture to tell the plain truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth about the situation of the country, foreign or domestic? Will any of them refrain from promises that he knows he can’t fulfill — that no human being could fulfill? Will any of them utter a word, however obvious, that will alarm or alienate any of the huge pack of morons who cluster at the public trough, wallowing in the pap that grows thinner and thinner, hoping against hope?
Answer: maybe for a few weeks at the start… But not after the issue is fairly joined, and the struggle is on in earnest… They will all promise every man, woman and child in the country whatever he, she or it wants. They’ll all be roving the land looking for chances to make the rich poor, to remedy the irremediable, to succor the unsuccorable, to unscramble the unscrambleable, to dephlogisticate the undephlogisticable. They will all be curing warts by saying words over them, and paying off the national debt with money no one will have to earn. When one of them demonstrates that twice two is five, another will prove that it is six, six and a half, ten, twenty, n.
In brief, they will divest themselves from their character as sensible, candid and truthful men, and simply become candidates for office, bent only on collaring votes. They will all know by then, even supposing that some of them don’t know it now, that votes are collared under democracy, not by talking sense but by talking nonsense, and they will apply themselves to the job with a hearty yo-heave-ho. Most of them, before the uproar is over, will actually convince themselves. The winner will be whoever promises the most with the least probability of delivering anything.”
― H.L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy
March 22, 2010
Mencken uses the word Chrestomathy to mean a selection of an author's writings chosen by the author. This is thus a diverse anthology of what HLM presumably regards as his best writing; and certainly it is nothing if not interesting. He skates with merry and cynical insouciance over an impressive range of subjects: politics, history, literature, religion, women, statesmen, etc. Often he is funny; always, acerbic.
Sometimes his opinions go beyond any evidence he presents (indeed, evidence is something he rarely troubles us with), so we have to take on trust that he knows what he's talking about. I fear that he had sometimes too much confidence in his own powers of pure reasoning, leading, for instance, to views on the South presented at length that flirt disturbingly close to racism, spuriously ascribing cultural phenomena to genetic lineage: "As a result of this preference of the Southern gentry for mulatto mistresses there was created a series of mixed strains containing the best white blood of the South..." "It is highly probable that some of the worst blood of western Europe flows in the veins of the Southern poor whites... The original strains, according to every honest historian, were extremely corrupt." What could that even mean?
I find him similarly close-minded in his snobberies: jazz is an "infernal din" for idiots and barbarians; all culture aside from classical music is pigeon-holed under "The Lesser Arts"; and he has a peculiar longing for society to be enriched by an intellectual elite, with the kind of freedoms and invention, but also the kind of feudalistic powers, of European aristocracy. (I may be caricaturing him there, but not much.) And if his 'insights' about Women take the form of back-handed compliments, they are scarcely the less patronising.
On the other hand, his prose is never dull and frequently passionate. The sections about his favourite composers float off the page (Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert...). His writing on boxing reeks of sweat and sawdust. He bigs up Twain repeatedly, declaring Huckleberry Finn to be the finest American novel. And his essay The Hills Of Zion is evidently, and understandably, regarded as a classic piece of reportage, brilliantly evoking the heat and fervour of a backwoods revivalist meeting.
Topped off with amusing Buffooneries, including a superb little comic fable about a Chinese medicine-man, this is stimulating reading from start to finish. Even where he's clearly wrong, Mencken is a fellow worth the trouble of disagreeing with.
Sometimes his opinions go beyond any evidence he presents (indeed, evidence is something he rarely troubles us with), so we have to take on trust that he knows what he's talking about. I fear that he had sometimes too much confidence in his own powers of pure reasoning, leading, for instance, to views on the South presented at length that flirt disturbingly close to racism, spuriously ascribing cultural phenomena to genetic lineage: "As a result of this preference of the Southern gentry for mulatto mistresses there was created a series of mixed strains containing the best white blood of the South..." "It is highly probable that some of the worst blood of western Europe flows in the veins of the Southern poor whites... The original strains, according to every honest historian, were extremely corrupt." What could that even mean?
I find him similarly close-minded in his snobberies: jazz is an "infernal din" for idiots and barbarians; all culture aside from classical music is pigeon-holed under "The Lesser Arts"; and he has a peculiar longing for society to be enriched by an intellectual elite, with the kind of freedoms and invention, but also the kind of feudalistic powers, of European aristocracy. (I may be caricaturing him there, but not much.) And if his 'insights' about Women take the form of back-handed compliments, they are scarcely the less patronising.
