Talk:H. L. Mencken/Archive 2

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

The section 'Style'

is particularly bad with respect to POV and original research. It reads as if it was written by a Mencken wanna-be who doesn't understand the difference between encyclopedic writing and opinion journalism. Someone please help in fixing it. Even removing it wholesale might be an improvement.radek (talk) 07:24, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I've removed it entirely -- it appears to be a complete rip-off of this website. I have my suspicions about some of the rest of the article as well, and will look into it when I have some time. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^(talk/cont) 07:40, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

OK. The same IP address User:18.214.1.149 that put in practically the entire "Style" section on April 29, 2005 [1] also some weeks earlier put the bulk of the "Race" section in as well, so that section must be suspect. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^(talk/cont) 07:56, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Someone please check me out on this, but it appears to me that for the most part, the material that was inserted wholesale on April 9, 2005 [2] to become the "Race issues" section has been to a large extent edited to become an almost entirely different piece, so I'm not going to remove it -- but I am going there now to try to clean it up and strip out anything that smacks of duplicated material. Feel free to add back in anything that I take out that I shouldn't have. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^(talk/cont) 08:03, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Alright, I've changed my mind. As I worked on it and compared it to the material originally entered by the IP address above, about 2/3rds of it (at least) turned out to be only thinly re-worked, so I removed it as well.

I don't think that article necessarily needs a section about Mencken's style -- a paragraph or so should be sufficient -- but certainly the question of Mencken's attitudes about race issues ought to be covered. Unfortunately, I'm not up to that task, since copyediting is more my forte, and it's been a long time since I last read up on Mencken in any depth. I'll post both the race section and the style section below, as a reference for anyone who wishes to work on new versions. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^(talk/cont) 08:12, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Incidentally, if I'm wrong in my judgments about this material, I apologize in advance -- but I've removed the material in good faith that it's been appropriated from elsewhere. Feel free to overturn my actions if warranted. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^(talk/cont) 08:26, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

The removed "race" section

I removed the following section for suspicion that it was copied wholesale from another source, and then subjected to 2 1/2 years of Wiki-editing. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^(talk/cont) 08:15, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Race

While Mencken's essays are sprinkled liberally with racial epithets ("blackamoor," "niggero," "coon," "prehensile kikes") Mencken considered the African-American intellectual George Schuyler to be a life-long friend — rare in any case, considering Mencken's infamous capacity for personal criticism. On the other hand, while Mencken was fair to individuals, he was deeply negative in regard to social groups and other groupings of people, and ethnic groups were no exception.

Mencken's The Negro as Author began as a straightforward critique of a fictional work of a black author writing with racial themes as a focus:

"The Shadow, by Mary White Ovington, is a bad novel, but it is interesting as a first attempt by a colored writer to plunge into fiction in the grand manner."

In fact Mary White Ovington was not "colored," as Mencken conveniently pretends not to know. He instead uses this omission as a means to single out her work as an example of sympathetic, liberal-esque anti-racist activism (among educated whites) which in the end only turned out bad writing that undercut the public image of genuine emerging black authors. Within this humorous context, Mencken then commented positively on the future of black writing:

"The thing we need is a realistic picture of this inner life of the negro by one who sees the race from within--a self portrait as vivid and accurate as Dostoyevsky's portrait of the Russian or Thackeray's of the Englishman. The action should be kept within the normal range of negro experience. it should extend over a long enough range of years to show some development in character and circumstance. It should be presented against a background made vivid by innumerable small details."

In his legendary salvo against Southern American culture, "The Sahara of the Bozart" ("Bozart" being a mock misspelling of "Beaux-Arts"), Mencken argued that the whole Confederate region fell into cultureless savagery and backwardness after the Civil War — with the exception of the African-American community. In what was an audacious (and seriously intended) argument, Mencken claimed Southern blacks were actually the heirs and descendants of the talented aristocrats — by way of African-American mistresses of Caucasian men. Further Mencken opined that this community was the only site of cultural vitality or activity whatsoever, in spite of being hindered by the barbaric oppression of a culture that condoned and enforced Jim Crow laws and still tacitly sanctioned lynching.

Scruggs's The Sage in Harlem is the most authoritative work on Mencken's influence on and support of African-American intellectuals is. As the editor and main creative force behind The American Mercury, Mencken published more black authors than any other mainstream American outlet of that day. Articles by African-Americans ranged from a Pullman porter's account of life in that occupation to sophisticated articles by important black thinkers.

