H.L. Mencken
Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) was an American journalist, essayist, social critic, and literary critic known as "The Sage of Baltimore." He is famous for editing the literary magazine The Smart Set, starting his own literary magazine, The American Mercury, and writing a number of books. His best known book is The American Language [1].
Mencken criticized many different people and things, including New Deal politics, Franklin D. Roosevelt, social reformers, authors of style books, and America's adoration of nonsense. But he also praised Mark Twain, Joseph Conrad, Bach, Beethoven and food from the Chesapeake Bay area [2].
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Reference in Style
Joseph M. Williams mentions Mencken in his book Style: Toward Clarity and Grace. Williams cites this passage on page 14, written by Mencken:
- "With precious few exceptions, all the books on style in English are by writers quite unable to write. The subject, indeed, seems to exercise a special and dreadful fascination over school ma'ams, bucolic college professors, and other such pseudoliterates... Their central aim, of course, is to reduce the whole thing to a series of simple rules - the overmastering passion of their melancholy order, at all times and everywhere."
Mencken's comment is followed by an explanation from Williams for why he included in his book about style.
- "Mencken is right, of course: no one can teach clear writing by rule or principle, simple or not, to those who have nothing to say and no reason to say it, to those who cannot think or feel or see."
Thoughts on American Life
Mencken called the American people the "booboisie" [3].
One of his longer quotations on America is:
- "We live in a land of abounding quackeries, and if we do not learn how to laugh we succumb to the melancholy disease which afflicts the race of viewers-with-alarm... In no other country known to me is life as safe and agreeable, taking one day with another, as it is in These States. Even in a great Depression few if any starve, and even in a great war the number who suffer by it is vastly surpassed by the number who fatten on it and enjoy it. Thus my view of my country is predominantly tolerant and amiable. I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind" [4].
The American Mercury
Mencken co-founded this literary magazine with George Jean Nathan in 1924. It included work from authors such as William Faulkner, Sinclair Lewis, and Eugene O'Neil.
The journal also contained opinion essays that attacked, among others, Abraham Lincoln and Walt Whitman. It peaked in popularity in the late 1920s, reaching a circulation of about 75,000. Its audience was put off by Mencken's sharp iconoclasm during the Great Depression, and the readership declined.
Mencken resigned from his editorial position at The American Mercury in 1933, and it was sold off by the publisher. Because of editorial changes in the 1930s and '40s, the journal became more conservative in an attempt to make it more profitable [5].
The American Language
Known as Mencken's most notable work, The American Language was initially published in 1919. The book was revised, improved, embellished, and re-released throughout Mencken's life. In 1945 and 1948, supplements for the book were also published. [6]
The intent of The American Language was to highlight "the discrepancies between British and American English and to define the distinguishing characteristics of American English." [7] The American Language and Mencken's work remain as the most scientific linguistic work concerning the American English language.[8]
