H.L. MENCKEN
Henry Louis Mencken (1880 - 1956)
The most prominent newspaperman, book reviewer, and political commentator of
his day, Henry Louis Mencken was a libertarian before the word came into
usage. His prose is as clear as an azure sky, and his rhetoric as deadly as
a rifle shot. Frequent targets of his lance were Franklin Roosevelt and New
Deal politics, Comstocks, hygenists, "uplifters", social reformers of any
stripe, boobs & quacks, and the insatiable American appetite for nonsense
and gaudy sham. But his life was not defined by negativity. He was
positively enthusiastic about to the writings of Twain and Conrad, the music
of Brahms, Beethoven and Bach, and the victuals offered up by Chesapeake
Bay.
Mencken's writing is endearing because of its wit, its crisp style, and the
obvious delight he takes in it. The Introduction to The Impossible H.L.
Mencken: A Collection of His Best Newspaper Stories, edited by Marion
Elizabeth Rodgers which relates Mencken's manner while reporting on the
presidential conventions:
No other entertainment gave him greater pleasure than reporting from the
conventions; nor did anyone appreciate his efforts more than Mencken
himself. One reporter, peering through Mencken's window late at night
after one rally, recalled watching him at work alone in his hotel room,
pounding out copy on a typewriter propped on a desk. He would type a few
sentences, read them, slap his thigh, toss his head back, and roar with
laughter. Then he would type some more lines, guffaw, and so on until the
end of the article.
A cigar jammed in the side of Mencken's mouth completes the image. Rare is
the picture of him without one in a hand, his mouth, or a nearby ashtray.
(His father was the owner of Baltimore's Mencken Cigar Company, which
provided Mencken his first gainful employment, which he ditched not long
after his father's death to become a cub reporter.) Here's Mencken's
assessment of life in the United States:
We live in a land of abounding quackeries, and if we do not learn how to
laugh we succumb to the melancholy disease which afflicts the race of
viewers-with-alarm... In no other country known to me is life as safe and
agreeable, taking one day with another, as it is in These States. Even in
a great Depression few if any starve, and even in a great war the number
who suffer by it is vastly surpassed by the number who fatten on it and
enjoy it. Thus my view of my country is predominantly tolerant and
amiable. 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.
Henry Louis Mencken (1880 - 1956)
The most prominent newspaperman, book reviewer, and political commentator of
his day, Henry Louis Mencken was a libertarian before the word came into
usage. His prose is as clear as an azure sky, and his rhetoric as deadly as
a rifle shot. Frequent targets of his lance were Franklin Roosevelt and New
Deal politics, Comstocks, hygenists, "uplifters", social reformers of any
stripe, boobs & quacks, and the insatiable American appetite for nonsense
and gaudy sham. But his life was not defined by negativity. He was
positively enthusiastic about to the writings of Twain and Conrad, the music
of Brahms, Beethoven and Bach, and the victuals offered up by Chesapeake
Bay.
Mencken's writing is endearing because of its wit, its crisp style, and the
obvious delight he takes in it. The Introduction to The Impossible H.L.
Mencken: A Collection of His Best Newspaper Stories, edited by Marion
Elizabeth Rodgers which relates Mencken's manner while reporting on the
presidential conventions:
No other entertainment gave him greater pleasure than reporting from the
conventions; nor did anyone appreciate his efforts more than Mencken
himself. One reporter, peering through Mencken's window late at night
after one rally, recalled watching him at work alone in his hotel room,
pounding out copy on a typewriter propped on a desk. He would type a few
sentences, read them, slap his thigh, toss his head back, and roar with
laughter. Then he would type some more lines, guffaw, and so on until the
end of the article.
A cigar jammed in the side of Mencken's mouth completes the image. Rare is
the picture of him without one in a hand, his mouth, or a nearby ashtray.
(His father was the owner of Baltimore's Mencken Cigar Company, which
provided Mencken his first gainful employment, which he ditched not long
after his father's death to become a cub reporter.) Here's Mencken's
assessment of life in the United States:
We live in a land of abounding quackeries, and if we do not learn how to
laugh we succumb to the melancholy disease which afflicts the race of
viewers-with-alarm... In no other country known to me is life as safe and
agreeable, taking one day with another, as it is in These States. Even in
a great Depression few if any starve, and even in a great war the number
who suffer by it is vastly surpassed by the number who fatten on it and
enjoy it. Thus my view of my country is predominantly tolerant and
amiable. 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.