The Impossible H. L. Mencken
by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers (Editor), H. L. Mencken (Author), Gore Vidal (Foreword)
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This carefully edited anthology captures Mencken at his best by concentrating on his newspaper work. Showcased is the curmudgeonly Mencken, in love with the American (as opposed to the English) language and with a pen as poisonous as an adder. With his cynicism and sharp tongue, Mencken has a remarkably modern sensibility and the power to deflate the pompous with one artfully turned phrase. A large section of the book is devoted to his stories about political conventions, which he covered show more with gusto from 1904 until 1948. Rodgers also presents lesser-known sides to the writer, such as his love of food and his literary criticism. ISBN 0-385-26207-8; $27.50. show lessTags
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I have read this book off and on for a decade i suppose. A topical selection of his newspaper columns- arranged by Presidents, food, music, Scopes trial, Baltimore miscellany and so forth. Consistently great, if cranky reading. Has great charm in the 1st draft of history way - that is about Harding and Coolidge and Hoover and Roosevelt before they had established their reputation (none of that inevitability of history that retrospective history books necessarily use). Cranky, but light hearted - he often strikes me as a man who is paid for his opinion and even if he doesn't have a strong opinion will devolve on one - immediately - to serve his purpose (the writing of the article). Fair enough. Great writer- one wonders how he was so show more popular when he is insulting his readers almost constantly. I know we all see ourselves as part of the rarefied group - with Mencken, of course- who see through bunk and rise above the rabble he so disparages. show less
It's billed as the best of his newspaper articles, but some of these are just not very interesting. He is at his best when criticizing politicians or the people who vote for them. The earliest pieces that comment on society or women are not very convincing. My favorites in the first half were his descriptions of the varous presidential conventions, when there was actually some drama involved in picking the nominee.
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H. L. Mencken 1880-1956 H. L. (Henry Louis) Mencken was born in Baltimore, Maryland, on September 12, 1880. He considered Maryland to be his home despite his many years in New York. As a child he attended Professor Friedrich Knapp's Institute, a private school for children of German descent. He completed his secondary education at Baltimore show more Polytechnic Institute, from which he graduated at the age of 16. Mencken wanted to be a writer but was obligated to work in his father's cigar factory. When his father died suddenly in 1899, Mencken immediately sought a job at the Baltimore Herald. Through he began with no experience in journalism, he quickly learned every job at the newspaper and at age 25 became its editor. Mencken went on to build himself a reputation as one of America's most brilliant writers and literary critics. His basic approach was to question everything and to accept no limits on personal freedom. He attacked organized religion, American cultural and literary standards, and every aspect of American life that he found shallow, ignorant, or false - which was almost everything. From the 1920's until his death, Mencken's sharp wit and penetrating social commentary made him one of the most highly regarded - and fiercely hated - of American social critics. He was later memorialized in the dramatic portrait of the cynical journalist in the play and film Inherit the Wind. Shortly after World War I, Mencken began a project that was to fascinate him for the rest of his life: a study of American language and how it had evolved from British English. In 1919 he published The American Language: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States. To this and his publisher's surprise, the book sold out quickly; its wit and nonscholarly approach attracted many readers who would not normally buy a book on such a subject. In 1936, a revised and enlarged edition was published, and in 1945 and 1948, supplements were added. The work shows not only how American English differs from British English but how the 300 year American experience shaped American dialect. Thus the book, still considered a classic in its field, is both a linguistic and social history of the United States. Mencken died in his sleep on January 29, 1956. He was interred in Baltimore's Loudon Park Cemetery. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Gore Vidal was born Eugene Luther Gore Vidal Jr. on October 3, 1925 at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York. He did not go to college but attended St. Albans School in Washington and graduated from Phillips Exeter Academy in New Hampshire in 1943. He enlisted in the Army, where he became first mate on a freight supply ship in the show more Aleutian Islands. His first novel, Williwaw, was published in 1946 when he was twenty-one years old and working as an associate editor at the publishing company E. P. Dutton. The City and the Pillar was about a handsome, athletic young Virginia man who gradually discovers that he is homosexual, which caused controversy in the publishing world. The New York Times refused to advertise the novel and gave a negative review of it and future novels. He had such trouble getting subsequent novels reviewed that he turned to writing mysteries under the pseudonym Edgar Box and then gave up novel-writing altogether for a time. Once he moved to Hollywood, he wrote television dramas, screenplays, and plays. His films included I Accuse, Suddenly Last Summer with Tennessee Williams, Is Paris Burning? with Francis Ford Coppola, and Ben-Hur. His most successful play was The Best Man, which he also adapted into a film. He started writing novels again in the 1960's including Julian, Washington, D.C., Myra Breckenridge, Burr, Myron, 1876, Lincoln, Hollywood, Live From Golgotha: The Gospel According to Gore Vidal, and The Golden Age. He also published two collections of essays entitled The Second American Revolution, which won the National Book Critics Circle Award for criticism in 1982 and United States: Essays 1952-1992. In 2009, he received the National Book Awards lifetime achievement award. He died from complications of pneumonia on July 31, 2012 at the age of 86. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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- The Impossible H. L. Mencken
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- H. L. Mencken
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