Mencken, H. L. 1880-1956

MENCKEN, H. L. 1880-1956

Critic & editor

Great Debunker

During the 1920s few Americans matched Henry L. Mencken's influence as a writer and as an independent thinker. He was the decade's great debunker, aiming ridicule at the cowardice and ignorance of what he called the "booboisee."

"The Baltimore

Anti-Christ." Mencken graduated from the Baltimore Polytechnic School and became a reporter on the Baltimore Herald in 1899. He moved to the Baltimore Sun in 1906, and was associated with the Sunpapers as editor, correspondent, and columnist ("The Free Lance") for the rest of his working life. The force of Mencken's mind and the breadth of his learning enabled him to combine journalism with simultaneous careers as magazine editor, philologist, and literary-social critic. As editor of The Smart Set and The American Mercury, as well as a prolific contributor to other journals, Mencken had a strong influence on American iconoclasm during the 1920s. He denounced puritanism, censorship, fundamentalism, political corruption, and human folly, among other targets of opportunity. His powerful jeremiads earned him the titles of "The Sage of Baltimore" and "The Baltimore Anti-Christ." Even when most actively involved in New York publishing activities he commuted from his permanent residence in Baltimore.

And Nathan

With George Jean Nathan, Mencken edited The Smart Set from 1914 to 1923 and founded The American Mercury in 1924. Nathan's primary interest was the theater, and he was much less concerned with political and philosophical ideas than Mencken; but their combined attacks on the inadequacies and absurdities of American culture, along with Mencken's Germanophilia, led their admirers to coin the slogan "Mencken, Nathan, und Gott." As a literary critic, Mencken ridiculed both popular and academic taste while promoting the work of writers he regarded as truthful and courageous: particularly Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Joseph Conrad, Arnold Bennett, Henrik Ibsen, and George Bernard Shaw. His support was crucial to the recognition of Dreiser as a major American novelist.

Prejudices and Philology

Mencken wrote more than thirty books on literature, philosophy, politics, and women, as well as autobiographies. His articles and essays were collected in six volumes correctly titled Prejudices. Mencken's major literary achievement was The American Language: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States, first published as one volume in 1919 but revised and enlarged into three volumes during the next twenty-five years. This extraordinary philological work was accomplished by a self-educated independent scholar without academic or financial support.

Courage and Independence

Never pompous or self-righteous, Mencken was at his best when declaring the emperor's nudity. His courageous positions were often expressed by means of irony and hyperbole. He destroyed many of his targets by exposing them to ridicule. A man who acted on his own convictions, Mencken was unimpressed and unintimidated by power or numbers. He opposed America's involvement in both world wars; he attacked powerful religious and political leaders; he ridiculed the cultural poverty of the hinterlands—especially the South, which he labeled "the Sahara of the Bozart" (the desert of the beaux arts); he challenged censorship and risked jail by selling a copy of a banned issue of The American Mercury on the Boston Common in 1926; he took on all comers, including Woodrow Wilson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Mencken consistently fought for American freedom, declaring that "no man can be dignified as long as he is afraid."

Hero

H. L. Mencken's reputation diminished during the 1930s and 1940s because his insistence on individualism and self-reliance was perceived as irresponsible or outdated by new generations committed to mass causes. Nonetheless, he was a culture hero in his own time; his work liberated American thought.

Sources:

Allison Bulsterbaum, H. L. Mencken: A Research Guide (New York: Garland, 1988);

William Manchester, Disturber of the Peace: The Life of H. L. Mencken (New York: Harper, 1951);

H. L. Mencken, My Life as Author and Editor (New York: Knopf, 1992).