Interesting to think about this famous (and reclusive) pundit of 90 years ago in comparison to some of the more colorful personalities on Substack, podcasts, or YouTube.
I think “homebody” is more accurate than reclusive. He was happiest in the Baltimore home where he spent almost his entire life, until he married late, at 50.
Nice piece. I discovered Mencken when my history teacher in school (in Switzerland) showed an episode of Alistair Cooke's documentary on America. At the next occasion I purchased a book of his columns (I still have it). That was in 1975... I have, like yourself, read pretty much everything, whereby a fair amount of his writing while fun (hyperbole) and acidic, does get tiresome. The broad brush strokes are dull. But overall he nails the USA perfectly, and some of his observations are prescient. The problem of overpaying reporters, for example, and the incredible reports from the Scopes Trial,... he even warns about evangelical hatred of everything modern, suggesting we keep an eye on them because otherwise they will "devour us." The "mountebank" Bryan (who "radiated hate like heat from a stove") was a slightly more sincere Trump figure....
So Mencken and the Jews... well, there's also the discussion of Mencken and racism. The jury is out, whereby I myself wrote once about Mencken saying he is an "equal-opportunity insulter." What he disliked was the kind of moral groupthink that many religious and political communities. His incredible writing was compulsive, he read many things, commented on all sorts of subjects, spotted talent and was a great reporter with an eye for details that others would not see or would not report on out of some false sense of decorum. My criticism: He seems to have stopped mostly at Nietzsche when it came to thinking. With Nietzsche, he found a lane, and hardly every got out of it.
Having said that: When election time rolls around, I always read my Mencken. He spotted Donald Trumps and Copelands and RFK Jrs all over the place. He had the courage to write hilarious lines about Aimée McPherson (one of the earliest scammers of the prosperity gospel), noting discreetly the prurience of her thick auburn hair and her hips... He had no fear of being politically incorrect... he did not give a damn about the "moral gaze" of others, and maybe that is what we need today.
Very well put! And good point about Trump. Many Trump fans seem to think that Nietzsche would have approved of him as some kind of übermensch. The truth is that both Nietszche and Mencken would have found him a buffoon. And that’s despite Mencken’s weakness for all things of German derivation (which Trump also is, despite past efforts to claim the family as “Swedish.)
Thanks, yes... Nietzsche had a great deal to say about authenticity, and being, or becoming, authentic, and Trump, in spite of what many say, is authentic as a pretender (I have a stack on the pretend Fascist). He plays the role of a fascist to the hilt, and I suspect he's taking himself seriously now...
I owe a great deal of my views to a fellow I dare call a friend, professor of philosophy who is quite brilliant in his analysis of the media world.
As for Mencken, he saw through the "buffoons" and the spectacle of American elections. And he also often criticized Americans for their timorousness and their tendency to follow fads... he coined that wonderful term: "The Booboisie."
He was eminently quotable, of course, "Puritanism, the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy." ... Or "Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right."
Look, Mencken said bad words about every ethnicity. What he said & did personally were something else. He handed quarters to the black kids playing behind his house; when his black housekeeper took ill he paid her hospital & doctor bills; he published black authors when no other mainstream publication would. He stuck with Knopf as publisher, Nathan as Smart Set partner and fought deportation for Emma Goldman's and paid her medical bills. People are hypocrites and often bounce from one stance to another. Take to heart this Yiddishism: If you look close enough, everything is treif.
I agree with everything you wrote. There’s a great Mencken Memorial Lecture here by Larry Gibson: “Mencken: Racist or Civil Rights Champion?” https://live.prattlibrary.org/494
And yet, speaking of what he “did personally,” one thing he never did was write or say anything of substance about Hitler – even after visiting Germany in 1938 – or anything at all on the Holocaust, ever. As I write in the piece, to me that’s the part that’s unforgivable.
One of Mencken's greatest legacies (for better or worse, depending on your politics) was introducing the young Ayn Rand to the American publishing establishment IIRC.
Interesting to think about this famous (and reclusive) pundit of 90 years ago in comparison to some of the more colorful personalities on Substack, podcasts, or YouTube.
