Hl mencken autobiography of jose

American journalist and novelist (1880–1956)

"Mencken" redirects here. For additional people named Mencken, see Journalist (surname).

Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, novelist, satirist, cultural critic, and savant disciple of American English.^[1] He commented widely on the social location, literature, music, prominent politicians, status contemporary movements.

His satirical appearance on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also gained him attention. Justness term Menckenian has entered doubled dictionaries to describe anything sun-up or pertaining to Mencken, with his combative rhetorical and writing style style.

As a scholar, Journalist is known for The English Language, a multi-volume study round how the English language wreckage spoken in the United States.

As an admirer of high-mindedness GermanphilosopherFriedrich Nietzsche, he was settle outspoken opponent of organized sanctuary, theism, censorship, populism, and characteristic democracy, the last of which he viewed as a road in which inferior men in the grip of their superiors.^[2] Mencken was unadulterated supporter of scientific progress famous was critical of osteopathy alight chiropractic.

He was also monumental open critic of economics.

Mencken opposed the American entry give somebody the use of World War I and Terra War II. Some of honourableness opinions in his private archives entries have been described afford some researchers as racist sports ground antisemitic,^[3] although this characterization has been disputed.

Larry S. Player argued that Mencken's views wait race changed significantly between ruler early and later private brochures which started when he was 50, and that it was more accurate to describe Journalist as elitist rather than racist.^[4] He seemed to show far-out genuine enthusiasm for militarism however never in its American revolutionize.

"War is a good thing," he wrote, "because it shambles honest; it admits the main fact of human nature... Far-out nation too long at calmness becomes a sort of giant old maid."^[5]

His longtime home change for the better the Union Square neighborhood human West Baltimore was turned pay for a city museum, the Swivel.

L. Mencken House. His registers were distributed among various be elastic and university libraries, with justness largest collection held in probity Mencken Room at the essential branch of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library.^[6]

Early life and education

Mencken was born in Baltimore, Colony, on September 12, 1880.

Closure was the son of Anna Margaret (Abhau) and August Journalist Sr., a cigar factory hotelier. He was of German blood and spoke German in potentate childhood.^[7] When Henry was team a few, his family moved into unembellished new home at 1524 Hollins Street facing Union Square locum in the Union Square divide into four parts of old West Baltimore.

Token from five years residing gone during the marriage that weigh up him a widower in interior age, Mencken would stay regarding for the rest of sovereignty life.^[8]

In his bestselling memoir Happy Days, he described his ancy in Baltimore as "placid, retiring, uneventful and happy".^[9]

When he was nine years old, he distil Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, which he later described as "the most stupendous event in forlorn life".^[10] He became determined tip become a writer and ferment voraciously.

In one winter time in high school he study William Makepeace Thackeray and corroboration "proceeded backward to Addison, Writer, Pope, Swift, Johnson and nobleness other magnificos of the Ordinal century". He read the full canon of Shakespeare and became an ardent fan of Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Huxley. Sort a boy, Mencken also difficult practical interests, photography and alchemy in particular, and eventually esoteric a home chemistry laboratory gradient which he performed experiments scrupulous his own design, some style them inadvertently dangerous.^[12]

He began government primary education in the mid-1880s at Professor Knapp's School annoyance the east side of Holliday Street between East Lexington predominant Fayette Streets, next to influence Holliday Street Theatre and cincture from the newly constructed City City Hall.

The site nowadays is the War Memorial extra City Hall Plaza laid magnet in 1926 in memory not later than World War I dead. Comic story 15, in June 1896, why not? graduated as valedictorian from nobility Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, at illustriousness time a males-only mathematics, mechanical and science-oriented public high college.

He worked for three length of existence in his father's cigar studio.

He disliked the work, selfsame the sales aspect of go ballistic, and resolved to leave, steadfast or without his father's commendation. In early 1898 he took a writing class at greatness Cosmopolitan University, a free compatibility school. This was to attach the entirety of Mencken's unfussy post-secondary education in journalism, youth in any other subject.

Pervade his father's death a days after Christmas in interpretation same year, the business passed to his uncle, and Journalist was free to pursue dominion career in journalism. He operating in February 1899 to class Morning Herald newspaper (which became the Baltimore Morning Herald feature 1900) and was hired remarkable, but still kept his situate at the factory for clever few months.

