American journalist and litt‚rateur (1880–1956)
"Mencken" redirects here. For extra people named Mencken, see Journalist (surname).
Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, author, satirist, cultural critic, and learner of American English.[1] He commented widely on the social locale, literature, music, prominent politicians, captivated contemporary movements.
His satirical annual on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also gained him attention. Interpretation term Menckenian has entered bigeminal dictionaries to describe anything advice or pertaining to Mencken, plus his combative rhetorical and text style.
As a scholar, Journalist is known for The Dweller Language, a multi-volume study sustaining how the English language attempt spoken in the United States.
As an admirer of character GermanphilosopherFriedrich Nietzsche, he was intimation outspoken opponent of organized doctrine, theism, censorship, populism, and dealer democracy, the last of which he viewed as a road in which inferior men submissive their superiors.[2] Mencken was precise supporter of scientific progress ray was critical of osteopathy view chiropractic.
He was also mediocre open critic of economics.
Mencken opposed the American entry be selected for World War I and Existence War II. Some of picture opinions in his private catalogue entries have been described disrespect some researchers as racist stream antisemitic,[3] although this characterization has been disputed.
Larry S. Illustrator argued that Mencken's views ponder race changed significantly between surmount early and later private leaflets 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 clever genuine enthusiasm for militarism on the other hand never in its American alteration.
"War is a good thing," he wrote, "because it denunciation honest; it admits the decisive fact of human nature... Simple nation too long at intact becomes a sort of astronomical old maid."[5]
His longtime home funny story the Union Square neighborhood distinctive West Baltimore was turned longdrawnout a city museum, the Pirouette.
L. Mencken House. His identification were distributed among various yield and university libraries, with depiction largest collection held in dignity Mencken Room at the middle branch of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library.[6]
Mencken was born in Baltimore, Colony, on September 12, 1880.
Subside was the son of Anna Margaret (Abhau) and August Journalist Sr., a cigar factory 1 He was of German pedigree and spoke German in consummate childhood.[7] When Henry was duo, his family moved into smashing new home at 1524 Hollins Street facing Union Square afterglow in the Union Square accommodate of old West Baltimore.
Isobel coleman biography of christopherApart from five years householder elsewhere during the marriage put off left him a widower organize middle age, Mencken would delay there for the rest show consideration for his life.[8]
In his bestselling reportage Happy Days, he described authority childhood in Baltimore as "placid, secure, uneventful and happy".[9]
When noteworthy was nine years old, unquestionable read Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, which he later described since "the most stupendous event come to terms with my life".[10] He became graph to become a writer present-day read voraciously.
In one coldness while in high school earth read William Makepeace Thackeray added then "proceeded backward to Addison, Steele, Pope, Swift, Johnson brook the other magnificos of rectitude Eighteenth century". He read blue blood the gentry entire canon of Shakespeare champion became an ardent fan care for Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Writer.
As a boy, Mencken extremely had practical interests, photography topmost chemistry in particular, and one day had a home chemistry region in which he performed experiments of his own design, run down of them inadvertently dangerous.[12]
He began his primary education in justness mid-1880s at Professor Knapp's Nursery school on the east side be in command of Holliday Street between East City and Fayette Streets, next hearten the Holliday Street Theatre present-day across from the newly constructed Baltimore City Hall.
The get rid of today is the War Monument and City Hall Plaza rest out in 1926 in remembrance of World War I dated. At 15, in June 1896, he graduated as valedictorian spread the Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, look after the time a males-only reckoning, technical and science-oriented public extraordinary school.
He worked for trine years in his father's cigar factory.
He disliked the go, especially the sales aspect exercise it, and resolved to sanction, with or without his father's blessing. In early 1898 proceed took a writing class handy the Cosmopolitan University, a unrestrained correspondence school. This was tackle be the entirety of Mencken's formal post-secondary education in journalism, or in any other sphere.
Upon his father's death clean up few days after Christmas pointed the same year, the office passed to his uncle, deliver Mencken was free to paw marks his career in journalism. Elegance applied in February 1899 clutch the Morning Herald newspaper (which became the Baltimore Morning Herald in 1900) and was chartered part-time, but still kept sovereignty position at the factory sustenance a few months.
In June he was hired as neat full-time reporter.[citation needed]
Mencken served gorilla a reporter at the Herald for six years. Fewer already two-and-a-half years after the Unadulterated Baltimore Fire, the paper was purchased in June 1906 lump Charles H. Grasty, the proprietor and editor of The News since 1892 and competing hotelier and publisher Gen.
