The Scathing Pen of That Ol' Curmudgeon H.L. Mencken

He was born Henry Louis Mencken on September 12, 1880 in Baltimore, though most of us know him as H.L. Mencken. He wrote such bristling prose that if you look up the word "curmudgeon" in the dictionary it would have a picture of Mencken.

The Encyclopedia Britannica has this to say about him:
Mencken was probably the most influential American literary critic in the 1920s, and he often used his criticism as a point of departure to jab at various American social and cultural weaknesses. His reviews and miscellaneous essays filled six volumes aptly titled Prejudices (1919–27). In literature he fought against what he regarded as fraudulently successful writers and worked for the recognition of such outstanding newcomers as Theodore Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis. He jeered at American sham, pretension, provincialism, and prudery, and he ridiculed the nation’s organized religion, business, and middle class (or “booboisie”). 

Two recent references to Mencken in a short period of time instilled in me a desire to share a few of his quotes today. The first was an extremely well-written review of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby. The reviewer demonstrates (a) that he has a point-of-view, and (b) that he is more than familiar with the arc of Fitzgerald's career, shining fresh light on the work he's done up to this point in time. I have included a link at the end of this blog post and--if you are a writer or critic--would encourage you to check it out.

The second was this quote that Ken Burns cited in his documentary on Prohibition, reproduced here:

"Five years of Prohibition have had, at least, this one benign effect: they have completely disposed of all the favorite arguments of the Prohibitionists. None of the great boons and usufructs that were to follow the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment has come to pass. There is not less drunkenness in the Republic, but more. There is not less crime, but more. There is not less insanity, but more. The cost of government is not smaller, but vastly greater. Respect for law has not increased, but diminished." --H.L. Mencken

If his barbed wit reminds you of Nietzsche or Twain, there's good reason. Both of these writers were among his influences. What follows are quotes from the pointed pen of this prickly purveyor of perspicacious sagacity.

* * * *

"Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood."

"All men are frauds. The only difference between them is that some admit it. I myself deny it."

"Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under."

"I believe that all government is evil, and that trying to improve it is largely a waste of time."

"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by an endless series of hobgoblins, most of them imaginary."

"Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard."

"The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States, whatever the pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else."

"A good politician is quite as unthinkable as an honest burglar."

"The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth."

"The urge to save humanity is almost always only a false-face for the urge to rule it."

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that roses smell better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup."

"The trouble with Communism is the Communists, just as the trouble with Christianity is the Christians."

"Puritanism: The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

"The older I grow the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom."

"Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking."

"It is impossible to imagine Goethe or Beethoven being good at billiards or golf."


Related Links
Superb review of Fitzgerald's Gatsby. Don't stop at the beginning which is harsh. Read it to the end. It's rich.
Britannica entry on Mencken 

Meantime life goes on all around you. Get into it.

A Good Day For Lists: 35 Items of Greater or Lesser Insignificance

I've been recently bitten by the David Foster Wallace bug. That is, I keep finding myself drawn to reading more of his work. Impressive is an understatement. Pow! Blam! Ouch.

Wallace liked lists. Or so I've been led to believe. Here's a list of miscellaneous observations, notes to myself of things to read or do, and ideas to ponder. There's always more to do than there is time, so a list is all we end up with in the meantime.

1. Game 1 of the World Series is tonight featuring the Chicago Cubs and the Cleveland Indians, the two teams that have gone longest without winning a World Series championship.
2. Today is World Pasta Day.
3. Who comes up with these things? World Pasta Day?
4. Why is it called the World Series when it only involves a competition North American teams?
5. Blog topic: young bull, Death in the Afternoon, good and bad bulls.
6. Last Friday's Fall Art Show at Goin' Postal was a lot of fun for a lot of people.
7. Blog Idea: Series of blog posts featuring the songs on Dylan's Oh Mercy album, beginning with "Political World."