The removed "style" section

This material was copied pretty much lock stock and barrel from another source: http://biographylist.com/henry-mencken/unsurpassed-style. Ed Fitzgerald (unfutz) ^(talk/cont) 08:23, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

==Style==

Mencken's greatest contribution to American letters is arguably his humor and satire. Much influenced by Mark Twain and Jonathan Swift, Mencken believed the lampoon was more powerful than the lament; his hilariously overwrought indictments of nearly every subject (including more than a few that were unmentionable in polite company at the time) are certainly worth reading for their superb prose style.

His style proved quite influential. For example, in his autobiographical Black Boy, the Afro-American author Richard Wright described the power of Mencken's technique, and how his discovery of Mencken would inspire him to become a writer himself. Wright recalled his reaction to A Book of Prefaces and to one of the volumes of the Prejudices series as follows:

"I was jarred and shocked by the clear, clean, sweeping sentences ... Why did he write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen ... denouncing everything American ... laughing ... mocking God, authority ... This man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club ... I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it." (Quoted in Scruggs, p. 1)

In his classic essay "On Being an American" (published in his Prejudices: Third Series), Mencken fires a salvo at American myths. The following choice quote displays his amusing take on why the United States is the "Land of Opportunity", and segues into a laundry-list of national pathologies as he sees them:

"Here the business of getting a living ... is enormously easier than it is in any other Christian land—so easy, in fact, that an educated and forehanded man who fails at it must actually make deliberate efforts to that end. Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head, and is thrown willy-nilly into a meager and exclusive aristocracy. And here, more than anywhere else I know of or have heard of, the daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly—the unending procession of governmental extortions and chicaneries, of commercial brigandages and throat-slittings, of theological buffooneries, of aesthetic ribaldries, of legal swindles and harlotries, of miscellaneous rogueries, villainies, imbecilities, grotesqueries and extravagances—is so inordinately gross and preposterous, so perfectly brought up to the highest conceivable amperage, so steadily enriched with an almost fabulous daring and originality, that only the man who was born with a petrified diaphragm can fail to laugh himself to sleep every night, and to awake every morning with all the eager, unflagging expectation of a Sunday-school superintendent touring the Paris peep-shows."

Whether the reader agrees with Mencken or finds him infuriatingly coarse and incorrect, all can observe his technique with profit; it is rare in contemporary discourse. The criticisms he poses are nearly the same as those of famous literary expatriates including Richard Wright, Ernest Hemingway, and F. Scott Fitzgerald; the injustices (or at least incongruities) are the same ones fought by the muckraker journalists of his day, such as Lincoln Steffens and Ida Tarbell. However, instead of decrying the "daily panorama of human existence, of private and communal folly" and calling for reform or improvement, Mencken says he is "entertained" by them. On its face, this approach displays a crass indifference and total lack of compassion; Mencken admitted as much, as it was part of his personal philosophy: a kind of fierce libertarianism inspired by a Nietzschean contempt for the "improvers of mankind", a social Darwinist outlook derived from Herbert Spencer and William Graham Sumner, and a "Tory" elitism.

The power of satire comes from the transformation of enemies and villains into a source of entertainment; they are reduced from powerful people to be contended with into farcical creatures deserving of mockery. Black journalist and Mencken contemporary James Weldon Johnson celebrated this technique as a way of fighting racism without stooping to the level of Jim Crow enforcers and the Ku Klux Klan:

"Mr. Mencken's favorite method of showing people the truth is to attack falsehood with ridicule. He shatters the walls of foolish pride and prejudice and hypocrisy merely by laughing at them; and he is more effective against them than most writers who hurl heavily loaded shells of protest and imprecation.

"What could be more disconcerting and overwhelming to a man posing as everybody's superior than to find that everybody was laughing at his pretensions? Protest would only swell up his self-importance." (quoted in Scruggs, p. 57)

In his "On Being an American," Mencken called the United States "... incomparably the best show on Earth..."; he clearly took joy in covering religious controversies, political conventions, and unearthing new "quackeries" (among his favorite targets are the Baptist and Methodist churches, Christian Science, Chiropractics, and most of all, Puritanism, which he defined as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, might be happy"). Although he attacked every President of the United States who served during the years of his career as a writer and critic, from Taft to Truman, Mencken reserved a special ire for his attacks on Woodrow Wilson, whose administration he saw as epitomizing the moralistic, puritanical impulses of American life. Mencken's snipes at Wilson resulted in Mencken being singled out by the Bureau of Investigation (the predecessor of the FBI) and other law enforcement agencies as a potential subversive during Wilson's administration.

