Maryland Paperback Bookshelf
8 total works
Here is Mencken at his hyperbolic best-from his thundering blows against politics, through his piercing deflations of pious reputations, to his tireless fusillades against the American plutocracy. He tallies the dubious merits of farmers, professors, economists, congressmen, and preachers. He calculates the displeasures of living in California-and the advantages of living in America: 'Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head.'
In 1956 Mencken could look back on a long and distinguished career that included years at the top of his profession, the publication of three volumes of memoirs, and a steady stream of journalism that made him loved and hated, sometimes by the same person. For "Minority Report", he read through his notebooks, extracting those pieces he thought most true, most pertinent, most precise or most likely to blow the dust out of a reader's brain. Here he shows off his skill with the aphorism, or "stinger": "The most expensive thing on earth is to believe in something that is palpably not true"; "We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart"; "Metaphysics is a refuge for men who have a strong desire to appear learned and profound but have nothing worth hearing to say".
'"I am quite convinced that all religions, at bottom, are pretty much alike. On the surface they may seem to differ greatly, but what appears on the surface is not always religion. Go beneath it, and one finds invariably the same sense of helplessness before the cosmic mysteries, and the same pathetic attempt to resolve it by appealing to higher powers."--from Treatise on the Gods' H. L. Mencken is perhaps best known for his scathing political satire. But politicians, as far as Mencken was concerned, had no monopoly on self-righteous chest-thumping, deceit, and thievery. He also found religion to be an adversary worthy of his attention and, in 'Treatise on the Gods', he offers some of his best shots, a choreographed cannonade. Mencken examines religion everywhere, from India to Peru, from the myths of Egypt to the traditional beliefs of America's Bible Belt. He compares Incas and Greeks, examines doctrines, dogmas, sacred texts, heresies, and ceremonies. He ranges far and wide, but returns at last to the subject that most provokes him: Christianity. He reviews the history of the Church and its founders.
"It is Tertullian who is credited with the motto, Credo, quia absurdum est: I believe because it is incredible. Needless to say, he began life as a lawyer." Mencken is no less interested in the dissidents: "The Reformers were men of courage, but not many of them were intelligent." Against the old-time religion of fellow countrymen, Mencken posed as a figure of old-time skepticism, and he reaped the whirlwind. Controversial even before it was published in 1930, 'Treatise on the Gods' remains what its author wished it to be: the plain, clear challenge of honest doubt.
"It is Tertullian who is credited with the motto, Credo, quia absurdum est: I believe because it is incredible. Needless to say, he began life as a lawyer." Mencken is no less interested in the dissidents: "The Reformers were men of courage, but not many of them were intelligent." Against the old-time religion of fellow countrymen, Mencken posed as a figure of old-time skepticism, and he reaped the whirlwind. Controversial even before it was published in 1930, 'Treatise on the Gods' remains what its author wished it to be: the plain, clear challenge of honest doubt.
In January 1991 the Enoch Pratt Free Library opened the sealed manuscript of H.L. Mencken's "Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work". Written in 1941-42 and bequeathed to the library under time-lock upon Mencken's death in 1956, it is among the very last of his papers opened to the public. "Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work", a one-volume edition of highlights from the manuscript, pictures the excitement of newspaper life in the heyday of print journalism. Here Mencken recalls his years - mostly with the Baltimore "Evening Sun" - as a reporter and a writer of editorials that always caused a stir among the public and riots of indignation among his enemies. The volume includes important new materials on his coverage of presidential candidates from 1929 to 1940 (Mencken on Harding's inaugural address: "a string of wet sponges") and the 1925 trial of the man he called "the infidel Scopes". Mencken also describes his brief stint as a war correspondent on Germany's sub-zero Eastern Front in 1917 and the perilous voyage back, which took him through Havana just as a revolution was breaking out. (He stayed to cover it).
He writes about the "inevitable" war and likely fate of Germany's Jews during a final visit to his ancestral homeland in summer 1938. And he describes colourful Baltimore personalities, shares local gossip, and offers candid - usually unflattering - portraits of the politicians and clerics he mostly despised.
He writes about the "inevitable" war and likely fate of Germany's Jews during a final visit to his ancestral homeland in summer 1938. And he describes colourful Baltimore personalities, shares local gossip, and offers candid - usually unflattering - portraits of the politicians and clerics he mostly despised.
With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken's death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejudices, Treatise on the Gods, On Politics, Thirty-Five Years of Newspaper Work, Minority Report, and A Second Mencken Chrestomathy. These seventy political pieces from the 1920s and 1930s are drawn from Mencken's famous Monday columns in the Baltimore Evening Sun.
In the third volume of his autobiography, H.L. Mencken looks back on his life and declares it "very busy and excessively pleasant". He imparts the impressive education he recieved from Hoggie Unglebower, the best dog trainer in Christendom, and the survival techniques he employed at Baltimore Polytechnic, where he learned to protect his fingers from power tools and his character from the influence of algebra. Mencken also describes the club boxing matches he attended, watching as the combatants in this gentleman's sport genteelly broke both bones and the law. He recounts his voyage across the Atlantic that he, unlike Columbus, paid for himself. In Naples, he admired the garbage that seemed to have accumulated since Roman times. In Tunis, he searched for the ruins of Carthage. In the Holy Land, he looked for the ruins of Gomorrah, the Hollywood of antiquity, in hopes of finding evidence that the city's unparalleled reputation for wickedness was simply exaggerated.
Though best known for his caustic newspaper columns, H. L. Mencken's most enduring contribution to American literature may be his autobiographical writings, most of which first appeared in the 'New Yorker'. In 'Happy Days', Mencken recalls memories of a safe and happy boyhood in the Baltimore of the 1880s and celebrates a way of life that he saw swiftly changing--from a time of straw hats and buggy rides to locomotives and bread lines.
In the second volume of his autobiographical writings, H. L. Mencken recalls his early years as a reporter. On January 16, 1899, Mencken applied for a job with the Baltimore Morning Herald, much to the editor's amusement. But Mencken persisted, and came back to the offices night after night until finally, in February, the editor sent him out into a blizzard to see if anything worth printing was happening on the snow-covered streets. Soon, Mencken was assigned to the police beat, and then to city hall, where the really big crooks worked. Mencken learned his craft so well that by 1901 he had become the Herald's Sunday editor, and in 1906 he was hired as an editor of the Baltimore Sun, where he quickly attracted a national following. Sustained by a steady diet of crabs, cigars, whiskey, and beer, he haunted Baltimore's jails and courtrooms, its churches, theaters, and saloons, and chased fire wagons, interviewed cops and coroners, battled politicians and crusaders, then raced back to the newsroom to beat his deadline by a second or two.