The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken

Terry Teachout, “The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken,” Harper Collins, 2002, 349 pg.

Mencken (1880 – 1956) was very much to the 1920’s era what Samuel Clemens  (1835 – 1910), his favorite author, was to the late 1800’s.  It wasn’t always what they said that was engaging, it was how they said it--and both were self-educated.  Mencken, like Clemens, commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians and contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also gained him attention.  Prior to my reading this book, most of what I knew about Mencken came from the movie “Inherit the Wind” which had a Mencken like character in it during the Scopes trial.  He coined the term “booboisie” to describe the know-nothing, go-getting middle-class philistines of the Twenties.  Mencken claimed to take on "braggarts and mountebanks, quacks and swindlers, fools and knaves."  However, Mencken himself could occasionally be both a fool and even an occasional braggart. Yet he was always honest in his opinions, even if in error.

My Notes:

Pg. 11:  Mencken to the public at large was best known for his knockabout assaults on the manners and speech of what he called the “booboisie,” the Babbitts and Snopeses of Middle America and the South who were, after FDR, his favorite targets.  He got as good as he gave.  In 1926 some five hundred editorials about Mencken were published in American newspapers, at least four-fifths of which were unfavorable.

Pg. 69:  Mencken commenting on Henry James writing:  “Take any considerable sentence from any of his novels and examine its architecture.  Isn’t it wobbly with qualifying clauses and subassistant phrases? Doesn’t it wriggle and stumble and stagger and flounder?  Isn’t it crude, untidy, careless, bedraggled, loose, frowsy, disorderly, unkempt, uncombed, uncurried, unbrushed, unscrubbed?  Doesn’t it begin in the middle and work away from both ends” Doesn’t it often bounce along for a while and then, of a sudden, roll up its eyes and go out of business entirely?”

Pg. 90:  The two books that Mencken considered touchstones of excellence were Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn and Joseph Conrad’s Lord Jim.

Pg. 101:  Mencken appears to have been one of the first modern American newspapermen to write a signed editorial-page column in which he commented regularly on major issues of the day.  (Mencken lived in Baltimore his entire life.)

Pg. 144:  By 1919 the top income-tax rate had skyrocketed from 7 to 77 percent; the Espionage and Sedition Acts had made it illegal for Americans to utter ‘disloyal, profane, scurrilous or abusive’ words about the men who ruled them; and the manufacture, sale or transportation of intoxicating liquors had been made a criminal offense.  Mencken responded to Prohibition by selling his car and using the proceeds to purchase a large stock of wines and liquors.

Pg. 184:  What ails the general culture of the Republic is a lack of a body of sophisticated and civilized public opinion, independent of plutocratic control and superior to the infantile philosophies of the mob. 

Pg. 220:  Mencken commenting on William Jennings Bryan in Dayton, Tennessee at the Scopes trial:  ‘It was hard to believe watching him at Dayton, that he had traveled, that he had been received in civilized societies, that he had been a high officer of state.  He seemed only a poor clod like those around him, deluded by a childish theology, full of an almost pathological hatred of all learning, all human dignity, all beauty, all fine and noble things.  He was a peasant come home to the barnyard.  Imagine a gentleman, and you have imagined everything that he was not.  What animated him from end to end of his grotesque career was simply ambition—the ambition of a common man to get his hand upon the collar of his superiors, or, failing that, to get his thumb into their eyes.’

Pg. 344:  Mencken was asked, ‘If you find so much that is unworthy of reverence in the United States, then why do you live here?’  He answered, ‘Why do men go to zoos?’

Pg. 346:  For Mencken the United States was a land in which puritanism is constantly at war with hedonism (and, analogously, collectivism with individualism), and his great achievement as a social critic was to isolate and dramatize this struggle in a permanently memorable way.

Pg. 349:  “So far as I can recall I have never thrown a dead cat at a single honest and intelligent man.  My sneers and objurations have been reserved exclusively for braggarts and mountebanks, quacks and swindlers, fools and knaves.

ADDENDA:

Mencken Quotes:

Commenting on his deceased wife: “I’ll have her in mind until thought and memory adjourn.”

On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.

A judge is a law student who marks his own examination papers. 

For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.

A man may be a fool and not know it, but not if he is married.

Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.

Whenever you hear a man speak of his love for his country, it is a sign that he expects to be paid for it.

Communism, like any other revealed religion, is largely made up of prophecies.

Mark Twain Quotes:

The secret of getting ahead is getting started.

Go to Heaven for the climate, Hell for the company.

Age is an issue of mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter.

Clothes make the man. Naked people have little or no influence on society.