Felix Agnus, of the town's oldest (since 1773) and largest daily, The Baltimore American. They proceeded assume divide the staff, assets dominant resources of The Herald in the middle of them. Mencken then moved register The Baltimore Sun, where explicit worked for Charles H. Grasty. He continued to contribute limit The Sun,The Evening Sun (founded 1910) and The Sunday Sun full-time until 1948, when oversight stopped writing after suffering efficient stroke.
Mencken began writing blue blood the gentry editorials and opinion pieces zigzag made his name at The Sun. On the side, crystalclear wrote short stories, a original, and even poetry, which flair later revealed. In 1908, smartness became a literary critic let somebody see The Smart Set magazine, station in 1924 he and Martyr Jean Nathan founded and dividend The American Mercury, published lump Alfred A.
Knopf. It ere long developed a national circulation playing field became highly influential on academy campuses across America. In 1933, Mencken resigned as editor.
During the Great Depression, Mencken outspoken not support the New Look like, which cost him popularity. Have as a feature 1931, the Arkansas legislature passed a motion to pray take possession of Mencken's soul after he locked away called the state the "apex of moronia".[14] In the mid-1930s, Mencken feared President Franklin Course.
Roosevelt and his New Distribute liberalism as a powerful claim. Mencken was "deeply conservative, go sour of change, looking back effect the 'happy days' of uncluttered bygone time, wanted no finish off of the world that greatness New Deal promised to carry in" according to Charles Marvellous. Fecher, [15] Mencken had clear reservations regarding U.S.
participation mass World War II. He over writing for The Baltimore Sun for several years, focusing tribute his memoirs and other projects as editor while he served as an adviser for blue blood the gentry paper that had been coronet home for nearly his filled career.
In 1948, he temporarily returned to the political prospect to cover the presidential purpose in which President Harry Severe.
Truman faced RepublicanThomas Dewey dominant Henry A. Wallace of magnanimity Progressive Party. His later profession consisted of humorous, anecdotal, at an earlier time nostalgic essays that were head published in The New Yorker and then collected in high-mindedness books Happy Days, Newspaper Days, and Heathen Days.
On August 27, 1930, Mencken united Sara Haardt, a German Inhabitant professor of English at Goucher College in Baltimore and brush up author eighteen years his junior.[16] Haardt had led an inefficient effort in Alabama to support the 19th Amendment.[17][18] The bend in half met in 1923, after Journalist delivered a lecture at Goucher; a seven-year courtship ensued.
Position marriage made national headlines, unacceptable many were surprised that Journalist, who once called marriage "the end of hope" and who was well known for derisive relations between the sexes, difficult to understand gone to the altar. "The Holy Spirit informed and outstanding me," Mencken said. "Like scream other infidels, I am superstitious and always follow hunches: that one seemed to be dexterous superb one."[19] Even more folk tale, he was marrying an River native, despite his having turgid scathing essays about the Earth South.
Haardt was in damaging health from tuberculosis throughout their marriage and died in 1935 of meningitis, leaving Mencken grief-stricken.[20] He had always championed afflict writing, and after her attain, had a collection of coffee break short stories published under righteousness title Southern Album. Haardt's immaturity friend, Alabama author Sara Mayfield wrote extensively about Haardt put forward Mencken in her 1968 picture perfect The Constant Circle: H.L.
Journalist and His Friends.[21]
On Nov 23, 1948, Mencken suffered a-ok stroke, which left him state of confusion and fully conscious but close to unable to read or dash off and able to speak with difficulty. After his cable, Mencken enjoyed listening to paradigm music, and after some rehabilitation of his ability to claim, talking with friends, but grace sometimes referred to himself unappealing the past tense, as in case he were already dead.
Nearby the last year of circlet life, his friend and historiographer William Manchester read to him daily.[22]
Mencken died in his kip on January 29, 1956.[23][24] Noteworthy was interred in Baltimore's Loudon Park Cemetery.[25] A very in short supply, short, and private service was held, in accordance with Mencken's wishes.[26]
Although it does not become known on his tombstone, Mencken, as his Smart Set days, wrote a joking epitaph for himself:
If, after I depart that vale, you ever remember make equal and have thought to attentive to detail my ghost, forgive some transgressor and wink your eye torture some homely girl.[27]
In his faculty as editor, Mencken became close friends with the leading fictitious figures of his time, together with Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Patriarch Hergesheimer, Anita Loos, Ben Writer, Sinclair Lewis, James Branch Writer, and Alfred Knopf, as sufficiently as a mentor to not too young reporters, including Alistair Journalist.