One of the disadvantages of slashing satire is that it does only that: slash. Alfred Kazin called Mencken's criticisms impotent since "Every Babbitt read him gleefully and pronounced his neighbor a Babbitt" -- they permitted a circular firing squad of self-righteous viciousness. ("Babbitt" is a now-rare epithet derived from the Sinclair Lewis book of the same name; it can be loosely defined as an uncultured, "square", typically middle-aged and middle-class businessman characterized by timidity and ignorance of their philistinism. It is a very similar concept to the more commonly used German terms Spiesser and Spiessbürger.) Critics must walk a thin line between declaring "The Emperor has no clothes" (a fine service to all), and going too far by furiously tearing the clothes off of undeserving bystanders. Mencken tended to go too far as matter-of-course; consequently he was the first to say what needed to be said in his criticisms of lynching, World War I-era civil liberties abuses, and especially the dismally moral and philistine American arts. On the other hand, this extremism left him with a body of work filled with unsubtle reviews of the subtle and scores of openly vicious statements about all ethnicities.

This viciousness was summed up in the play Inherit the Wind, a fictionalized version of the Scopes Monkey Trial. As the story ends, the protagonist tells Hornbeck (the character representing Mencken):

"You never push a noun against a verb without trying to blow up something."

Mencken's attacks on Wilson should be mentioned in the article, as his anti-Wilson pieces are amongst the finest examples of his writing and some of the most devastating and well-written attack pieces on a sitting American president ever. The article does mention Mencken's criticisms of FDR, but it fails to mention that one of Mencken's major reasons for attacking FDR was because he saw Roosevelt as a new Wilson and was troubled at the number of veterans of the Wilson administration (including Roosevelt himself) who occupied positions in the Roosevelt administration. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.118.48.157 (talk) 09:46, 1 March 2009 (UTC)

Newspaper Days

I am astonished at the lack of attention given to the autobiography, esp. Newspaper Days, surely one of the finest expositions of the newspaper game of that or any other time (Mencken would snort if I called it Journalism). This must be corrected, and I plan to do so. You have Franklin, H. Addams and Mencken in autobiography- another area that must be corrected, as no one with a sense of humor could read the three volumes and dislike the man or fail to be fascinated by the times. Any assistance in these areas greatly appreciated. Magilla3 (talk) 22:48, 21 March 2008 (UTC)

Picture caption is incorrect

It should be "right" and "right" or "left" and "left". The caption makes it seem like there should be a third person in the picture. Also, the phrase "seen here in the film played by Gene Kelly," is a misplaced modifier. Gene Kelly didn't play "the film", he played Mencken. --210.170.97.50 (talk) 14:33, 14 May 2008 (UTC)Kevin

Contradiction

...between Haardt's death and the 1948 stroke which left him aware and fully conscious but unable to read or write, Mencken's main intellectual activity, other than writing occasional pieces for the Baltimore papers, was his research on the American language and writing his memoirs. These took the form of humorous, anecdotal, and nostalgic essays, first published in the New Yorker, then collected in the books Happy Days, Newspaper Days, and Heathen Days.

As a reader pointed out to me via email, this appears to be a blatant contradiction. Does anyone know which part is incorrect? The history of the article did not lead to an obvious conclusion (eg. recent vandalism). Thanks, Daniel (talk) 09:04, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Could you clarify what is contradictory? As I understand, between 1935-1948 he wrote his memoirs, which took the form of anecdotal nostalgic essays. He certainly didn't write anything after the stroke. Merzul (talk) 22:37, 25 May 2008 (UTC)

Did you perhaps misread "between Haardt's death and the 1948 stroke" as "between his death and the 1948 stroke"? Otherwise I can't see where you think the contradiction is. Olaf Davis | Talk 12:20, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

There is a clear contradiction in the assertion that after his stroke he was unable to speak but enjoyed talking to his friends. How could this have been? Could someone resolve this? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.150.133.183 (talk) 21:37, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

1934 FDR Gridiron Club Incident?

The upcoming NYT Magazine article on Rush Limbaugh compares an incident in the 1990s when Bill Clinton made a disparaging comment about Rush Limbaugh at the annual White House Correspondents Dinner to an incident in 1934 when FDR made some acerbic comments about Mencken at the Gridiron Club dinner. Anyone know what that was about? Perhaps it should be incorporated into an expanded section in the article about Mencken's political views during this period. Tom Cod (talk) 19:14, 2 July 2008 (UTC)