On the other hand, his prose is never dull and frequently passionate. The sections about his favourite composers float off the page (Beethoven, Brahms, Schubert...). His writing on boxing reeks of sweat and sawdust. He bigs up Twain repeatedly, declaring Huckleberry Finn to be the finest American novel. And his essay The Hills Of Zion is evidently, and understandably, regarded as a classic piece of reportage, brilliantly evoking the heat and fervour of a backwoods revivalist meeting.
Topped off with amusing Buffooneries, including a superb little comic fable about a Chinese medicine-man, this is stimulating reading from start to finish. Even where he's clearly wrong, Mencken is a fellow worth the trouble of disagreeing with.
January 6, 2020
It took me over a year to read all of the articles in this. It really isn't meant to sit and read cover to cover, the book is divided into subject areas, and I would read a few of his essays a week. Mencken was a journalist, essayist, critic, humorist, reviewer--and knowledgeable about a wealth of subject matter. The pieces in this book were selected by Mencken himself, and represent his entire life of writing, on wide ranging scale of topics. Although many of his political writings were published in the 1920's--they certainly apply to today. I was surprised on his knowledge of classical music--writing critiques on some of the classical composers. If you're not familiar with his works, smaller collections of his writing is available. Although all of his material didn't appeal to me, I believe everyone would find something to their liking in his book.
May 10, 2016
mencken was a cynical man. he covered the scopes monkey trial with acerbic jabs at southern fundamentalism. he was the original hater. he hates zoos and democracy and jesus and abraham and stupid people and women and italians and irishmen and germans and politicians and teachers and critics and soldiers and soldier's wives and babbits and non-babbits and children and adults and marriage and newspaper editors and newspaper readers and georgia and prohibition and telephones and ceremonies and eastern religions and more!
his low opinion of the average man is manifest in everything he writes. he's a scientific determinist and damn near a nihilist. he admires frederich nietszche and charles darwin. as nearly as i can tell, he hates everyone else ever. so i'm not the only one.
his low opinion of the average man is manifest in everything he writes. he's a scientific determinist and damn near a nihilist. he admires frederich nietszche and charles darwin. as nearly as i can tell, he hates everyone else ever. so i'm not the only one.
April 10, 2010
Mencken is a master of metaphor and a wonderful writer, but he is very caustic, and dangerous in large doses. I highly recommend reading Lloyd-Jones' "Spiritual Depression" along side of him.
November 11, 2009
Has America ever had a greater prose stylist than Henry Mencken? It's not just that each of his sentences has a logical essence to it that builds upon and adds to what came before it. It's that those sentences have a pulsing rhythm that seem to pour forth from him in a steadily increasing tempo, the logic and rhythm always in perfect harmony. The cumulative effect of reading Mencken is not unlike that of listening to Beethoven, whom Mencken adored; he was the most musical of writers (he was an amateur musician himself) not in the sense that he was sweet or pretty, but in the sense that his prose had a rhythm, a beat. Reading Mencken is a vibrant pleasure. This rollicking appreciation of Beethoven is a case in point:
"It was a bizzare jest of the gods to pit Beethoven, in his first days in Vienna, against Papa Haydn. Haydn was undeniably a genius of the first water, and, after Mozart's death, had no apparent reason to fear a rival. If he did not actually create the symphony as we know it today, then he at least enriched the form with its first genuine masterpieces - and not with a scant few, but literally with dozens. Tunes of the utmost loveliness gushed from him like oil from a well. More, he knew how to manage them; he was the master of musical architectonics. But when Beethoven stepped in, poor old Papa had to step down. It was like pitting a gazelle against a bull. One colossal bellow, and the combat was over. Musicians are apt to look at it as a mere contest of technicians. They point to the vastly greater skill and ingenuity of Beethoven - his firmer grip upon his materials, his greater daring and resourcefulness, his far better understanding of dynamics, rhythms and clang-tints - in brief, his tremendously superior musicianship. But that is not what made him so much greater than Haydn - for Haydn, too, had his superiorities; for example, his far readier inventiveness, his capacity for making better tunes. What lifted Beethoven above the old master was simply his greater dignity as a man. The feelings that Haydn put into tone were the feelings of a country pastor, a rather civilized stockbroker, a viola player gently mellowed by Kulmbacher. When he wept it was with the tears of a woman who has discovered another wrinkle; when he rejoiced it was with the joy of a child on Christmas morning. But the feelings Beethoven put into his music were the feelings of a god. There was something olympian in his snarls and rages, and the was a touch of hell-fire in his mirth.