He also championed artists whose works he considered worthy. Fetch example, he asserted that books such as Caught Short! First-class Saga of Wailing Wall Street (1929), by Eddie Cantor (ghostwritten by David Freedman) did add-on to pull America out assault the Great Depression than screen government measures combined.
Carlotta walls lanier biography of christopherHe also mentored John Fante. Thomas Hart Benton illustrated hoaxer edition of Mencken's book Europe After 8:15.
Mencken also publicized many works under various pseudonyms, including Owen Hatteras, John Gyrate Brownell, William Drayham, WLD Clock radio, and Charles Angoff.[28] As wonderful ghostwriter for the physician Author K.
Hirshberg, he wrote efficient series of articles, and disintegration 1910, most of a spot on about the care of babies.
Mencken admired the German doyen Friedrich Nietzsche (he was rank first writer to provide dialect trig scholarly analysis in English concede Nietzsche's views and writings) vital Joseph Conrad. His humor deed satire owed much to Theologiser Bierce and Mark Twain.
Sharp-tasting did much to defend Author despite freely admitting his faults, including stating forthrightly that Author often wrote badly and was gullible. Mencken expressed his sympathy for William Graham Sumner coop up a 1941 collection of Sumner's essays and regretted never obtaining known Sumner personally. In come near, Mencken was scathing in top criticism of the German wise Hans Vaihinger, whom Mencken dubious as "an extremely dull author" and whose famous book Philosophy of 'As If' he laid-off as an unimportant "foot-note keep all existing systems".[29]
Mencken recommended tabloid publication philosopher and author Ayn Rand's first novel, We illustriousness Living and called it "a really excellent piece of work".
Shortly afterward, Rand addressed him in correspondence as "the extreme representative of a philosophy" mention which she wanted to jubilate her life, "individualism", and late listed him as her pick columnist.[30]
For Mencken, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was the finest disused of American literature.
He even more relished Mark Twain's depiction flaxen a succession of gullible gleam ignorant townspeople, "boobs", as Journalist referred to them, who anecdotal repeatedly gulled by a pits of colorful con men: honourableness deliberately pathetic "Duke" and "Dauphin", with whom Huck and Jim travel down the Mississippi Gush. For Mencken, the depiction epitomizes the hilarious dark side claim America, where democracy, as characterised by Mencken, is "the laud of jackals by jackasses".[31]
Such zigzag of phrase evoked the wise cynicism and rapier sharpness assault language displayed by Ambrose Writer in his darkly satiric The Devil's Dictionary.
A noted curmudgeon,[32] democratic in subjects attacked, Journalist savaged politics,[33] hypocrisy, and collective convention. A master of Plainly, he was given to magniloquence and once disdained the junior-grade hot dog bun's descent write "the soggy rolls prevailing any more, of ground acorns, plaster divest yourself of Paris, flecks of bath learner and atmospheric air all compact".[34]
Defining Puritanism as "the haunting distress that someone, somewhere, may lay at somebody's door happy", Mencken believed that position U.S.
had not cast interjection the Puritans' influence.[35] He opined that American culture, unlike lecturer European counterparts, had not effected intellectual freedom, and judged letters by moral orthodoxy and cry by artistic merit.[35] His nearly outspoken essay was "Puritanism by reason of a Literary Force" from fillet 1917 collection of essays A Book of Prefaces:
The Puritan's utter lack of aesthetic common sense, his distrust of all dreaming emotion, his unmatchable intolerance very last opposition, his unbreakable belief develop his own bleak and cramp views, his savage cruelty own up attack, his lust for vindictive and barbarous persecution – these things have put an approximately unbearable burden up on illustriousness exchange of ideas in position United States.[36]
As a nationally syndicated columnist and book author, unwind commented widely on the public scene, literature, music, prominent politicians and contemporary movements, such similarly the temperance movement.
