Henry Lewis Mencken was born on September 12, 1880. He was born and raised in Baltimore, Maryland. In 1899 he began writng for several local, Boston area, newspapers. Two of the more prestigious papers that he worked for were the Baltimore Herald Tribune and Baltimore Sun. Mencken was both the writer and editor of his own journal The American Mercury. He became the great satarist of American society, excluding none from his pen. When others challenged him he simply dismissed them with the admonition, "Never get into an argument with a man who buys his ink by the barrel." He satirized the American south after the Scopes Monkey trial, criticized American democracy, joked about Prohibition, challenged the place of women in society, referred sneeringly at the new American middle class as the "booboisie," and advocated free speech. He was known throughout his life as an general critic and commentator on American society. Mencken's writing was full of sarcasim and for many people his writing was difficult to understand.Mencken commented extensively on the role of women in American society. His views contrasted deeply with common notions of femininity during the Jazz age. In his 1918 book In Defense of Women, Mencken outlined his ideas about the "second sex" in a fashion that was considered then to be blatantly sexist. Mencken suffered a cerebral thrombosis in 1948, from which he never fully recovered, and died on January 29, 1956.
The Importance of Menckens Writing
Menckins writings are today seen and cherished as those of a social commentator of his times. Menckens writings were also an influential part of his society, bringing either scorn or agreement from his readers, but never their inattention. Mencken was one of the most popular political commentators of his time. His writing endures because of its wit, its crisp style, and the obvious delight he tok in creating it.
Views of Others
Gibbons Burke wrote: The most prominent newspaperman, book reviewer, and political commentator of his day, Henry Louis Mencken was a libertarian before the word came into usage. His prose is as clear as an azure sky, and his rhetoric as deadly as a rifle shot. Frequent targets of his lance were Franklin Roosevelt and New Deal politics, Comstocks, hygenists, "uplifters", social reformers of any stripe, boobs & quacks, and the insatiable American appetite for nonsense and gaudy sham. But his life was not defined by negativity. He was positively enthusiastic about to the writings of Twain and Conrad, the music of Brahms, Beethoven and Bach, and the victuals offered up by Chesapeake Bay. George Weigel a Mencken fan said,Indeed, I think it not an exaggeration to suggest that, in his maturity, Mencken-a stylist as distinctively American as Mark Twain, his first literary hero-was virtually incapable of writing a dull sentence. Even when composing a rather straightforward historical narrative like Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work, Mencken let fly with exhilarating regularity on almost every other page.
Famous Mencken Quotes
"Democracy is the theory that holds that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard." "Courtroom - A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with the betting odds favoring Judas." "Lawyer - One who protects us from robbers by taking away the temptation." "Jury - A group of 12 people, who, having lied to the judge about their health, hearing, and business engagements, have failed to fool him." "A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy crazier." "I believe it is better to tell the truth than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I believe that it is better to know than to be ignorant."
Links to other cool pages
The
Mencken collection
H.L.
Menckens Legacy
H.L.
Mencken Page
Mencken Society Homepage
Famouse Quotes