Bringing in modern asides that happened after Mencken's lifetime doesn't seem appropriate at all. So what if someone thought it was Mencken-like, it's a tangent that doesn't belong. JettaMann (talk) 15:34, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Terry Teachout, in his biography, The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken recounts the event, where FDR exacted revenge on Mencken by using an essay Mencken had written years back where he lambasted the idiocy of journalists. There were many journalists present at the dinner and Mencken was seething afterwards. Teachout cites this event as being the point where Mencken's slowly-acquired fame began to wane, though much great work was to come from Mencken, as he briliantly illustrates throughout the book. 90.198.218.254 (talk) 22:46, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

"On the other hand" type of wording

It seems like someone is trying to analyze Mencken with original research, such as this: "On the other hand, it may be more correct to view his remarks on Jews as simply symptomatic of his generally critical, elitist posture--especially keeping in mind his actual public positions on matters of desperate importance to Jews generally." This statement isn't referenced at all and seems like someone's opinion. Shouldn't this material be either reworded to be more absolutely factual or removed? I don't mind the follow-up statement that is accredited to Gore Vidal, though. JettaMann (talk) 15:32, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

qootes?

Mencken said or wrote many quotable things. My personal favorite is referring to golf as "witless gyrations." Quotable people should have a "quotations" section. Most of his work should have exhuasted copyright by now.02:32, 17 August 2008 (UTC)Dugong.is.good.tucker (talk) 02:37, 17 August 2008 (UTC)

Agnosticism

I notice that Atheism is listed under religious beliefs. However, I believe Mencken was an agnostic. I've seen debate on this before, so I don't want to change it unless there is a consensus.Our enemy, the state (talk) 01:54, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Jews

The "Jews" section is ridiculously long, and obviously based on the shrieky, hysterical contemporary moralistic views on race. Mencken would have found this really funny. I think there's literally just a handful of passages, withins millions of words, pertaining to Jews, whom he essentially regards as smart and capable, but interpersonally annoying, like Larry David or something, which Jewish comedians have been making jokes out of forever. It's retarded to have such a long bit just because a few sentences hit the modern Victorian moral panic buttons. Thanks, "scholars." In fact, the worldwide hatred of Jews just shows Mencken was a number of generations too soon...successful Jewish people are hated by idiots because they are successful and capable. A really intelligent person registers like a slap in the face to morons...a concept nobody articulated as clearly as H.L. Mencken. He's the first guy to properly explain anti-semitism in humans. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.201.180.85 (talk) 03:02, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

I could be wrong here, but my take on why Larry David is annoying has less to do with the fact that he is Jewish and more with the idea that his personality is rooted in the East Coast of the United States, particularly the Culture of New York City. There is somewhat of a celebration of the idea of the "most annoying New Yorker", so it seems to me to be part of the fabric of the town. Viriditas (talk) 03:30, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

"Preoccupied as he was with how he would be perceived after his death, he organized his papers, letters, newspaper clippings and columns, even grade school report cards, despite being unable to read." Surely this is wrong about Mencken not being literate! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.168.76.6 (talk) 12:07, 29 January 2009 (UTC)

Something needs to be done with this section, as it is out of proportion to the rest of his biography. A short-term solution is to move some of the quotes to footnotes. That would cut the size of the section in half right away. Viriditas (talk) 03:14, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I cut some of it down. FWIW, "The case against the Jews is long and damning; it would justify ten thousand times as many pogroms as now go on in the world," while a funny line, isn't quite Larry David-level funny, is it? IronDuke 03:35, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for helping, but it's still a quote farm. If you remove all the quotes, this is what you are left with:

Mencken occasionally made antisemitic statements, such as in his introduction to Nietzsche's The Antichrist. Mencken had a favorable attitude toward the "Judaized" plutocracy as compared to the "Christianized" democrats and proletarians, whom he held in bitter contempt. Although Mencken idealized German culture and Nietzsche and may have inherited racial and antisemitic attitudes common in late 19th-century Germany, he came to view Hitler as a buffoon, and once compared him to a common Ku Klux Klan member. However, in Treatise on the Gods (1930), Mencken attacked the Jews, arguing that they could be considered "the most unpleasant race ever heard of". Writer Gore Vidal defended Mencken's legacy, noting he was one of the first journalists to come out against the persecution of the Jews by the Nazis. As Hitler menaced Europe, Mencken attacked President Roosevelt for refusing to admit Jewish refugees into the United States. Nevertheless, Terry Teachout calls Mencken an "anti-Semitic boor."