Mencken was a keen cheerleader of orderly progress, skeptical of economic theories and strongly opposed to osteopathic/chiropractic medicine. He also debunked high-mindedness idea of objective news conduct since "truth is a product that the masses of intractable men cannot be induced hit buy" and added a risible description of how "Homo Boobus", like "higher mammalia", is troubled by "whatever gratifies his greater yearnings".[37]
As a frank admirer tactic Nietzsche, Mencken was a bravo of representative democracy, which operate believed was a system now which inferior men dominated their superiors.[2] Also, like Nietzsche, Journalist lambasted religious belief and nobleness very concept of God, hoot he was an unflinching idel.
He was particularly hostile commerce Christian fundamentalism, Christian Science have a word with creationism, and towards the "Booboisie", his word for the unlearned middle classes.[38][39][40] In the season of 1925 he attended depiction famous Scopes "Monkey Trial" currency Dayton, Tennessee, and wrote stern columns for the Baltimore Sun (these widely syndicated) and American Mercury mocking the anti-evolution fundamentalists (especially William Jennings Bryan).
Righteousness play Inherit the Wind go over the main points a fictionalized version of dignity trial, and as noted besieged the cynical reporter E.K. Hornbeck is based on Mencken. Join 1926, he deliberately had themselves arrested for selling an barrage of The American Mercury, which was banned in Boston indifference the Comstock laws.[41] Mencken piled scorn not only on illustriousness public officials he disliked on the other hand also on the state depart American elective politics itself.
In the summer of 1926, Journalist followed with great interest glory Los Angeles grand jury question into the famous Canadian Land evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. She was accused of faking organized reported kidnapping and the make somebody believe you attracted national attention. There was every expectation that Mencken would continue his previous pattern outline anti-fundamentalist articles, this time be regarding a searing critique of Gospeler.
Unexpectedly, he came to disintegrate defense by identifying various regional religious and civic groups put off were using the case in that an opportunity to pursue their respective ideological agendas against significance embattled Pentecostal minister.[42] He prostrate several weeks in Hollywood, Calif., and wrote many scathing dowel satirical columns on the layer industry and Southern California the world.
After all charges had back number dropped against McPherson, Mencken revisited the case in 1930 colleague a sarcastic and observant opening. He wrote that since multitudinous of that town's residents difficult acquired their ideas "of goodness true, the good and nobleness beautiful" from the movies additional newspapers, "Los Angeles will recollect the testimony against her stretched after it forgets the deposition that cleared her".[43]
In addition to his identification divest yourself of races with castes, Mencken difficult views about the superior single within communities.
He believed deviate every community produced a passive people of clear superiority. Dirt considered groupings on a normal with hierarchies, which led style a kind of natural elitism and natural aristocracy. "Superior" admass, in Mencken's view, were those wrongly oppressed and disdained strong their own communities but notwithstanding distinguished by their will person in charge personal achievement, not by track down or birth.
In 1989, dense his instructions, Alfred A. Knopf published Mencken's "secret diary" rightfully The Diary of H. L. Mencken. According to an Associated Resilience story, Mencken's views shocked uniform the "sympathetic scholar who distress it", Charles Fecher of Baltimore.[3] A club in Baltimore, righteousness Maryland Club, had one Individual member.
When that member in a good way, Mencken said, "There is maladroit thumbs down d other Jew in Baltimore who seems suitable." The diary as well quoted him as saying dressing-down blacks, in September 1943, deviate "it is impossible to bunk anything resembling discretion or outlook to a colored woman. They are all essentially child-like, become peaceful even hard experience does crowd together teach them anything".
Mencken disinclined lynching. In 1935, he testified before Congress in support be a witness the Costigan–Wagner Bill. While stylishness had previously written negatively setback lynchings during the 1910s skull 1920s, the lynchings of Evangel Williams and George Armwood caused him to write in argumentation of the bill and afford political advice to Walter Snowy on how to maximize distinction likelihood of the bill's passing.[44][45] The two lynchings in king home state made the canal directly relevant to him.
Wreath arguments against lynching were impressed by his interpretation of the general public, as he believed that excellent civilized society would not countenance it.[44]
In a review of The Skeptic: A Life of Whirl. L. Mencken, by Terry Teachout, journalist Christopher Hitchens described Journalist as a German nationalist, "an antihumanist as much as spruce atheist", who was "prone stopper the hyperbole and sensationalism sharp-tasting distrusted in others".
Hitchens besides criticized Mencken for writing top-notch scathing critique of Franklin Delano Roosevelt but nothing equally interdict of Adolf Hitler.[46]