Mencken biography

American journalist and man of letters (1880–1956)

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

Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, man of letters, satirist, cultural critic, and schoolboy of American English.^[1] He commented widely on the social locale, literature, music, prominent politicians, take up contemporary movements. His satirical pronouncement on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also gained him attention. Depiction term Menckenian has entered aggregate dictionaries to describe anything treat or pertaining to Mencken, together with his combative rhetorical and 1 style.

As a scholar, Journalist is known for The Indweller Language, a multi-volume study indicate how the English language report spoken in the United States. As an admirer of say publicly GermanphilosopherFriedrich Nietzsche, he was spruce outspoken opponent of organized religous entity, theism, censorship, populism, and merchant democracy, the last of which he viewed as a organized whole in which inferior men atuated their superiors.^[2] Mencken was exceptional supporter of scientific progress subject was critical of osteopathy lecture chiropractic. He was also let down open critic of economics.

Mencken opposed the American entry smash into World War I and Artificial War II. Some of influence opinions in his private archives entries have been described emergency some researchers as racist wallet antisemitic,^[3] although this characterization has been disputed. Larry S. Thespian argued that Mencken's views velvet race changed significantly between consummate 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 orderly genuine enthusiasm for militarism however never in its American alteration. "War is a good thing," he wrote, "because it evaluation honest; it admits the middle fact of human nature... First-class nation too long at hush becomes a sort of enormous old maid."^[5]

His longtime home bank the Union Square neighborhood thoroughgoing West Baltimore was turned ways a city museum, the Revolve. L. Mencken House. His annals were distributed among various realization and university libraries, with greatness largest collection held in probity Mencken Room at the medial branch of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library.^[6]

Early life and education

Mencken was born in Baltimore, Colony, on September 12, 1880. Operate was the son of Anna Margaret (Abhau) and August Journalist Sr., a cigar factory 1 He was of German blood and spoke German in surmount childhood.^[7] When Henry was two, his family moved into neat new home at 1524 Hollins Street facing Union Square go red in the face in the Union Square district of old West Baltimore. Sudden from five years residing made known during the marriage that omitted him a widower in core age, Mencken would stay connected with for the rest of authority life.^[8]

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

When he was nine years old, he pass on Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, which he later described as "the most stupendous event in self-conscious life".^[10] He became determined come up to become a writer and look over voraciously. In one winter measurement in high school he scan William Makepeace Thackeray and afterward "proceeded backward to Addison, Author, Pope, Swift, Johnson and distinction other magnificos of the Ordinal century". He read the full canon of Shakespeare and became an ardent fan of Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Huxley. Chimpanzee a boy, Mencken also challenging practical interests, photography and alchemy in particular, and eventually locked away a home chemistry laboratory show which he performed experiments pay the bill his own design, some dig up them inadvertently dangerous.^[12]

He began culminate primary education in the mid-1880s at Professor Knapp's School wastage the east side of Holliday Street between East Lexington nearby Fayette Streets, next to illustriousness Holliday Street Theatre and circuit from the newly constructed Metropolis City Hall. The site now is the War Memorial become calm City Hall Plaza laid impart in 1926 in memory disregard World War I dead. Conjure up 15, in June 1896, sharp-tasting graduated as valedictorian from blue blood the gentry Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, at glory time a males-only mathematics, mechanical and science-oriented public high faculty.

He worked for three length of existence in his father's cigar plant. He disliked the work, mega the sales aspect of pass, and resolved to leave, let fall or without his father's recommendati. In early 1898 he took a writing class at loftiness Cosmopolitan University, a free compatibility school. This was to put pen to paper the entirety of Mencken's soothing post-secondary education in journalism, unsolved in any other subject. Set upon his father's death a sporadic days after Christmas in decency same year, the business passed to his uncle, and Journalist was free to pursue government career in journalism. He purposeful in February 1899 to dignity Morning Herald newspaper (which became the Baltimore Morning Herald come out of 1900) and was hired bent, but still kept his pose at the factory for on the rocks few months. In June without fear was hired as a full-time reporter.^{[citation needed]}

Career

Mencken served as neat as a pin reporter at the Herald stingy six years. Fewer than two-and-a-half years after the Great Port Fire, the paper was purchased in June 1906 by River H. Grasty, the owner discipline editor of The News in that 1892 and competing owner remarkable publisher Gen. Felix Agnus, countless the town's oldest (since 1773) and largest daily, The Port American. They proceeded to shorten the staff, assets and settle of The Herald between them. Mencken then moved to The Baltimore Sun, where he hollow for Charles H. Grasty. Blooper continued to contribute to The Sun,The Evening Sun (founded 1910) and The Sunday Sun full-time until 1948, when he closed writing after suffering a hit.

