A Shout-Out to H. L. Mencken

[billyb1012]

Yes, he's long since dead. But, since he is mainly remembered today, if at all, for his literary criticism, and (most unfortunately) for the current revisionist attempt to portray him as a bigot and anti-semite, let us not forget that he was a skeptic of the first chop (a favorite expression of his). He used his words delightfully, as a club to beat mountains into molehills, or to beat mountebanks into mice. One can only barely imagine the glee with which he'd savage the Sylvia Brownes, the Head-Ons, the Bush Dynasty, the Patriot Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, and Messrs. Dembski and Behe, to list but a very few.

We are very lucky to have a James Randi defending the cause of reason over superstition, but I don't think anyone who has read Mencken would disagree that America in the 21st century is desperate for a voice as eloquent as Mencken's. Much more is being written these days against the morality and puritanism against which he raged, but far less is being said.

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Mencken liked to say things simply to cause controversy. Sure he said things clearly racist and anti-semitic but he also went into great effort to describe how "inferior" anglo saxons are. He did it to stir up controversy. I doubt he himself was racist at all.

 

[Dustin Kesselberg]

Some of his quotes...

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. 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.

Sound familiar?

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him. If it be aristocratic in organization, then it seeks to protect the man who is superior only in law against the man who is superior in fact; if it be democratic, then it seeks to protect the man who is inferior in every way against both. One of its primary functions is to regiment men by force, to make them as much alike as possible and as dependent upon one another as possible, to search out and combat originality among them. All it can see in an original idea is potential change, and hence an invasion of its prerogatives. The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane and intolerable, and so, if he is romantic, he tries to change it. And even if he is not romantic personally he is very apt to spread discontent among those who are.

The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.

 

[LibraryLady]

I work at the center of Mencken scholarship in the world. He actually was an anti-Semite and bigot--but that doesn't lessen the power of his writing. I say that because of the entries in his diaries that speak to this (can't cite it right now). My grandparents were very likely the Jewish riffraff that he complained of living in his neighborhood!

 

[SamanthaMc]

I have a soft spot for Mencken because his writings on the hypocrisy of religion were some of the first I'd read that mirrored my own frustrations.

 

[Thinking in CT]

My late father was a reader and devoted fan of Mencken. He (my Dad, that is) was in the advertizing and publishing business and often quoted to me his favorite Mencken aphorism, which I have heretofore shared with this forum, regarding the continued success of Sylvia Bromn, J. Edward, The Secret, et. al.:

"Nobody ever went broke overestimating the vulgarity of the American public."

 

[billyb1012]

Thank you all for your comments. I freely admit to being bewitched by the brilliance of Mencken's prose, and might overlook some of the unpleasant aspects therein. But I know of no claims that he was anything other than a gentleman, and often an unusually amiable and garrulous one, when dealing with his fellow homo sapiens.

My two favorite quotes, off the top of my head:

"Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

"If I had my way, no man guilty of golf would be eligible for any office of trust or profit under these United States."

 

[BPScooter]

I just read Anita Loos' "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" for the first time (loved it), and in her Foreword written in the '60s she mentions that she wrote the first draft of it on a train returning from New York to Hollywood and it was originally a jab at Mencken. They were great friends, apparently, but she was mystified by his taste in companions (less-intelligent blondes vs. more-intelligent brunettes like her). She sent it to him and he suggested she publish it in a magazine, I think Harper's. It became really popular so she continued to write more as a serial, then privately published a couple hundred copies for friends. And then eventually wrote "But Gentlemen Marry Brunettes." Highly recommended! I can't look at the latest pop music or cinema starlets now without thinking of Lorelei Lee.

 

[BPScooter]

OK, here is a totally uncalled-for passage from "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes." The whole book is in the form of a diary.

"May 17

So now we are on an oriental express and everything seems to be quite unusual. I mean Dorothy and I got up this morning and we looked out of the window of our compartment and we saw quite a lot of girls who seemed to be putting small size hay stacks onto large size hay stacks while their husbands seemed to sit at a table under quite a shady tree and drink beer. Or else their husbands seemed to sit on a fence and smoke their pipe and watch them. So Dorothy and I looked at two girls who seemed to be ploughing up all of the ground with only the aid of a cow and Dorothy said, 'I think we girls have gone one step to far away from New York, because it begins to look to me as if the Central of Europe is no country for we girls.'"

[quote starts on p. 103 of the Vintage paperback]

Remember this was 1925, and the author was a satirist and savant. I passed this book on to Mrs. Scooter, and she also singled this out as a good passage, independent of my memory.