Mencken was born in Baltimore in 1880 and died there in 1956. He was a journalist, critic and noted philologist. He worked for the Baltimore Morning Herald and the Baltimore Sun. He co-edited The Smart Set with George Jean Nathan and founded and edited The American Mercury. His book: The American Language is a "must-read." He also wrote other books, including three that are autobiographical: Happy Days, Heathen Days, and Newspaper Days.
You may have heard of him in relation to the famous Scopes (Monkey) Trial.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/monkeytrial/peopleevents/p_mencken.html
Even before I moved to Baltimore, I had read The American Language volumes and enjoyed the many stories that he relates within. However, I had never read his autobiographical works, so I was pleased to discover a copy of The Vintage Mencken at a Smith College Book Sale. The book is a collection of pieces of the writings of Mencken, gathered by Alistair Cooke, with an informative introduction by Mr. Cooke, who dubbed Mencken, "the American Voltaire."
The book was published as a Vintage paperback.. probably in 1956, one year after Mencken's death.
HLM loved Baltimore. Even though he edited magazines in New York City, he almost always returned on the weekends by train to his hometown.. about a 5 hour ride. He liked to eat the famous Wiener Schnitzel at Hausner's Restaurant, and loved everything German. During the time when Germany was the enemy of the United States, he was not happy, because he considered German culture to be the best in the world. He liked to read Goethe and was a member of a classical quartet in Baltimore, playing Bach and Beethoven at least once a week.
Some people have said that he had anti-Semitic tendencies. I have never found any indication of that. But, I could be wrong. He definitely did not like the separate, but not quite equal facilities for Blacks that he saw in Baltimore, and wrote scathingly about them.
If this is the first time you have encountered Mr. Mencken, let me introduce you to a few "tidbits" from some of his writings. I'm sure you will agree that he had definite opinions about almost everything.
From: In Defense of Women, 1922
"What men mistake for beauty in themselves is usually nothing save a certain hollow gaudiness, a revolting flashiness, the superficial splendor of a prancing animal. The most lovely movie actor, considered in the light of genuine esthetic values, is no more than a study in vulgarity. His like is to be found, not in the Uffizi gallery or among the harmonies of Brahms, but among the plush sofas, rococo clocks and hand-painted oil-paintings of the third-rate auction-room. All women, save the least intelligent, penetrate this imposture with sharp eyes."
From: The Smart Set, April 1920
"In the face of another man's good fortune I am as inert as a curb broker before Johann Sebastian Bach. It gives me neither pleasure nor distress. The fact, for example that John D. Rockefeller had more money than I have is as uninteresting to me as the fact that he believed in total immersion and wore detachable cuffs. And the fact that some half-anonymous ass or other has been elected President of the United States, or appointed a professor at Harvard, or married to a rich wife, or even to a beautiful and amiable one: this fact is as meaningless to me as the the latest piece of bogus news from eastern Europe."
From: The Smart Set, May 1919
"The allurement that women hold out to men is precisely the allurement that Cape Hatteras holds out to sailors: They are enormously dangerous and hence enormously fascinating. To the average man, doomed to some banal drudgery all his life long, they offer the only grand hazard that he ever encounters. Take them away and his existence would be as flat and secure as that of a moo-cow."
From: The Smart Set, 1923
"Man, at his best, remains a sort of one-lunged animal, never completely rounded and perfect, as a cockroach, say, is perfect. If he shows one valuable quality, it is almost unheard of for him to show any other. Give him a head, and he lacks a heart. Give him a heart of a gallon capacity and his head holds scarcely a pint."
From: The Baltimore Evening Sun, December 1924
"...that (chiropractic) pathology is grounded upon the doctrine that all human ills are caused by the pressure of misplaced vertebrae upon the nerves which come out of the spinal cord .. in other words, that every disease is the result of a pinch. This, plainly enough, is buncombe. The chiropractic therapeutics rest upon the doctrine that the way to get rid of such pinches is to climb upon a table and submit to a heroic pummeling by a retired piano-mover. This obviously, is buncombe doubly damned."
From: Happy Days, 1940
"...they (literary tourists) all agreed, often with lubricious gloats and gurgles, (a) that its (Baltimore's) indigenous victualry was unsurpassed in the Republic, (b) that its native Caucasian females of all ages up to thirty-five were of incomparable pulchritude, and as amiable as they were lovely, and (c) that its home-life was spacious, charming, full of creature comforts, and hightly conducive to the facile and orderly propagation of the species."
(And they were right.. Baltimore is a nice comfy place to live.)
So, there you have it. HLM was a curmudgeon, a "Crankshaft" kind of guy, and a breath of fresh air, in my opinion. I wish that he had lived into the 1960's so I could have had a beer and 'schnitzel with him at Hausner's.
If you do nothing else in your life... go to the library and browse through his magnum opus: The American Language. In it you will learn how some people had their European names squeezed and stuffed into Yankee sounds. Also, you will learn that the interns at the famous Johns Hopkins Hospital used to name all the children born to poor unwed mothers. Some of the names that they chose were classic, such as "Positive Wasserman Johnson." (Medical persons will appreciate that.) And, you will learn that he was the person to first categorize:
Boobus Americanus: A subspecies of homo sapiens. Characterized as the ignorant, self-righteous, and over-credulous American middle class.
... and the category of humanoids that both the Republicans and Democrats will be trying to woo in the election year of 2012!
Good bye, from HLM!
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