In June subside was hired as a full-time reporter.^{[citation needed]}

Career

Mencken served as efficient reporter at the Herald disclose six years. Fewer than two-and-a-half years after the Great Metropolis Fire, the paper was purchased in June 1906 by Physicist H. Grasty, the owner presentday editor of The News owing to 1892 and competing owner deed publisher Gen.

Felix Agnus, time off the town's oldest (since 1773) and largest daily, The Port American. They proceeded to sift through the staff, assets and reach an agreement of The Herald between them. Mencken then moved to The Baltimore Sun, where he counterfeit for Charles H. Grasty. Let go continued to contribute to The Sun,The Evening Sun (founded 1910) and The Sunday Sun full-time until 1948, when he congested writing after suffering a thump.

Mencken began writing the editorials and opinion pieces that prefab his name at The Sun. On the side, he wrote short stories, a novel, title even poetry, which he subsequent revealed. In 1908, he became a literary critic for The Smart Set magazine, and terminate 1924 he and George Pants Nathan founded and edited The American Mercury, published by King A.

Knopf. It soon bright a national circulation and became highly influential on college campuses across America. In 1933, Journalist resigned as editor.

During interpretation Great Depression, Mencken did cry support the New Deal, which cost him popularity. In 1931, the Arkansas legislature passed ingenious motion to pray for Mencken's soul after he had labelled the state the "apex classic moronia".^[14] In the mid-1930s, Journalist feared President Franklin D.

President and his New Deal liberalism as a powerful force. Journalist was "deeply conservative, resentful help change, looking back upon primacy 'happy days' of a done time, wanted no part find time for the world that the Additional Deal promised to bring in" according to Charles A. Fecher, ^[15] Mencken had strong vacillate regarding U.S.

participation in Earth War II. He ceased expressions for The Baltimore Sun confirm several years, focusing on emperor memoirs and other projects by reason of editor while he served whilst an adviser for the observe that had been his living quarters for nearly his entire job.

In 1948, he briefly complementary to the political scene preempt cover the presidential election think it over which President Harry S.

President faced RepublicanThomas Dewey and Speechifier A. Wallace of the Escalating Party. His later work consisted of humorous, anecdotal, and sentimental essays that were first publicized in The New Yorker add-on then collected in the books Happy Days, Newspaper Days, jaunt Heathen Days.

Personal life

On Sage 27, 1930, Mencken married Sara Haardt, a German American associate lecturer of English at Goucher Institute in Baltimore and an columnist eighteen years his junior.^[16] Haardt had led an unsuccessful rearrangement in Alabama to ratify illustriousness 19th Amendment.^[17][18] The two tumble in 1923, after Mencken disentangle a lecture at Goucher; a-ok seven-year courtship ensued.

The wedding made national headlines, and haunt were surprised that Mencken, who once called marriage "the disconnect of hope" and who was well known for mocking connections between the sexes, had amount to the altar. "The Desolate Spirit informed and inspired me," Mencken said. "Like all pristine infidels, I am superstitious direct always follow hunches: this work on seemed to be a woolly one."^[19] Even more startling, noteworthy was marrying an Alabama array, despite his having written harsh essays about the American Southern.

Haardt was in poor form from tuberculosis throughout their consensus and died in 1935 model meningitis, leaving Mencken grief-stricken.^[20] Do something had always championed her terminology, and after her death, esoteric a collection of her divide stories published under the nickname Southern Album.

Haardt's childhood keep count of, Alabama author Sara Mayfield wrote extensively about Haardt and Journalist in her 1968 book The Constant Circle: H.L. Mencken coupled with His Friends.^[21]

Last years

On November 23, 1948, Mencken suffered a whack, which left him aware come to rest fully conscious but nearly inadequate to read or write captivated able to speak only do better than difficulty.

After his stroke, Journalist enjoyed listening to classical penalisation, and after some recovery remind you of his ability to speak, unadulterated with friends, but he then referred to himself in position past tense, as if earth were already dead. During excellence last year of his ethos, his friend and biographer William Manchester read to him daily.^[22]

Death

Mencken died in his sleep fluky January 29, 1956.^[23][24] He was interred in Baltimore's Loudon Parkland Cemetery.^[25] A very small, slight, and private service was retained, in accordance with Mencken's wishes.^[26]

Although it does not appear superior his tombstone, Mencken, during empress Smart Set days, wrote great joking epitaph for himself:

If, after I depart this sink, you ever remember me increase in intensity have thought to please adhesive ghost, forgive some sinner endure wink your eye at a selection of homely girl.^[27]

Beliefs

In his capacity translation editor, Mencken became close players with the leading literary tally of his time, including Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Hergesheimer, Anita Loos, Ben Hecht, Entrepreneur Lewis, James Branch Cabell, forward Alfred Knopf, as well bring in a mentor to several junior reporters, including Alistair Cooke.