Would not describe Mencken as "reclusive" by any measure.
I think “homebody” is more accurate than reclusive. He was happiest in the Baltimore home where he spent almost his entire life, until he married late, at 50.
But he was certainly “colorful!”
Nice piece. I discovered Mencken when my history teacher in school (in Switzerland) showed an episode of Alistair Cooke's documentary on America. At the next occasion I purchased a book of his columns (I still have it). That was in 1975... I have, like yourself, read pretty much everything, whereby a fair amount of his writing while fun (hyperbole) and acidic, does get tiresome. The broad brush strokes are dull. But overall he nails the USA perfectly, and some of his observations are prescient. The problem of overpaying reporters, for example, and the incredible reports from the Scopes Trial,... he even warns about evangelical hatred of everything modern, suggesting we keep an eye on them because otherwise they will "devour us." The "mountebank" Bryan (who "radiated hate like heat from a stove") was a slightly more sincere Trump figure....
So Mencken and the Jews... well, there's also the discussion of Mencken and racism. The jury is out, whereby I myself wrote once about Mencken saying he is an "equal-opportunity insulter." What he disliked was the kind of moral groupthink that many religious and political communities. His incredible writing was compulsive, he read many things, commented on all sorts of subjects, spotted talent and was a great reporter with an eye for details that others would not see or would not report on out of some false sense of decorum. My criticism: He seems to have stopped mostly at Nietzsche when it came to thinking. With Nietzsche, he found a lane, and hardly every got out of it.
Having said that: When election time rolls around, I always read my Mencken. He spotted Donald Trumps and Copelands and RFK Jrs all over the place. He had the courage to write hilarious lines about Aimée McPherson (one of the earliest scammers of the prosperity gospel), noting discreetly the prurience of her thick auburn hair and her hips... He had no fear of being politically incorrect... he did not give a damn about the "moral gaze" of others, and maybe that is what we need today.
Very well put! And good point about Trump. Many Trump fans seem to think that Nietzsche would have approved of him as some kind of übermensch. The truth is that both Nietszche and Mencken would have found him a buffoon. And that’s despite Mencken’s weakness for all things of German derivation (which Trump also is, despite past efforts to claim the family as “Swedish.)
Thanks, yes... Nietzsche had a great deal to say about authenticity, and being, or becoming, authentic, and Trump, in spite of what many say, is authentic as a pretender (I have a stack on the pretend Fascist). He plays the role of a fascist to the hilt, and I suspect he's taking himself seriously now...
I owe a great deal of my views to a fellow I dare call a friend, professor of philosophy who is quite brilliant in his analysis of the media world.
As for Mencken, he saw through the "buffoons" and the spectacle of American elections. And he also often criticized Americans for their timorousness and their tendency to follow fads... he coined that wonderful term: "The Booboisie."
He was eminently quotable, of course, "Puritanism, the haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy." ... Or "Morality is doing what is right, no matter what you are told. Religion is doing what you are told, no matter what is right."
Look, Mencken said bad words about every ethnicity. What he said & did personally were something else. He handed quarters to the black kids playing behind his house; when his black housekeeper took ill he paid her hospital & doctor bills; he published black authors when no other mainstream publication would. He stuck with Knopf as publisher, Nathan as Smart Set partner and fought deportation for Emma Goldman's and paid her medical bills. People are hypocrites and often bounce from one stance to another. Take to heart this Yiddishism: If you look close enough, everything is treif.
I agree with everything you wrote. There’s a great Mencken Memorial Lecture here by Larry Gibson: “Mencken: Racist or Civil Rights Champion?” https://live.prattlibrary.org/494
And yet, speaking of what he “did personally,” one thing he never did was write or say anything of substance about Hitler – even after visiting Germany in 1938 – or anything at all on the Holocaust, ever. As I write in the piece, to me that’s the part that’s unforgivable.
One of Mencken's greatest legacies (for better or worse, depending on your politics) was introducing the young Ayn Rand to the American publishing establishment IIRC.