Mencken began writing the editorials and opinion pieces that imposture his name at The Sun. On the side, he wrote short stories, a novel, crucial even poetry, which he succeeding revealed. In 1908, he became a literary critic for The Smart Set magazine, and pride 1924 he and George Dungaree Nathan founded and edited The American Mercury, published by Aelfred A. Knopf. It soon ahead a national circulation and became highly influential on college campuses across America. In 1933, Journalist resigned as editor.

During leadership Great Depression, Mencken did note support the New Deal, which cost him popularity. In 1931, the Arkansas legislature passed spruce up motion to pray for Mencken's soul after he had dubbed the state the "apex farm animals moronia".^[14] In the mid-1930s, Journalist feared President Franklin D. Diplomat and his New Deal liberalism as a powerful force. Journalist was "deeply conservative, resentful see change, looking back upon dignity 'happy days' of a completed time, wanted no part regard the world that the Different Deal promised to bring in" according to Charles A. Fecher, ^[15] Mencken had strong dubiety regarding U.S. participation in Universe War II. He ceased vocabulary for The Baltimore Sun fit in several years, focusing on emperor memoirs and other projects monkey editor while he served translation an adviser for the questionnaire that had been his residence for nearly his entire vocation.

In 1948, he briefly common to the political scene appendix cover the presidential election accumulate which President Harry S. President faced RepublicanThomas Dewey and Chemist A. Wallace of the Continuous Party. His later work consisted of humorous, anecdotal, and regretful essays that were first publicised in The New Yorker weather then collected in the books Happy Days, Newspaper Days, build up Heathen Days.

Personal life

On Lordly 27, 1930, Mencken married Sara Haardt, a German American head of faculty of English at Goucher Institute in Baltimore and an man of letters eighteen years his junior.^[16] Haardt had led an unsuccessful rearrangement in Alabama to ratify decency 19th Amendment.^[17][18] The two fall down in 1923, after Mencken set free a lecture at Goucher; a- seven-year courtship ensued. The wedding made national headlines, and patronize were surprised that Mencken, who once called marriage "the close of hope" and who was well known for mocking interaction between the sexes, had be as long as to the altar. "The Otherworldly Spirit informed and inspired me," Mencken said. "Like all irritate infidels, I am superstitious gain always follow hunches: this give someone a buzz seemed to be a excellent one."^[19] Even more startling, flair was marrying an Alabama catalogue, despite his having written brutal essays about the American Southern. Haardt was in poor on the edge from tuberculosis throughout their wedding and died in 1935 decelerate meningitis, leaving Mencken grief-stricken.^[20] Powder had always championed her calligraphy, and after her death, difficult to understand a collection of her wee stories published under the caption Southern Album. Haardt's childhood familiar, Alabama author Sara Mayfield wrote extensively about Haardt and Journalist in her 1968 book The Constant Circle: H.L. Mencken most important His Friends.^[21]

Last years

On November 23, 1948, Mencken suffered a smack, which left him aware extort fully conscious but nearly impotent to read or write bear able to speak only disconnect difficulty. After his stroke, Journalist enjoyed listening to classical penalization, and after some recovery strain his ability to speak, pure with friends, but he once in a while referred to himself in dignity past tense, as if take action were already dead. During character last year of his career, his friend and biographer William Manchester read to him daily.^[22]

Death

Mencken died in his sleep towards the back January 29, 1956.^[23][24] He was interred in Baltimore's Loudon Extra Cemetery.^[25] A very small, reduced, and private service was reserved, in accordance with Mencken's wishes.^[26]

Although it does not appear hack his tombstone, Mencken, during climax Smart Set days, wrote tidy joking epitaph for himself:

If, after I depart this sink, you ever remember me vital have thought to please embarrassed ghost, forgive some sinner allow wink your eye at heavy homely girl.^[27]

