Prejudices: Fourth, Fifth, & Sixth Series

by H.L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (Editor)

H. L. Mencken was the most provocative and influential journalist and cultural critic in twentieth-century America. In this volume and a companion, The Library of America presents all six series of Prejudices (1919–1927), the iconoclastic collections that helped blast American literature out of its complacency and into a new age of frankness and maturity. The fantastic linguistic inventiveness, full-bodied humor, and unwaveringly fierce courage of his journalism made him a liberating force for his contemporaries.

The final three series show Mencken at his lacerating best, taking on targets from religious fundamentalism to the dismal state of higher education. Included are such famous essays as “The Hills of Zion,” his report on the local atmosphere surrounding the Scopes trial in 1925; “In Memoriam: W.J.B.,” his relentless postmortem on William Jennings Bryan; “The Fringes of Lovely Letters,” a hilarious delineation of the lower and outer reaches of the literary world; “Comstockery,” a devastating account of the anti-obscenity crusader Anthony Comstock (“A good woman, to him, was simply one who was efficiently policed”); and “On Living in Baltimore,” a celebration of his beloved native city.

Mencken was a man of strong enthusiasms and even stronger antipathies, expressed in a prose style that marshaled all the resources of the American language in a rich blend of comic invention and sarcastic fury. To read Prejudices is to embark on an exploration of many curious byways of American culture in a moment of tumultuous and often combative transition. Mencken never shied from combat, and the courage with which he confronted the entrenched truisms and hypocrisies of his time made him a uniquely liberating force in American letters.

Genres: Essays, Literature

656 pages, Hardcover

Published September 2, 2010

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

[Gary Land · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have now finished the complete series of Mencken's PREJUDICES. Although many of his enthusiasms are dated--I don't think many people read James Branch Cabell or Joseph Hergesheimer any more--he is always entertaining to read because of his colorful language. The title he gave to these collections is accurate, for he held strong viewpoints and appears not to have been concerned about causing offense. One thing that struck me while reading these essays is that Mencken might be considered a founding father of the Libertarian movement. Especially opposed to prohibition, he seems to object to any government interference in one's life. Because these are occasional pieces, he does not develop his political philosophy systematically but I think that he holds some connections with contemporary debates. But his subjects are wide-ranging--music, art, literature, and many aspects of society--and his writing is almost always interesting as well, even when one strongly disagrees with him.

[Fred R · Rating 4 out of 5]

One thing I've been wondering is how different Mencken would have been if he had been born in Germany, rather than America. Would being part of the ethnocultural majority have made him more contrarian and more destructive, or less so?