It is almost a literal fact that there is not a trace of cheapness in the whole body of his music. He is never sweet and romantic; he never shed conventional tears; he never stikes orthodox attitudes. In his lightest moods there is the immense and inescapable dignity of the ancient prophets. He concerns himself, not with the transient agonies of romantic love, but with the eternal tragedy of man. He is a great tragic poet..."
The absolute confidence of his voice and the command of the language we see in this excerpt is present in virtualy everything he wrote. Read this book, and whatever else from Mencken you can get your hands on. Even if you don't agree with what he says, you'll love the way he says it.
"It was a bizzare jest of the gods to pit Beethoven, in his first days in Vienna, against Papa Haydn. Haydn was undeniably a genius of the first water, and, after Mozart's death, had no apparent reason to fear a rival. If he did not actually create the symphony as we know it today, then he at least enriched the form with its first genuine masterpieces - and not with a scant few, but literally with dozens. Tunes of the utmost loveliness gushed from him like oil from a well. More, he knew how to manage them; he was the master of musical architectonics. But when Beethoven stepped in, poor old Papa had to step down. It was like pitting a gazelle against a bull. One colossal bellow, and the combat was over. Musicians are apt to look at it as a mere contest of technicians. They point to the vastly greater skill and ingenuity of Beethoven - his firmer grip upon his materials, his greater daring and resourcefulness, his far better understanding of dynamics, rhythms and clang-tints - in brief, his tremendously superior musicianship. But that is not what made him so much greater than Haydn - for Haydn, too, had his superiorities; for example, his far readier inventiveness, his capacity for making better tunes. What lifted Beethoven above the old master was simply his greater dignity as a man. The feelings that Haydn put into tone were the feelings of a country pastor, a rather civilized stockbroker, a viola player gently mellowed by Kulmbacher. When he wept it was with the tears of a woman who has discovered another wrinkle; when he rejoiced it was with the joy of a child on Christmas morning. But the feelings Beethoven put into his music were the feelings of a god. There was something olympian in his snarls and rages, and the was a touch of hell-fire in his mirth.
It is almost a literal fact that there is not a trace of cheapness in the whole body of his music. He is never sweet and romantic; he never shed conventional tears; he never stikes orthodox attitudes. In his lightest moods there is the immense and inescapable dignity of the ancient prophets. He concerns himself, not with the transient agonies of romantic love, but with the eternal tragedy of man. He is a great tragic poet..."
The absolute confidence of his voice and the command of the language we see in this excerpt is present in virtualy everything he wrote. Read this book, and whatever else from Mencken you can get your hands on. Even if you don't agree with what he says, you'll love the way he says it.
April 13, 2019
HL Mencken was utterly reprobate, but it would be hard to find a finer stylist. While his Chrestomathy isn’t strictly history, of course, it is a “feel” for how life was in the 20s and 30s. While Mencken was a wordsmith of the highest skill, he was a 3rd rate philosopher--and that’s putting it nicely. Still, even his incompetence in metaphysics serves a purpose: he shows some of the arguments used against the supernatural today.
Mencken’s materialism comes through in stark colors: life is a “long series of inexplicable accidents, not only quite unavoidable, but even quite unintelligible” (Mencken 83). I suppose the obvious question is “Is that statement unintelligible?”
On Government
Mencken is a Libertarian, believing the ideal government is one that lets you alone (146).
"When a private citizen is robbed a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the govt is robbed the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than before. The notion that they have earned that money is never entertained” (149).
Americans
“The New England shopkeepers never really developed a civilization; all they ever developed was a government” (185).
History
“As for the Greek genius for politics, it revealed its true measure in the fact that no Greek government ever lasted for more than a century, and that most of them ended in scandal and disaster” (215).
General Grant: He was completely innocent. He was too stupid to be anything else (224). “Now and then, by a flash of what must be called, I suppose, insight, he struck out in his Berserker way for common decency” (225).