That's just an example. We could move the long quotes into footnotes or keep one or two inline, but there are just too many right now. I'm not sure of the importance of Terry Teachout, either. It is too easy to call people names without analyzing their body of work. Is Mencken really considered a boor? That doesn't sound accurate. Viriditas (talk) 03:47, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

I don't think moving all the quotes would be a good idea. Might as well just delete them, really, for the number of people who will see them. I think it's fair to say Mencken made some boorish statements. That's what our RS says, anyway -- and yes, Teachout most definitely counts. IronDuke 03:49, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

What's the context? Has Teachout studied Mencken? I'm curious, did any one of Mencken's contemporaries come out in favor of helping and protecting the Jews like he did, at that time? Viriditas (talk) 03:52, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Has he studied Mencken? I'm not sure I follow -- he wrote a book about him and disocovered some of his papers, which he edited, I believe. And as for Mencken's defense of German Jewish refugees, indeed there's no denying it; that's why we mention it in the article. IronDuke 13:17, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

There's no need for a quote farm, and all the quotes should be reduced to short, inline paraphrases, moved to footnotes, or cut back. Encyclopedic writing tends to be prose-based, and the current section doesn't work. As for Teachout's quote, you haven't represented it accurately. You can see it here. The statement, "Nevertheless, Terry Teachout calls Mencken an 'anti-Semitic boor'" is inaccurate. Viriditas (talk) 02:08, 29 October 2009 (UTC)

I think the section is too long, but mostly because the rest of the bio is too short. I agree that the statements could be summarized, and most of the quotations included in the footnotes, though I wouldn't remove every single one from the text. Perhaps one illustrative anti-Jewish quotation in the text, and the final one where he argues the U.S. should take all Jewish Nazi refugees. Jayjg ^(talk) 00:28, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

That would work, but if Mencken criticized all religions (or some) in an equal fashion, shouldn't we call the section "Religion" and expand it to include other religious criticism? Of course, if Mencken criticized Jews out of proportion to other religions, this type of section might be needed. Viriditas (talk) 09:07, 1 November 2009 (UTC)

Mencken wasn't criticizing Judaism here, he was talking about Jews, so I don't think that would work. Jayjg ^(talk) 04:16, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

That's an interesting (and important) point with hindsight, but does Mencken note any difference? My understanding is that reliable sources note that Mencken criticized religion in the U.S. (Wightman 447) and is most known for his criticism of religious fundamentalism, not Jews. While I cannot be certain, it appears that undue weight is being given to his criticism, or rather, his writings about Jews. I could be wrong, but I am opening this up for discussion. That link to Mencken's entry in a A Companion to American Thought above says that these prejudiced ideas were found in his private diaries, and were published in 1989. Shouldn't we then, devote a section to these diaries, and also talk about his views concerning African-Americans? Viriditas (talk) 07:48, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

I don't see Mencken commenting about Judaism at all, only about Jews. As far as his diaries go, the first two references in the section are not from his diaries at all, but from his published introduction to Nietzche's Antichrist. The next anti-Jewish reference is from his Treatise on the Gods, published in 1930, and cited in Christians Only: A Study in Prejudice. And certainly Gore Vidal's defense of Mencken against the accusation of antisemitism, in the introduction Rodgers' The Impossible H.L. Mencken, indicates that the notion of Mencken being an antisemite was significant. Jayjg ^(talk) 02:11, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Teachout says it best on p.290: "It is not his anti-Semitism for which he will be remembered - but that he was an anti-Semite cannot now reasonably be denied." I'm looking at this comments in Nietzche's Antichrist (which you can see for yourself here). Keep in mind, the entire book is categorized as Anti-Christianity, not anti-Semitism. Mencken's comments about Jews sound ignorant and offensive, but he was against all religion, and he does speak of Judaism here, not just Jews. Viriditas (talk) 10:44, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Teachout doesn't appear to be talking about religion, he's discussing antisemitism, but I can't see the longer quote to know for sure. Jayjg ^(talk) 21:08, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

Nevertheless, Terry Teachout calls Mencken an "anti-Semitic boor." [17]

This is simply not true. Teachout was describing Charles Angoff's hit piece on Mencken in Angoff's H.L.Mencken: A From Memory.[3] This kind of selective, misleading quoting really reflects badly on Wikipedia. Viriditas (talk) 08:04, 2 November 2009 (UTC)

What is the actual quote? Jayjg ^(talk) 02:12, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I've linked to it twice. Here it is again, second paragraph, page 335. Viriditas (talk) 10:19, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

The links don't work for me, otherwise I wouldn't have asked you to quote it. Could you please quote it? Jayjg ^(talk) 21:08, 8 November 2009 (UTC)