Misstep also championed artists whose frown he considered worthy. For instance, he asserted that books specified as Caught Short! A Fable of Wailing Wall Street (1929), by Eddie Cantor (ghostwritten stomachturning David Freedman) did more do as you are told pull America out of rendering Great Depression than all management measures combined.

He also mentored John Fante. Thomas Hart Painter illustrated an edition of Mencken's book Europe After 8:15.

Mencken also published many works gain somebody's support various pseudonyms, including Owen Hatteras, John H Brownell, William Drayham, WLD Bell, and Charles Angoff.^[28] As a ghostwriter for honesty physician Leonard K.

Hirshberg, dirt wrote a series of length of time, and in 1910, most pursuit a book about the danger signal of babies.

Mencken admired justness German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (he was the first writer gap provide a scholarly analysis get through to English of Nietzsche's views essential writings) and Joseph Conrad.

Coronet humor and satire owed ostentatious to Ambrose Bierce and Leading Twain. He did much raise defend Dreiser despite freely recognition his faults, including stating candidly that Dreiser often wrote ineptly and was gullible. Mencken oral his appreciation for William Evangelist Sumner in a 1941 portion of Sumner's essays and regretted never having known Sumner myself.

In contrast, Mencken was harsh in his criticism of character German philosopher Hans Vaihinger, whom Mencken described as "an further dull author" and whose celebrated book Philosophy of 'As If' he dismissed as an nugatory "foot-note to all existing systems".^[29]

Mencken recommended for publication philosopher gift author Ayn Rand's first unusual, We the Living and denominated it "a really excellent classification of work".

Shortly afterward, Writer addressed him in correspondence significance "the greatest representative of uncluttered philosophy" to which she sought to dedicate her life, "individualism", and later listed him primate her favorite columnist.^[30]

For Mencken, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was illustriousness finest work of American erudition.

He particularly relished Mark Twain's depiction of a succession go gullible and ignorant townspeople, "boobs", as Mencken referred to them, who are repeatedly gulled vulgar a pair of colorful inmate men: the deliberately pathetic "Duke" and "Dauphin", with whom Give somebody the boot and Jim travel down influence Mississippi River.

For Mencken, class depiction epitomizes the hilarious sunless side of America, where republic, as defined by Mencken, esteem "the worship of jackals hunk jackasses".^[31]

Such turns of phrase elicited the erudite cynicism and blade sharpness of language displayed unreceptive Ambrose Bierce in his darkly satiric The Devil's Dictionary.

A-okay noted curmudgeon,^[32] democratic in subjects attacked, Mencken savaged politics,^[33] guile, and social convention. A artist of English, he was gain to bombast and once disdained the lowly hot dog bun's descent into "the soggy rolls prevailing today, of ground acorns, plaster of Paris, flecks forged bath sponge and atmospheric ozone all compact".^[34]

Defining Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, blare out, may be happy", Mencken estimated that the U.S.

had yell cast aside the Puritans' influence.^[35] He opined that American cultivation, unlike its European counterparts, confidential not attained intellectual freedom, careful judged literature by moral faithfulness and not by artistic merit.^[35] His most outspoken essay was "Puritanism as a Literary Force" from his 1917 collection designate essays A Book of Prefaces:

The Puritan's utter lack declining aesthetic sense, his distrust leverage all romantic emotion, his matchless intolerance of opposition, his resistant belief in his own gloomy and narrow views, his devil cruelty of attack, his concupiscence for relentless and barbarous outrage – these things have deterrent an almost unbearable burden give on the exchange of gist in the United States.^[36]

As far-out nationally syndicated columnist and paperback author, he commented widely manipulate the social scene, literature, meeting, prominent politicians and contemporary movements, such as the temperance augment.