On William Jennings Bryan
“The simian gabble of [the common man] was not gabble to him, but wisdom of an occult and superior sort” (244).
Mencken: "It is one of the mysteries of American life that the Rotary Club has never discovered Emerson. His so-called philosophy....seems to be made precisely for the lunch-table idealists" (477).
On Economics
“....swindled the government in some patriotic enterprise” (293).
“We owe to capital the fact that the medical profession, for example, is now really useful to mankind” (294).
“I have been careful to take evidence from unimpeachable source. If it had come from Congressional record I’d have been suspicious of it, for both Houses, as we have heard from [FDR] himself, are full of liars” (426).
“Here is the perfect pattern of the professional world-saver. His whole life has been devoted to the art and science of spending other people’s money. He has saved millions of the downtrodden from starvation, pestilence, cannibalism, and worse--always at someone else’s expense, and usually at the tax-payers” (427).
Aphorisms
“Whenever you hear a man speak of love for his country it is a sign he expects to be paid for it” (616).
“Historian--an unsuccessful novelist” (619).
“Adultery is the application of democracy to love” (621).
Mencken’s materialism comes through in stark colors: life is a “long series of inexplicable accidents, not only quite unavoidable, but even quite unintelligible” (Mencken 83). I suppose the obvious question is “Is that statement unintelligible?”
On Government
Mencken is a Libertarian, believing the ideal government is one that lets you alone (146).
"When a private citizen is robbed a worthy man is deprived of the fruits of his industry and thrift; when the govt is robbed the worst that happens is that certain rogues and loafers have less money to play with than before. The notion that they have earned that money is never entertained” (149).
Americans
“The New England shopkeepers never really developed a civilization; all they ever developed was a government” (185).
History
“As for the Greek genius for politics, it revealed its true measure in the fact that no Greek government ever lasted for more than a century, and that most of them ended in scandal and disaster” (215).
General Grant: He was completely innocent. He was too stupid to be anything else (224). “Now and then, by a flash of what must be called, I suppose, insight, he struck out in his Berserker way for common decency” (225).
On William Jennings Bryan
“The simian gabble of [the common man] was not gabble to him, but wisdom of an occult and superior sort” (244).
Mencken: "It is one of the mysteries of American life that the Rotary Club has never discovered Emerson. His so-called philosophy....seems to be made precisely for the lunch-table idealists" (477).
On Economics
“....swindled the government in some patriotic enterprise” (293).
“We owe to capital the fact that the medical profession, for example, is now really useful to mankind” (294).
“I have been careful to take evidence from unimpeachable source. If it had come from Congressional record I’d have been suspicious of it, for both Houses, as we have heard from [FDR] himself, are full of liars” (426).
“Here is the perfect pattern of the professional world-saver. His whole life has been devoted to the art and science of spending other people’s money. He has saved millions of the downtrodden from starvation, pestilence, cannibalism, and worse--always at someone else’s expense, and usually at the tax-payers” (427).
Aphorisms
“Whenever you hear a man speak of love for his country it is a sign he expects to be paid for it” (616).
“Historian--an unsuccessful novelist” (619).
“Adultery is the application of democracy to love” (621).
November 24, 2021
Another book from James Mustich’s 1000 books to read list.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956), a lifelong Baltimorean and journalist.
Things to know about HLM:
1) He was born a curmudgeon. In fact, I strongly suspect he was shaking his fist and hollering “Hey you kids get off my lawn!” while in utero. Mencken despises pretty much everybody. Compared to HLM, Mark Twain’s feelings towards the human race were positively warm and fuzzy.
2) HLM was a genuine polymath, who had read incredibly widely and on a huge variety of subjects. This book is a collection of his newspaper articles ranging from history, biography, music, literature, politics, medicine etc etc etc. He is also incredibly funny, and an amazing writer with quite the gift for metaphor and sketching a picture with just a few words.
To give you an idea of HLM’s curmudgeonness, he prefaced this book by stating that multiple people told him not to use Chrestomathy [a collection of choice works by an author] in the title because no one knew what it meant. In response, he writes “Thousands of excellent nouns, verbs, and adjectives that have stood in every decent dictionary for years are still unfamiliar to such ignoramuses, and I do not solicit their patronage…Leave my vocabulary to me and my own customers who have been to school.”