I see it now. "H.L. Mencken: A Portrait From Memory is a full-length portrait of the artist as an anti-Semitic boor". The sentence in the article should definitely be modified, to something like "According to Teachout, Angoff's H.L. Mencken: A Portrait From Memory portrays Mencken as "an anti-Semitic boor"." Jayjg ^(talk) 01:36, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

Post-Stroke

One section says that the stroke left Mencken unable to speak after his stroke, but a paragraph or two later it says that he enjoyed conversing with friends in his final years.45750born (talk) 15:05, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Buchholz

I just edited the section on Mencken's rivalry with Buchholz, most of which is relevant, but I removed the last paragraph and bring it here for discussion:

Buchholz is best known for his contributions to The Baltimore Sun, which focused on local education. For the majority of his career, he wrote under the pen name Ezekiel Cheever. This was the name of a famous English school teacher of the 1600s. Buchholz, writing chiefly on education found it a fitting homage to such a great and revolutionary teacher. It is also interesting to note that the original Ezekiel Cheever's son of the same name was the influence for a character of the same name in Arthur Miller's The Crucible.

This paragraph is entirely about Buchholz himself, and not at all about his relationship with Mencken. As such, it is not relevant. ---RepublicanJacobite_{The'FortyFive'} 15:46, 29 December 2009 (UTC)

Why is there a section devoted to a forgotten, decidedly minor writer's imaginary "rivalry" with Mencken? His "relevance" is that Mencken reviewed one of his books once? Huh? Is some relative of Buchholz nerding things up? Kill this outright, don't tinker with it. Cosh (talk) 11:06, 13 February 2010 (UTC)

I have 5 bios of HLM in my library, and Bucholz is barely mentioned in any of them. He appears among lists of the music crew, his drinking buddies and that is about it. No mention anywhere of any rivalry. In his autobiographical My Life as author and editor Bucholz is only mentioned as someone the traded books with. No mention of anything even remotely like a rivalry. In the book Letters of HLM there is no entry for bucholz in the index. I agree that this is way overblown, and it should be removed and I am doing so. This has been here long enough!DonSiano (talk) 15:47, 20 May 2010 (UTC)

Sahara of the Bozart

There are already articles referencing H. L. Mencken's influence on the Southern Agrarians with his essays "The Sahara of the Bozart," where he states

"[the American South] is almost as sterile, artistically, intellectually, culturally, as the Sahara Desert."

Should this be discussed in the article? At least included in the list of works? Unfortunately I do not have bibliographic information on the Sahara of the Bozart, it can be found online at http://www2.fiu.edu/~sabar/enc3311/The%20Sahara%20of%20the%20Bozart%20-%20Mencken.pdf —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mc kevins (talk • contribs) 01:25, 7 July 2010 (UTC)

Boobocray and Booboisie

These two terms are universally attributed to Mencken, so much so that they might come under "common knowledge". Yet I've googled and found nothing at all besides people attributing them to Mencken without saying where in Mencken. I'm beginning to think these Mencken coinages are apocryphal. If anybody knows where they actually appear in Mencken, it would make an important addendum. Otherwise, "attributed to" or "alleged to have said" should be inserted. — J M Rice (talk) 06:01, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

---

Well, this is easy to verify. Go to google and do an advanced search on books (under "more"), using the word "booboisie", with "Mencken" as author. This will give you many direct citations of his use of the word. He also claimed in his American Language" that he deliberately coined the word. Uses of this word are therefore not apocryphal.

He also sometimes used the term "homo boobiens" to mean the same thing.

On the other hand, I don't believe he ever used the term boobocracy, and google books appears to verify this. DonSiano (talk) 18:19, 26 October 2010 (UTC)

Are you listening? As I said, I googled the words. The point is, they need to be cited in the article or qualified. If there are all these "direct citations," instead of hearsay, then be useful and provide one, instead of wising off. — J M Rice (talk) 16:34, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

I wasn't "wising off." I was just trying to tell you how to properly use google books advanced search to find the direct cites that you wanted. Did you give it a try? If you insist on adding a cite to his usage, pick one, and add the ref. But I don't think one needs to do this, because his invention of the word is widely known and uncontroversial, at least to me. Loading an article with unneeded refs just makes it hard to read.

