Writings in the Baltimore Evening Sun, 1921-1923: Edited and Annotated by S. T. Joshi

by H.L. Mencken, S.T. Joshi (Editor)

As H. L. Mencken got into the swing of his “Monday articles” in the Baltimore Evening Sun, he focused on several key the ongoing buffooneries of Prohibition, the increasing corruption in the Harding administration, and the naïve optimism of those who hope for international peace and disarmament. But he also devoted several pungent articles to a condemnation of the Ku Klux Klan, one of several “imbecile organizations” that, in Mencken’s view, propounded a “Know Nothing” outlook. He also wrote keenly on the unjust imprisonment of the communists Sacco and Vanzetti. A hilarious rewriting of the Declaration of Independence into American slang highlights Mencken’s enthusiasm for the “American language.” His annoyance with the telephone seems highly prescient in our era of overconnectivity. Along the way, Mencken takes detours to address issues relating to literature, art, and general culture. These articles testify to how H. L. Mencken uses the entire world as fodder for his trenchant commentary.

364 pages, Kindle Edition

Published February 10, 2021

About the author

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

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

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

(from American Public Media)

Reviews

[Dan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some funny pieces, and a lot of denunciation of the 1922 disarmament conference in Washington -- including scorching disgust at U.S. imperialism, especially in Haiti, that would make a Jacobin editor blush. Capitalism, as the driving force in American foreign policy, isn't spared, either. Also a lot of repetition -- these were weekly columns on a fairly narrow range of topics -- mainly on Prohibition, and one or two tantalizing mentions of William Jennings Bryan's then-new jehad (HLM's spelling) against the teaching of evolution.