HLM could write some great one liners. “Democracy: the belief that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” And of course the classic “Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, is happy.”
I am glad I read this book, and found it useful, even though I disagreed with Mencken on a lot of things (and found his support of eugenics abhorrent ) because one can learn a lot from HLM on how to construct an argument. Mencken knows exactly what he thinks and believes, and why he thinks it, and lays everything out clearly and succinctly on many different topics. (His reporting on the Scopes Monkey Trial I found particularly fascinating). It is good to read people you disagree with sometimes; you see new viewpoints and firm up your own arguments.
Also, I totally want a dinner party with Dorothy Parker and Mencken, just so they can trade verbal jabs and argue politics, literature, and pretty much everything.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956), a lifelong Baltimorean and journalist.
Things to know about HLM:
1) He was born a curmudgeon. In fact, I strongly suspect he was shaking his fist and hollering “Hey you kids get off my lawn!” while in utero. Mencken despises pretty much everybody. Compared to HLM, Mark Twain’s feelings towards the human race were positively warm and fuzzy.
2) HLM was a genuine polymath, who had read incredibly widely and on a huge variety of subjects. This book is a collection of his newspaper articles ranging from history, biography, music, literature, politics, medicine etc etc etc. He is also incredibly funny, and an amazing writer with quite the gift for metaphor and sketching a picture with just a few words.
To give you an idea of HLM’s curmudgeonness, he prefaced this book by stating that multiple people told him not to use Chrestomathy [a collection of choice works by an author] in the title because no one knew what it meant. In response, he writes “Thousands of excellent nouns, verbs, and adjectives that have stood in every decent dictionary for years are still unfamiliar to such ignoramuses, and I do not solicit their patronage…Leave my vocabulary to me and my own customers who have been to school.”
HLM could write some great one liners. “Democracy: the belief that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard.” And of course the classic “Puritanism: the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, is happy.”
I am glad I read this book, and found it useful, even though I disagreed with Mencken on a lot of things (and found his support of eugenics abhorrent ) because one can learn a lot from HLM on how to construct an argument. Mencken knows exactly what he thinks and believes, and why he thinks it, and lays everything out clearly and succinctly on many different topics. (His reporting on the Scopes Monkey Trial I found particularly fascinating). It is good to read people you disagree with sometimes; you see new viewpoints and firm up your own arguments.
Also, I totally want a dinner party with Dorothy Parker and Mencken, just so they can trade verbal jabs and argue politics, literature, and pretty much everything.
June 15, 2019
Being an avowed contrarian, Mencken’s conceit is hard to fathom. This work is like driving on an unfamiliar country road at night – at a slow speed you are jarred by a rock… then run into a pothole… repeatedly… for miles. Depressing. His word choice is so pedantic it impedes the flow of thought. A humorist seems to have a pessimistic view of man: foibles predominate and define the human condition. But most humor leaves the reader elevated because it makes one happy. Mencken can parlay against what he sees are common misconceptions, but does he pay off? Can you enjoy his wit when he drips with disgust about everything? He is a misogynistic, racist, anti-Semitic Nietzschian. The average man is a boob. The world would be better had the Confederacy won. The Apostolic Fathers were frauds. Americans are essentially cowards. High priced call-girls bring sophistication to cities. The Gettysburg Address was foolish bombast. His observations depress the reader. It has been my experience that most of those authors who profess atheism – and Mencken did - tend towards hopelessness and this is reflected in their writing: Brecht, Lovecraft, Sartre, Ibsen, Marx, Gorky, Carducci, Ayn Rand, Kingsley Amis, Kafka, James Baldwin, de Beauvoir, Woolf, Leopardi, Proust… The point is that these profess a higher wisdom and therefore a superiority. But toward what end? If the ignorant believe in God and are happier, aren’t they the wiser?
I got through 220 pages of this drivel and could not continue. What a waste of time.
I got through 220 pages of this drivel and could not continue. What a waste of time.
May 18, 2015
I would not recommend reading from start to finish. There are certainly some gems of genius here, but at least in this version it felt like serious digging between them. Additionally, it would be much more useful for a more cultivated collection with editorial headers to provide additional historical context. I felt many jokes and references were lost on me without such a guide. Recommend reading sections you've selected in advance.