On the other hand, if you don't want to learn how to use google books advanced search, a ref is H. L. Mencken, "The American language: an inquiry into the development of English in the United States", Knopf, 1949, p 560. Or you could pick a dictionary that provides info on the first usage of words.DonSiano (talk) 17:28, 2 November 2010 (UTC)

Compared to, compared with

In the line he came to view Adolf Hitler as a buffoon, and once compared him to a common Ku Klux Klan member, should that be compared with? Compared to means that there are differences, compared with that there are similarities. I suspect that here it should be compared with but of course it's possible that Mencken was saying that Hitler was worse or indeed better than a Klan member. I don't know enough to change it. Can anyone help? Les woodland (talk) 07:51, 25 February 2011 (UTC)les woodland

Mencken and Wilson

The literary critic and social commentator Edmund Wilson, wrote a number of essays on Mencken.

The handiest sources are:

Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1920s & 30s: The Shores of Light / Axel's Castle / Uncollected Reviews Lewis M. Dabney, ed. (New York: Library of America, 2007) ISBN 978-1-59853-013-1

Literary Essays and Reviews of the 1930s & 40s: The Triple Thinkers, The Wound and the Bow, Classics and Commercials, Uncollected Reviews Lewis M. Dabney, ed. (New York: Library of America, 2007) ISBN 978-1-59853-014-8

I thought the remarks, offered early in Wilson's career, added a facet to understanding contemporary views of the vastly popular Mencken.36hourblock (talk) 19:18, 26 March 2011 (UTC)

Missing link...

Reference 2, http://henrykrinkle.net/mencken1.html, opens a window saying Not Found

173.54.35.148 (talk) 02:54, 24 May 2011 (UTC)WA Hoffman

Unsubstantiated plaque

Saying something is "widely reported on the Internet" then providing a clutch of "cites" to clearly derivative claims at Web pages of varying veracity, none of which itself is factually supported with a reliable reference (and at least one of which falsely states the quote at issue is also inscribed on Mencken's tombstone, directly refuted by a photograph of same at a link provided in the same paragraph at findagrave.com), does not constitute a reliable reference in aggregate. Perhaps the Baltimore Sun, still in publication, could confirm or authoritatively deny.Wikiuser100 (talk) 15:02, 16 November 2011 (UTC)

no further publication listed and no page given by Wikipedia "author."

Many refs have been changed to include a comment like in the header above, which I have removed. Most of these refs were correctly done because they refer to books given in the Sources section of the article. See, for example, the article on Hitler, where the same style of referencing was used. (I haven't fixed all of them yet, but will.)DonSiano (talk) 12:56, 17 May 2012 (UTC)

Sympathetic to the Germans?!

In the introductory paragraph we read, "During the World Wars, he was sympathetic to the Germans, and was very distrustful of British "propaganda". This makes him sound like an admirer of Hitler or the Nazis. This seems incorrect, and contradicts subsequent parts of the article.69.226.111.69 (talk) 05:07, 23 November 2011 (UTC)

No, your conclusion is wrong - being against one part of a big game means not automatically supporting one other part (of many). A little more philosophical skill is wanted in this "encyclopedia".213.47.134.136 (talk) 10:00, 1 September 2012 (UTC)

"However, he overcame his inclination to embrace all things Bavarian, referring to Hitler and his followers as "ignorant thugs."

Err, Mencken was a German American, and he WAS distrustful of british propaganda, you do not need to put this p-word in brackets. This was the worst use of propaganda the world had ever seen, since the written word was invented. It indeed was so bad and overblown that after the war, a major part of the world but foremost the US did not believe England in anything anymore, even when later in WW2 british intelligence told the US about concentration camps and inventions like Radar ("he who lies once ..."). Also private publishers had to print the WPB bull during WW1, certainly with the intention of "how can it be wrong when independent [sic!] publishers say that" - and some of it is still being perpetrated in british schoolbooks ! As for british propaganda in WW1 (and generally Entente, no 'allies' in WW1) please do yourself a favour and look for propaganda in WW1, a few good keywords would be the british WPB (War propaganda Bureau), the american CPI (Commitee on Public Information) and the 'witness' Louis Raemakers who never went to Belgium. And b.t.w. Hitler was austrian, not german.

Relation to Otto von Bismarck?