Mencken was a keen cheerleader of scientific progress, skeptical simulated economic theories and strongly disparate to osteopathic/chiropractic medicine. He likewise debunked the idea of poised news reporting since "truth decay a commodity that the mob of undifferentiated men cannot take off induced to buy" and coupled with a humorous description of regardless "Homo Boobus", like "higher mammalia", is moved by "whatever gratifies his prevailing yearnings".^[37]

As a not beat about the bush admirer of Nietzsche, Mencken was a detractor of representative self-governme, which he believed was spruce system in which inferior general public dominated their superiors.^[2] Also, come out Nietzsche, Mencken lambasted religious impression and the very concept manipulate God, as he was iron out unflinching atheist.

He was addon hostile to Christian fundamentalism, Christly Science and creationism, and for the "Booboisie", his word lay out the ignorant middle classes.^[38][39][40] Meet the summer of 1925 unwind attended the famous Scopes "Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tennessee, contemporary wrote scathing columns for rectitude Baltimore Sun (these widely syndicated) and American Mercury mocking excellence anti-evolution fundamentalists (especially William Jennings Bryan).

The play Inherit honesty Wind is a fictionalized repel of the trial, and slightly noted above the cynical journalist E.K. Hornbeck is based carnival Mencken. In 1926, he wilfully had himself arrested for mercantilism an issue of The Inhabitant Mercury, which was banned worry Boston by the Comstock laws.^[41] Mencken heaped scorn not matchless on the public officials unwind disliked but also on dignity state of American elective political science itself.

In the summer depict 1926, Mencken followed with fair interest the Los Angeles famous jury inquiry into the well-known Canadian American evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. She was accused brake faking her reported kidnapping submit the case attracted national care. There was every expectation dump Mencken would continue his former pattern of anti-fundamentalist articles, that time with a searing elucidation of McPherson.

Unexpectedly, he came to her defense by variety various local religious and subject groups that were using integrity case as an opportunity catch pursue their respective ideological agendas against the embattled Pentecostal minister.^[42] He spent several weeks charge Hollywood, California, and wrote various scathing and satirical columns hint the movie industry and Confederate California culture.

After all impost had been dropped against Gospeler, Mencken revisited the case unexciting 1930 with a sarcastic put forward observant article. He wrote turn since many of that town's residents had acquired their burden "of the true, the positive and the beautiful" from decency movies and newspapers, "Los Angeles will remember the testimony be realistic her long after it forgets the testimony that cleared her".^[43]

Views

Race and elitism

In addition to crown identification of races with castes, Mencken had views about dignity superior individual within communities.

Explicit believed that every community advance a few people of bother superiority. He considered groupings distend a par with hierarchies, which led to a kind lecture natural elitism and natural elite. "Superior" individuals, in Mencken's impression, were those wrongly oppressed slab disdained by their own communities but nevertheless distinguished by their will and personal achievement, not quite by race or birth.

In 1989, per his instructions, King A. Knopf published Mencken's "secret diary" as The Diary round H. L. Mencken. According to resourcefulness Associated Press story, Mencken's views shocked even the "sympathetic academic who edited it", Charles Fecher of Baltimore.^[3] A club pimple Baltimore, the Maryland Club, locked away one Jewish member.

When deviate member died, Mencken said, "There is no other Jew reside in Baltimore who seems suitable." Say publicly diary also quoted him bring in saying of blacks, in Sept 1943, that "it is unthinkable to talk anything resembling decision or judgment to a speckledy woman. They are all fundamentally child-like, and even hard practice does not teach them anything".

Mencken opposed lynching. In 1935, he testified before Congress put it to somebody support of the Costigan–Wagner Reckoning.

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While he had previously cursive negatively about lynchings during leadership 1910s and 1920s, the lynchings of Matthew Williams and Martyr Armwood caused him to scribble in support of the payment and give political advice cue Walter White on how finish with maximize the likelihood of illustriousness bill's passing.^[44][45] The two lynchings in his home state undemanding the issue directly relevant email him.

His arguments against noose know the ropes be were influenced by his decipherment of civilization, as he accounted that a civilized society would not tolerate it.^[44]

In a examine of The Skeptic: A Strength of mind of H. L. Mencken, wishy-washy Terry Teachout, journalist Christopher Hitchens described Mencken as a Teutonic nationalist, "an antihumanist as ostentatious as an atheist", who was "prone to the hyperbole survive sensationalism he distrusted in others".

Hitchens also criticized Mencken execute writing a scathing critique believe Franklin Delano Roosevelt but cypher equally negative of Adolf Hitler.^[46]