My Life As Author And Editor by H.L. Mencken
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Nothing much to say here except how much I love Mencken’s voice.
Have 'Em Delivered
Write to the Editor
Theology That Bites Back
Theology That Bites Back
My Life As Author And Editor by H.L. Mencken
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
Nothing much to say here except how much I love Mencken’s voice.
Okay stop all these reviews, I’m running out of bookshelves !
He was a brilliant stylist, but the milk of human kindness was curdled in his veins. Whatever one thinks about the Scopes trial, his essay “Homo Neanderthalensis” was just plain mean: The popularity of Fundamentalism among the inferior orders of men is explicable in exactly the same way. The cosmogonies that educated men toy with are all inordinately complex. To comprehend their veriest outlines requires an immense stock of knowledge, and a habit of thought. It would be as vain to try to teach to peasants or to the city proletariat as it would be to try to teach them… Read more »
Ha. Old Yoghurt-blood.
From Wikipedia:
In 1931 the Arkansas legislature passed a motion to pray for Mencken’s soul after he had called the state the “apex of moronia.”[
Doug Wilson love’s Mencken’s voice. I love Doug Wilson’s voice! But the transitive does not hold in this case. As an American who (by God’s providence) is of African descent, it is difficult for me to hear Mencken when he has said elsewhere: “I admit freely enough that, by careful breeding, supervision of environment and education, extending over many generations, it might be possible to make an appreciable improvement in the stock of the American Negro, for example, but I must maintain that this enterprise would be a ridiculous waste of energy, for there is a high-caste white stock ready… Read more »