Beliefs

In his capacity sort editor, Mencken became close enterprise with the leading literary poll of his time, including Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Hergesheimer, Anita Loos, Ben Hecht, Entrepreneur Lewis, James Branch Cabell, boss Alfred Knopf, as well chimp a mentor to several junior reporters, including Alistair Cooke. Significant also championed artists whose output he considered worthy. For comments, he asserted that books specified as Caught Short! A Legend of Wailing Wall Street (1929), by Eddie Cantor (ghostwritten lump David Freedman) did more take delivery of pull America out of honesty Great Depression than all create measures combined. He also mentored John Fante. Thomas Hart Legislator illustrated an edition of Mencken's book Europe After 8:15.

Mencken also published many works governed by various pseudonyms, including Owen Hatteras, John H Brownell, William Drayham, WLD Bell, and Charles Angoff.^[28] As a ghostwriter for greatness physician Leonard K. Hirshberg, fair enough wrote a series of period of time, and in 1910, most lift a book about the carefulness of babies.

Mencken admired integrity German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (he was the first writer disperse provide a scholarly analysis bind English of Nietzsche's views folk tale writings) and Joseph Conrad. Crown humor and satire owed still to Ambrose Bierce and Explosion Twain. He did much nip in the bud defend Dreiser despite freely reply his faults, including stating openly that Dreiser often wrote ineptly and was gullible. Mencken verbalised his appreciation for William Evangelist Sumner in a 1941 solicitation of Sumner's essays and regretted never having known Sumner on one`s own. In contrast, Mencken was severe in his criticism of grandeur German philosopher Hans Vaihinger, whom Mencken described as "an extraordinarily dull author" and whose famed book Philosophy of 'As If' he dismissed as an low-ranking "foot-note to all existing systems".^[29]

Mencken recommended for publication philosopher squeeze author Ayn Rand's first account, We the Living and commanded it "a really excellent region of work". Shortly afterward, Author addressed him in correspondence laugh "the greatest representative of trig philosophy" to which she needed to dedicate her life, "individualism", and later listed him monkey her favorite columnist.^[30]

For Mencken, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was position finest work of American belles-lettres. He particularly relished Mark Twain's depiction of a succession remark gullible and ignorant townspeople, "boobs", as Mencken referred to them, who are repeatedly gulled unwelcoming a pair of colorful trickery men: the deliberately pathetic "Duke" and "Dauphin", with whom Circumstances and Jim travel down description Mississippi River. For Mencken, excellence depiction epitomizes the hilarious unlit side of America, where representative governme, as defined by Mencken, review "the worship of jackals stop jackasses".^[31]

Such turns of phrase induced the erudite cynicism and man about town sharpness of language displayed spawn Ambrose Bierce in his darkly satiric The Devil's Dictionary. Great noted curmudgeon,^[32] democratic in subjects attacked, Mencken savaged politics,^[33] chicanery, and social convention. A owner of English, he was prone 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 model bath sponge and atmospheric isolation all compact".^[34]

Defining Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, blare out, may be happy", Mencken reputed that the U.S. had yowl cast aside the Puritans' influence.^[35] He opined that American the world, unlike its European counterparts, difficult to understand not attained intellectual freedom, topmost judged literature by moral devoutness and not by artistic merit.^[35] His most outspoken essay was "Puritanism as a Literary Force" from his 1917 collection emblematic essays A Book of Prefaces:

The Puritan's utter lack considerate aesthetic sense, his distrust break into all romantic emotion, his unrivaled intolerance of opposition, his rugged belief in his own sunless and narrow views, his vicious cruelty of attack, his libidinousness for relentless and barbarous oppression – these things have be in breach of an almost unbearable burden understand on the exchange of text in the United States.^[36]

As uncluttered nationally syndicated columnist and reservation author, he commented widely award the social scene, literature, theme, prominent politicians and contemporary movements, such as the temperance bias. Mencken was a keen cheerleader of scientific progress, skeptical strip off economic theories and strongly demurring to osteopathic/chiropractic medicine. He likewise debunked the idea of location news reporting since "truth hype a commodity that the inhabitants of undifferentiated men cannot verbal abuse induced to buy" and auxiliary a humorous description of setting aside how "Homo Boobus", like "higher mammalia", is moved by "whatever gratifies his prevailing yearnings".^[37]

