H.L. Mencken

[LizzieMaine]

He could only be called a nihilist in the sense that most nihilists can be - believing in nothing so much as oneself.

A man never says "we cannot have democracy, for I cannot bear the burden of governance." One only hears "we cannot have democracy because all those people are incapable of it." His contempt for democracy is based on the deep anger that all those inferior beings can have a say in his world.

That's exactly the reason why all the efforts to posthumously co-opt him into this movement or the other basically miss the point of what he was saying. While a great Marxist thinker once said "I would never be a part of any club that would have me as a member," Mencken was more along the lines of "I would never be a part of any movement that would have *you* as a member."

But I also think people too often take him at face value -- how much of what he wrote for public consumption was wild hyperbole and how much of it he actually believed remains open to interpetation. Like Ambrose Bierce and Mark Twain before him, he knew that outrageous, controversial quotes sold books and newspapers.

 

[Paisley]

And not unlike his hero Nietzsche:

It seems to me that to take a book of mine into his hands is one of the rarest distinctions that anyone can confer upon himself. I even assume that he removes his shoes when he does so--not to speak of boots.​

 

[HadleyH]

Enfant Terrible of American Letters

.... where someone described Mencken as "embodying" the ethos of the Golden Era.

I don't know about "embodying" the ethos of all of the Golden Era, but certainly he rung a bell in the 1920s. These are some of the reasons:


..." He was the outstanding American literary critic of his generation, its most influential stylist, its most prominent iconoclast, the chief scourge of the genteel tradition and a great liberating force"...


The Sage of Baltimore ( that's how he was called, Lord knows he was not perfect but then who is? [huh] ) ..."was famous for his violent and vitriolic attacks on the hypocrisy, stupidity and bigotry of much of the life as he saw it"...


In short, "he was the great debunker "... and did struck a responsive cord in 1920s America.


Hope that helps.

 

[HadleyH]

OK then let's shift gears here:

fftopic:

Yes, Mr Mencken said that his beer was directly piped from Munich! Go figure!

 

[vonwotan]

I am guessing that someone has pulled together disparate quotes (or paraphrased some) to create this list. I've just re-read his A Mencken Chrestomathy - His Own Selection of his Choicest Writings and you might expect these phrases would turn up in a volume of what he cosidered some of his "choicest" writing. If indeed he considered this his creed. Some of these sentiments are expressed, but the quotes don't leap to mind.

Speaking of which, does anyone know of an original published source for "Mencken's Creed?" It's been making the rounds online for years, but the only attribution ever given is George Seldes' philospohical collection "Great Thoughts," where no source is cited. I've yet to come across it in any published collection of Mencken's own writings, though, and the whole idea of a formal "creed" seems very un-Menckenlike to me.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

Speaking of which, does anyone know of an original published source for "Mencken's Creed?" It's been making the rounds online for years, but the only attribution ever given is George Seldes' philospohical collection "Great Thoughts," where no source is cited. I've yet to come across it in any published collection of Mencken's own writings, though, and the whole idea of a formal "creed" seems very un-Menckenlike to me.

H. L. Mencken, "What I Believe," The Forum (September, 1930), p. 139.

Here is a brief background:

Part of Mencken's antipathy to reform stemmed from his oft-reiterated belief that "all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time." Mencken stressed this theme in the noble and moving peroration to his Credo, written for a "What I Believe" series in [that] leading magazine.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

where someone described Mencken as "embodying" the ethos of the Golden Era. Now in as much as any one person can do this, would anyone care to comment on how and in what ways Mencken was this embodiment?

I believe that the above is an inaccurate description ......

In addition to the other more succinct examples previously cited see below:

Mencken's devotion to capitalism was to the free market, and not to the monopoly statism that he saw ruling America in the 1920s. Hence he was as willing as any socialist to point the finger at the responsibility of Big Business for the growth of statism. Thus, in analyzing the 1924 presidential election, Mencken wrote:

Big Business, it appears, is in favor of him [Coolidge]…. The fact should be sufficient to make the judicious regard him somewhat suspiciously. For Big Business, in America … is frankly on the make, day in and day out…. Big Business was in favor of Prohibition, believing that a sober workman would make a better slave than one with a few drinks in him. It was in favor of all the gross robberies and extortions that went on during the war, and profited by all of them. It was in favor of all the crude throttling of free speech that was then undertaken in the name of patriotism, and is still in favor of it.