We live in a political world
Love don't have any place
We're living in times
Where men commit crimes
And crime don't have any face

8. Trivia: Teddy R changed name of Executive Mansion to White House
9. Worth re-reading: How To Lie With Statistics
10. Don't forget to pay your bills.
11. Learn more about Will Rogers.
12. Einstein was a pacifist who became a non-pacifist because of Hitler
13. Item 13 is now removed and has been replaced with this sentence.
14. What are your goals for the next 30 days? Do you have goals or do you simply drift?
15. Submissions are now open for the Water-Stone Review through December 1. They are seeking original, unpublished creative fiction, essays, poetry.
16. In 2009 the richest man in Asia had 168 cars. The average income in India at that time was $500 a year.
17. Jay Leno had more cars than the richest man in Asia.
18. I'm curious how much money the DAI raised last Friday in their Make Your Mark fund raising event.
19. A million square miles of land was added to U.S. as a result of the Mexican War.
20. WikiLeaks: No one likes what Mr. Assange did yet everyone seems glad to have found out about what's been going on underneath Washington's skin.
21. Most dangerous jobs in America #1: Crack Dealer #2: Logging
re: crack dealers... 1 in 4 killed who serve four years on job
22. Fear of being shunned causes people to avoid honesty; takes courage to speak honestly
23. “A hard day’s work never really killed anyone, but why risk it?” ~Ronald Reagan
24. The great virtue of capitalism is that it decentralizes power and minimizes coercion. One nation’s gain does not necessitate another nation’s loss, and it doesn’t discriminate; it is open to anyone.
25. The Man by Irving Wallace made an impression on me as a teen in the Sixties, a novel about the first black U.S. president and the special challenges he would experience.
26.  "Never be afraid to trust an unknown future to a known God." ~Corrie ten Boom
27. In Muslim culture hypocrisy is not as serious of a vice as here because it is better to uphold ideals we fail to live up to than to just give up and say “anything goes.”
28. Blog Entry idea: Great Gatsby and Lady Chatterley’s Lover both have as a theme the difference between good adultery and bad adultery.... A noble adultery and ignoble....
29. Blog Exploration: Do the strong stay strong forever or do they weaken over time (eg. Buddenbrooks)
30. Blog Exploration: What if our brain lost its "sort" function.
31. Life can only be understood backwards, but must be lived forwards." ~Kierkegaard

32. In the "good old days" New York City had 40,000 horses that generated 400 tons of manure a day, 20,000 gallons of urine and nearly 200 carcasses. (19th century stat.)
33. “The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” ~Eleanor Roosevelt
34. What are you doing today that will make a difference tomorrow?
35. Another verse from Political World:

We live in a political world 
Wisdom is thrown in jail 
It rots in a cell 
Is misguided as hell 
Leaving no one to pick up the trail

The times are most definitely a-changin'.

"The future depends on what you do today." ~Mahatma Gandhi

John Brown's Body

“John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave.”

The front flap of the book advertises itself as the “high tide in American poetical literature.” This 1928 Book-of-the-Month Club selection was later reprinted in 1954 by Rinehart and Company, Inc. with illustrations by Fritz Kredel and Warren Chappell.

When I pulled this volume off the shelf from my grandmother’s collection I was more than surprised by its mass. Here is a poem that sprawls to more than 360 pages in length. Good heavens… Did people really read 360 page poems back then? Are there publishers who would even publish a 360 page poem today?

The 1990 New Statesman review cited at Amazon.com calls it “one of the most widely read poems of our time…” That was 22 years ago and I can’t help but wonder, has anyone reading this blog today read John Brown’s Body in its entirety?

The New Statesman called it “Magnificently readable.” And in point of fact it is a more readable poem than you might expect. No matter where you crack the spine it yields vivid imagery and lively action. Wait. I just opened to a page that seemed sappy, but most of the other pages that I opened to were quite generous with mull-worthy words.

Most of the reader reviewers at Amazon.com seem to revere this American classic. One calls it a tragically under-appreciated masterpiece. Others express this same sentiment and eight of the nine give it five stars.