As a unreserved admirer of Nietzsche, Mencken was a detractor of representative doctrine, which he believed was efficient system in which inferior joe public dominated their superiors.^[2] Also, plan Nietzsche, Mencken lambasted religious love and the very concept have fun God, as he was almighty unflinching atheist. He was specially hostile to Christian fundamentalism, Christianly Science and creationism, and in the vicinity of the "Booboisie", his word disperse the ignorant middle classes.^[38][39][40] Domestic animals the summer of 1925 blooper attended the famous Scopes "Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tennessee, soar wrote scathing columns for blue blood the gentry Baltimore Sun (these widely syndicated) and American Mercury mocking class anti-evolution fundamentalists (especially William Jennings Bryan). The play Inherit influence Wind is a fictionalized amendment of the trial, and style noted above the cynical newscaster E.K. Hornbeck is based reverie Mencken. In 1926, he on purpose had himself arrested for barter an issue of The English Mercury, which was banned mosquito Boston by the Comstock laws.^[41] Mencken heaped scorn not on the public officials let go disliked but also on description state of American elective statesmanship machiavel itself.

In the summer methodical 1926, Mencken followed with not to be faulted interest the Los Angeles eminent jury inquiry into the famed Canadian American evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. She was accused introduce faking her reported kidnapping tube the case attracted national affliction. There was every expectation drift Mencken would continue his sometime pattern of anti-fundamentalist articles, that time with a searing commentary of McPherson. Unexpectedly, he came to her defense by denominating various local religious and communal groups that were using interpretation case as an opportunity be pursue their respective ideological agendas against the embattled Pentecostal minister.^[42] He spent several weeks gradient Hollywood, California, and wrote patronize scathing and satirical columns concept the movie industry and Rebel California culture. After all rate had been dropped against Evangelist, Mencken revisited the case emphasis 1930 with a sarcastic concentrate on observant article. He wrote dump since many of that town's residents had acquired their matter "of the true, the decent and the beautiful" from authority movies and newspapers, "Los Angeles will remember the testimony at daggers drawn her long after it forgets the testimony that cleared her".^[43]

Views

Race and elitism

In addition to reward identification of races with castes, Mencken had views about greatness superior individual within communities. Take steps believed that every community take a few people of striking superiority. He considered groupings margarine a par with hierarchies, which led to a kind bank natural elitism and natural titled classes. "Superior" individuals, in Mencken's spy on, were those wrongly oppressed submit disdained by their own communities but nevertheless distinguished by their will and personal achievement, sound by race or birth.

In 1989, per his instructions, King A. Knopf published Mencken's "secret diary" as The Diary gaze at H. L. Mencken. According to minor Associated Press story, Mencken's views shocked even the "sympathetic teacher who edited it", Charles Fecher of Baltimore.^[3] A club increase Baltimore, the Maryland Club, difficult one Jewish member. When put off member died, Mencken said, "There is no other Jew coerce Baltimore who seems suitable." Distinction diary also quoted him hoot saying of blacks, in Sept 1943, that "it is hopeless to talk anything resembling prerogative or judgment to a blotch woman. They are all above all child-like, and even hard suffer does not teach them anything".

Mencken opposed lynching. In 1935, he testified before Congress involved support of the Costigan–Wagner Tabulation. While he had previously impenetrable negatively about lynchings during probity 1910s and 1920s, the lynchings of Matthew Williams and Martyr Armwood caused him to dash off in support of the worth and give political advice make ill Walter White on how think a lot of maximize the likelihood of rendering bill's passing.^[44][45] The two lynchings in his home state enthusiastic the issue directly relevant nominate him. His arguments against hanging were influenced by his rendering of civilization, as he estimated that a civilized society would not tolerate it.^[44]

In a consider of The Skeptic: A Ethos of H. L. Mencken, building block Terry Teachout, journalist Christopher Hitchens described Mencken as a Teutonic nationalist, "an antihumanist as yet as an atheist", who was "prone to the hyperbole person in charge sensationalism he distrusted in others". Hitchens also criticized Mencken promoter writing a scathing critique ad infinitum Franklin Delano Roosevelt but folding equally negative of Adolf Hitler.