As for John W. Davis, the Democratic candidate, Mencken noted that he was said to be a good lawyer — not, for Mencken, a favorable recommendation, since lawyers "are responsible for nine-tenths of the useless and vicious laws that now clutter the statute-books, and for all the evils that go with the vain attempt to enforce them. Every Federal judge is a lawyer. So are most Congressmen. Every invasion of the plain rights of the citizen has a lawyer behind it. If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow … we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half." And what is more,

Dr. Davis is a lawyer whose life has been devoted to protecting the great enterprises of Big Business. He used to work for J. Pierpont Morgan, and he has himself said that he is proud of the fact. Mr. Morgan is an international banker, engaged in squeezing nations that are hard up and in trouble. His operations are safeguarded for him by the manpower of the United States. He was one of the principal beneficiaries of the late war, and made millions out of it. The Government hospitals are now full of one-legged soldiers who gallantly protected his investments then, and the public schools are full of boys who will protect his investments tomorrow.

 

[vonwotan]

I would love to see the article. It's not one we came across while studying Mencken at University. Typically, everything we read was in his wonderful prose. I'll certainly try to track down a copy.

H. L. Mencken, "What I Believe," The Forum (September, 1930), p. 139.

Here is a brief background:

Part of Mencken's antipathy to reform stemmed from his oft-reiterated belief that "all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time." Mencken stressed this theme in the noble and moving peroration to his Credo, written for a "What I Believe" series in [that] leading magazine.

 

[LizzieMaine]

" If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow … we'd all be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half.".

This is a good example of Mencken's hyperbole in action -- or are we to believe that, taking it at face value, he actually advocated stringing up people he disagreed with. If so, that's not a libertarian, that's a psychopath.

Thanks for the "Forum" reference, by the way -- I'll check it out next time I'm up at the State Library.

 

[Carlisle Blues]

This is a good example of Mencken's hyperbole in action -- or are we to believe that, taking it at face value, he actually advocated stringing up people he disagreed with. If so, that's not a libertarian, that's a psychopath.

Thanks for the "Forum" reference, by the way -- I'll check it out next time I'm up at the State Library.

Clearly in this context and given his style it is hyperbole.............wait a second hmmmmmm...you know he might have been a psychopath as well...

You are very welcome!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Tommy]

Here is a series of you tube clips of Mencken interviews late 1940's, If you wonder what he sounded like, and what a golden age man like him thought, take a listen.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S4bYv3uwDqc

 

[Angus Forbes]

Tommy, thanks for posting the link. I enjoyed listening to the entire sequence. His diction surprised me. Being "Old Baltimore" myself, and knowing that Mencken was a contemporary (roughly) of my grandparents, I expected him to have a heavy Baltimore accent. But the only instances I could detect were when he said the word "Baltimore." Then he sounded exactly as I expected and just like my grandparents.

I have the two new Mencken volumes printed up by the Library of America, an old copy of The American Language, and a copy of Serpent in Eden by Hobson, which discusses Mencken's "Sahara of the Bozart" work.

I remember reading somewhere that he (Mencken) had the largest English language vocabulary of either anyone then living or of anyone who ever had lived. As most readers of this thread undoubtedly know, he often employed his unusual vocabulary in the pursuit of insulting other people.

To me, he was a mixed bag. Despite his brilliance and oddball kind of charm, it seems to me that the passing of time has not shown his legacy to be of any great importance. On the other hand, his American Mercury carried some significant work, including, for example, the essays that later became W. J. Cash's Mind of the South, which itself is quite Menckenesque.

Again thanks for posting the link.

 

[Stanley Doble]

And yet no one called him an agitator or an anarchist...wonder why?