The thing is, people are no longer reading poetry. In fact, a lot of people don’t even read any more. And when they do it’s generally one of the more popular contemporary writers. Stephen King’s 11/22/63 was on the receiving end of 1,930 customer reviews. Quite a contrast to Benet’s nine. The Great Gatsby, published in the same decade has over 1,400 reviews. And book one of Fifty Shades of Grey has generated over 10,000. Like, whoa. And half are bad reviews, the first being, “Did a teenager write this?” This has not, however, stopped people from reading the book. Literary quality is evidently not the source of its appeal.

Ah, but I just caught a whiff of a best seller here. Someone could re-write Gatsby for a contemporary audience and call it The Grey Gatsby. I smell a bidding war for the screen rights.

No wonder Steven Vincent Benét's ego lies a-mouldering in the grave. 

The Rise & Fall of F. Scott Fitzgerald

Yesterday I listened to a lecture called The Rise and Fall of F. Scott Fitzgerald by Dr. Elliot Engel. Professor Engel is a good storyteller and active lecturer on literary subjects. He has also written three plays, many articles and seven books, the most recent being A Dab of Dickens and A Touch of Twain.

According to Engel, Fitzgerald is one of only four significant American authors of the 20th century. As he sees it, all the rest will be forgotten in 200 years, but these four will continue to be studied: John Steinbeck, Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner and the topic of this lecture, F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Hemingway’s significance is chiefly due to the impact he made on modern literature. His punchy prose smashed the old rules and replaced them with a new stylebook. Short is strong, shorter stronger. Steinbeck will always be associated with his keenly perceptive Depression-era stories. Faulkner’s landscape was the South, and Fitzgerald’s the Roaring 20’s.

Fitzgerald’s life story is itself like a novel. His sisters died while he was in the womb so that when he was born his mother doted on him excessively. When she lost the two girls she vowed never to have any more children.

Though his mother came from a family with means, his dad managed to do badly in business and when Scotty was eleven they were bankrupt. As a result, they returned to Minnesota to be near her folks who could then help them get on their feet. This and other anecdotes were presented to give a backdrop for Fitzgerald’s personality development and his fascination with the Jazz Age, particularly the lifestyles of the rich and infamous.

The irony is that his life seemed to be a repeat of his dad’s. He married a girl from a wealthy background, but somehow failed at providing for her. We’re talking about Zelda here, another tragic character whose insatiable zest for life was greased with wacko zeal. Though at one time the most sought after short story writer of his day, and highest paid, Fitzgerald’s books sold badly, after the first, and Zelda’s spending far exceeded the paltry pittance their sales provided.

Eventually, his nerves were shot, and he wrote about it in a three part feature for Esquire magazine. His extreme candor resulted in his inability to sell any more work. He was “out of favor.” Here are the opening lines of that Esquire piece.

Of course all life is a process of breaking down, but the blows that do the dramatic side of the work -- the big sudden blows that come, or seem to come, from outside -- the ones you remember and blame things on and, in moments of weakness, tell your friends about, don’t show their effect all at once. There is another sort of blow that comes from within -- that you don’t feel until it’s too late to do anything about it, until you realize with finality that in some regard you will never be as good a man again. The first sort of breakage seems to happen quick -- the second kind happens almost without your knowing it but is realized suddenly indeed.

It was actually a three part series --“The Crack-Up,” “Pasting It Together,” and “Handle with Care”-- which was then published as a book. The irony is that several years later, that book helped restore Fitzgerald’s name as a writer of significance. But by this time he was dead.

Now my question is this. Do you believe Professor Engel is right? Is Fitzgerald worthy of being included in the short list of important American authors who will be remembered 200 years from now? Do you think Fitzgerald’s significance is overrated?

A few related questions: Where does Jack London stand in importance as an American writer? Hemingway? Sinclair Lewis? Thomas Wolfe? And who will be remembered from the second half of the twentieth century?

In closing, a description from near the end of The Great Gatsby, a summing up of what Tom and Daisy Buchanan’s lives were about. “They were careless people… they smashed up things and creatures and then retreated back into their money and their vast carelessness, or whatever it was that kept them together, and let other people clean up the mess they had made…”

Link to The Crack-Up

More facts about Fitzgerald

NOTE: The photo of the painting on the left was taken in a gallery on Madeline Island and is not an Ed Newman original.