June 8, 2009
For a Nietzschean, Mencken was quite humorous, as well as culturally insightful. Except he suffered many of the same problems Nietzsche suffered from-- a man without a chest, complaining about other men who lacked chests.
December 11, 2010
Mecken was a polemical journalist of the first rate, although he did not always have the right position he knew how to make his position known. His writing is charming and clever, I am particularly fond of his bold and humourous statements about the nature of government.
November 4, 2008
If I had to live with one book, this would be it. I'm a huge Mencken fan, and there's plenty of his outside of this book that I need access to, but this is a great place to start.
February 12, 2025
A hearty and genuinely funny writer who is situated in early 20th century Baltimore, using sheer wit and wordsmithery, he comments on just about every subject available to an American, which is simulateously insightful, absurd, and instructive. He loses a star for misunderstanding Calvinism but restores one's appreciation for American literature.
April 13, 2024
Read in small doses over a long time. On important topics, I agree with him on just about nothing, and his cinicism is vexing, but boy could Mencken wield a pen. Stars for sheer wordsmithing power.
April 20, 2025
Imagine reading Huckleberry Finn before finishing the fourth grade of primary school, or reading Thackeray, Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, and Johnson before graduating high school (where he was valedictorian). Such was part of the early life of H.L. Mencken, a journalist and essayist mostly unread today. Part of that is due to the dated quality of some of his writing (early 20th century persons and events mostly unknown outside the circle of historians of American political and cultural history). Though I don't believe this collection of his writing need be read in its entirety, one nevertheless ought to read selections from it for several reasons. First, it shows how a college education (to whatever degree level) has no necessary correlation with the intelligence of one's thoughts or quality of one's writing. Mencken only finished high school, though Baltimore's Polytechnic High School from the late 19th century into at least the 1920s gave an education equal to many baccalaureate programs today. Science and technology may be mostly a continuous upward progression, but culture (institutions, practices, norms) can and does decline.
Mencken made his living as a writer and editor for the Baltimore Sun, though he also wrote for the Smart Set and the American Mercury magazines, the latter of which he founded, and the breadth of his writing shows what can be accomplished through a strong desire to be knowledgeable not only about history, politics and society but also literature and music as well, and far beyond the coasts of the United States. His writing is also remarkable for the breadth of his knowledge of those subjects as well as English vocabulary, knowledge that his journalistic writing assumed for his readers. It's also remarkable that he wrote not for academics but for newspaper readers, and had no qualms about expressing strong opinions and judgments in those areas. His writing thus makes a bracing contrast with the run-of-the-mill output of today's media. It's worth your while to take a look.
Mencken made his living as a writer and editor for the Baltimore Sun, though he also wrote for the Smart Set and the American Mercury magazines, the latter of which he founded, and the breadth of his writing shows what can be accomplished through a strong desire to be knowledgeable not only about history, politics and society but also literature and music as well, and far beyond the coasts of the United States. His writing is also remarkable for the breadth of his knowledge of those subjects as well as English vocabulary, knowledge that his journalistic writing assumed for his readers. It's also remarkable that he wrote not for academics but for newspaper readers, and had no qualms about expressing strong opinions and judgments in those areas. His writing thus makes a bracing contrast with the run-of-the-mill output of today's media. It's worth your while to take a look.
September 21, 2018
It is fun when he is on your side, and a bit if a squirm when he isn't. There is some "fallen out of use" vocabulary that take a little getting used to; using cheese-monger as an insult for example. He loves to call things "buncombe" (old way of saying bull), he refers to people as "poltroons" (cowards), and he likes the word "bounders" (another way of saying cad or dishonorable man). Maybe it's just me. I never did find out exactly what he meant by Peruna. It appears to be a word for potato, so a fancy way of saying Vodka? The great internet couldn't help me. That's most of the archaic vocabulary. My favorite parts were the bits about men and women, the piece about the ancient Greeks being overrated, pedagogy, quackery, and music. A decent read of a famous misanthrope.
February 21, 2014
(4.5 stars).If Mencken was a blogger in today's age he would be #1 by any standards. His writings epitomize an era and journalistic style at their best. You may not always agree with his views, but you'll never be bored reading Mencken, and you'll come to relish his one-liners and aphorisms just as those of Churchill, GB Shaw and others.
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