You must be kidding. They seldom called him anything else. In response, he called himself an old fashioned Tory and said he would be standing on the dock, wrapped in the American flag when his critics fled the country.

The man had a powerful and original mind and stainless steel balls when it came to expressing his opinions. Many of his writings were part of some slanging match against a now forgotten antagonist in academe or journalism. In the style of the times, forceful language counted in other words, don't take him too literally when he says someone belongs in a home for the feeble minded or ought to be hanged.

He certainly was not typical of the Golden Age but he was definitely an important and influential part of it.

 

[mayserwegener]

Mencken's Golden Age was the late 1800s (he called it that). He considered that the best of times. At least that is what I got from his writings.

 

[plain old dave]

Old post, but a few thoughts.

Good points made on trying to pigeonhole the man. While he admired Nietzsche, his idea of the superior man was more based on individuals than races. He was one of the most savage critics of lynching active in the Jazz Age, and regularly called racism "Ku Kluxery." Published many of the leading names of the Harlem Renaissance in the American Mercury, too.

His admiration of all things Deutche were his feet of clay. Refused to consider Hitler as anything other than other than a low-class ward-heeler till well after it was clear what Nazism was.

Reading "The Hills Of Zion," it's easier to see Mencken pitying the average Evangelical as an uneducated "inferior" person.

Profoundly offensive or entertaining depending on one's point of view, he was the Colossus of Jazz Age letters.

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[LizzieMaine]

"Jazz Age" is pretty much it as far as his time as influential figure is concerned. He was considered very much a back number by the second half of the thirties, a time when he pretty much withdrew completely from newspaper and magazine work to focus on a revised edition of "The American Language" and books looking back nostalgically on the lost days of his youth. It's very hard to see the fiery contrarian of the teens and twenties in these later works -- even Mencken himself seems to have realized by that point that his schtick was getting old.

It's a pity Mencken hated New York as much as he did, because he would have been a perfect panelist on "Information Please" during that period -- just the thought of him sitting at the same table as Oscar Levant makes me tingle all over.

 

[tonyb]

Whatever else might be said for or against old Henry, anyone who doubts his brilliance as a literary stylist is one whose opinions on such matters count for less than my dog's.

Pretty much my take on the more recently departed Gore Vidal and Christopher Hitchens. Wanna write good stuff? Read good stuff. And read it the way a musician listens to music. Sometimes you gotta resist getting lost in the melody.

 

[plain old dave]

While HLM did withdraw from political discourse in the 30s, I have always thought it was more based on his instinctive hatred of the New Deal than any idea of his persona getting long in the tooth. He was one of Ayn Rand's favorite writers.

"On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron."

He said that in 1920, and I have had a sneaking suspicion for many years that he thought that happened in the Fall of 1932 and therefore abandoned politics to the "Babbitts" til 1948.

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[LizzieMaine]

The 1936 election was pretty much the last call for the "old Mencken" persona on the public stage -- after Landon and the Liberty Leaguers went down to ignominious defeat, that whole movement pretty much lost public credibility, even though it continued to fulminate in Scribners Magazine, which had by then become its house organ.

Mencken was conspicuous by his absence from the front line of the "America First" movement, which grew out of much the same NAM-Chicago Tribune axis as the Liberty League had, even though he was certainly in sympathy with it. Quite possibly he couldn't stand the fact that the founders of this movement, even though they were millionaires, were still basically booboisie Babbitts in their outlook.

Mencken's "nostalgia" books of this period are a far cry from his fiery denunciations of 1920s hickery. If you didn't know better you'd think they were written by Alexander Woollcott, so heavily is the schmaltz laid on.

 

[plain old dave]

Agree, in general. Probably a combo of disdain for Babbitts, Roosevelt II, and the New Deal provoked HLM to batten down the hatches and wait for better days. He had, after all, been an active reporter for over 35 years and was in his later 50s in 1936, and retirement was probably in the mix, too. The 1948 Convention season was very much The Lion In Winter.

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