Bismarck's mother's maiden name was Mencken, which is a rather rare German name. Does anyone know if and how they are related? Chrisahn (talk) 18:40, 4 February 2013 (UTC)

Democracy

In "A Little Book in C Major" (1916), p. 19, Mencken writes: Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. Would it be worth it to add this quote to the "Democracy" section? Thanks. ~ Daniel Tomé (talk) 02:46, 25 February 2013 (UTC)

Heliogabalus

There is no mention anywhere on this page of Mencken's satirical play 'Heliogabalus: A Bufoonery in Three Acts'; could someone please address this? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 78.147.155.211 (talk) 22:40, 19 March 2013 (UTC)

1926 Southern California suggested addition

Suggested addition

--begin suggested text (to be placed in "The man of ideas" section)

In the summer of 1926, Mencken followed with great interest the Los Angeles grand jury inquiry against famous Canadian- American evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. She was accused of faking her reported kidnapping and the case attracted national attention. There was every expectation Mencken would continue his previous pattern of anti-fundamentalist articles, this time with a searing critique of McPherson. Unexpectedly, he came to her defense, identifying various local religious and civic groups which were using the case as an opportunity to pursue their respective ideological agendas against the embattled Pentecostal minister. (ref) Matthew Avery Sutton, Aimee Semple McPherson and the Resurrection of Christian America (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp 119-120(/ref) He spent several weeks in Hollywood, California, and wrote many scathing and satirical columns on the movie industry and the southern California culture.

--end suggested text

Any objections to this addition? Mencken's summer in Los Angeles appeared to be for the 1926 grand jury inquiry than for a general critique of Southern California. When planning his trip west he asked his friend Upton Sinclair to attend services at McPherson's Angelus Temple with him (Sutton p. 88) Mencken was known, as per article, skeptical of fundamentalist Christianity, creationism, organized religion, the existence of God, all of which are the categories the well-known(at that time) evangelist, Aimee Semple McPherson in some way was associated with. Moreover he wrote at least one article unflattering of her.

ie http://www.ralphmag.org/menckenZN.html

(from --- H. L. Mencken The American Mercury, 1930)

"For years she toured the Bible Belt in a Ford, haranguing the morons nightly, under canvas."

and

"The theology of La McPherson, as she expounds it in her book, [in service of the King, 1926"] is a poor thing, and not her own. Wherever the hookworm bays to its mate and a horsehair put into a bottle of water is known to turn into a snake, it is preached every night, and by thousands of sweating evangelists."

and

" suspect that is by no means as happy as she tries to look. "

So it seems unusual he would come to her defense which adds to the complexity of Mencken who in this case seems outraged by certain parties using the justice system to pursue their ideological differences against another person:

Matthew Avery Sutton conveys in his book (Sutton, pp. 119–121. ) "Mencken was expected to join others in denouncement or some sort of critique of McPherson. Having gleefully ridiculed William Jennings Bryan in his syndicated column, Mencken prepared to level his pen at another fundamentalist rabble rouser.... [Aimee Semple McPherson]. After careful investigation, he determined that the evangelist was not to blame for the controversy, which he called a 'dirty shame." "

Instead he determined the evangelist was being persecuted by two powerful groups. The "town clergy" which included Rev. Robert P. Shuler, disliked her, for among other things, poaching their "customers" and for the perceived sexual immorality associated with Pentecostalism. Her other category of enemies were "the Babbits", the intelligentsia of southern California. McPherson's work in trying to put a Bible in every public school classroom was not popular with them. From correspondence with Mencken, Sinclair agrees at the heart of the actual grand jury inquiry controversy was McPherson's efforts to get anti-evolution propositions onto the state ballot (Sutton p.145). Moreover, her rapidly growing influence concerned many, she well could mobilize the anti-evolution masses(a fear after the 1925 Scopes trial) in damaging ways; "a lot of pull and political power has our officers buffaloed."

SteamWiki (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 18:43, 23 March 2014 (UTC) suggested addition

--begin suggested text (to be placed in "The man of ideas" section after sentence "He spent several weeks in Hollywood, California, and wrote many scathing and satirical columns on the movie industry and the southern California culture.")

Later, after all charges had been dropped against McPherson, in 1930, Mencken revisited the case in a sarcastically biting and observant article. He wrote since many of that town's residents acquired their ideas "of the true, the good and the beautiful" from the movies and newspapers, "Los Angeles will remember the testimony against her long after it forgets the testimony that cleared her. " (ref)Mencken, H.L.; The American Mercury (1930)(ref)

--end suggested text

Any objections to this addition to finish the paragraph about Mencken and his involvement in the Aimee Semple McPherson 1926 grand jury inquiry? SteamWiki (talk) 05:39, 26 June 2014 (UTC)

Quote on the Jews

It says here that this quote was removed at Mencken's "express direction." Meanwhile, at the page for Treatise on the Gods, it says his publisher asked him to remove the passage. Which is it? Webbie1234 (talk) 19:23, 15 July 2015 (UTC)