Hi, Jim, here's what I worked on so far, the first part is some notes for myself on Mencken's history - I thought it would be useful to give some background on his career and influence. I won't read this, it's more notes for myself. I have quotes that I may edit and will likely cut or shorten some, I do tend to overprepare! I want to use a quote from American Language, but haven't chosen one yet. I may also use something from In Defense of Women and I will bring in a few volumes for people to take a look at - I have several of his works that I used in writing my thesis.
Mencken started as a newspaperman working for the Baltimore Sunpapers – with only a high school education. His association with the paper continued off and on for most of his career He became an editor of The Smart Set and later The American Mercury, both of which published short fiction, essays, and literary criticism.
He had close ties to many of the premiere American novelists of the era – Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, and was wildly influential with intellectuals and college students during the 1920s and early 1930s, although he always derided universities and academics.
Mencken wrote a bit of fiction and even poetry as a young man, but his work was largely nonfictions. He was incredibly prolific, writing thousands of articles and books on a staggering array of topics, his own estimate of his output was 10 million words. His correspondence with friends and authors consists of thousands and thousands of letters (he almost always made a carbon copy of letters he sent), although he destroyed some letters with women with whom he had relationships. One of his most enduringly popular works was The American Language which went through multiple editions and had two supplements, a massive scholarly work on the differences in British and American English.
Mencken’s influence began to wane during the later 1930s. He was a supporter of Germany during WWI and was slow to denounce Hitler and the Nazis in the years leading up to WWII, he was writing editorials for the Baltimore Sun and was finally forced to resign in 1941 because of his views on Hitler and Roosevelt.
Despite his ridicule of marriage, he married Sara Haardt in 1930 . She was in very poor health and wasn’t expected to live very long, and she died about 5 years after they married. He lived his entire life in the same house in Baltimore, except for the 5 years of his marriage.
Mencken had a variety of illnesses throughout his life,and was something of a medical consultant to his friends, connecting them with the many doctors he knew in Baltimore. In 1948, Mencken had a severe stroke that largely robbed him of the ability to read and write and severely impaired his speech a tragedy that was for him so profound that he sometimes referred to that as the year that he died, although he lived for 7 more years.
Mencken was an ultimate believer in liberty, but had grave doubts about democracy:
He believed in liberty “in the wildest and most imaginable sense” and “up to the extreme limits of feasibility and tolerance”
QUOTES
When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand. So confronted, the candidate must either bark with the pack or be lost... All the odds are on the man who is, intrinsically, the most devious and mediocre — the man who can most adeptly disperse the notion that his mind is a virtual vacuum. The Presidency tends, year by year, to go to such men. As democracy is perfected, the office represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. We move toward a lofty ideal. 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.”
The men the American people admire most extravagantly are the most daring liars; the men they detest most violently are those who try to tell them the truth.”
“Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance. No one in this world, so far as I know—and I have researched the records for years, and employed agents to help me—has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.”
Notes on Democracy
“The notion that a radical is one who hates his country is naïve and usually idiotic. He is, more likely, one who likes his country more than the rest of us, and is thus more disturbed than the rest of us when he sees it debauched. He is not a bad citizen turning to crime; he is a good citizen driven to despair.”
Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on "I am not too sure.”
It is often argued that religion is valuable because it makes men good, but even if this were true it would not be a proof that religion is true. That would be an extension of pragmatism beyond endurance. . . . Every theologian spends a large part of his time and energy trying to prove that religions for which multitudes of honest men have fought and died are false, wicked, and against God.” , Minority Report
I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind — that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest thinking.
“All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him, A Mencken Chrestomathy
He writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash.
(writing about US President Warren G. Harding)”
“Philosophy consists very largely of one philosopher arguing that all others are jackasses. He usually proves it, and I should add that he also usually proves that he is one himself.”
I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious.
I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect.
I believe in the complete freedom of thought and speech — alike for the humblest man and the mightiest, and in the utmost freedom of conduct that is consistent with living in organized society.
I believe in the capacity of man to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.
I believe in the reality of progress.
I —But the whole thing, after all, may be put very simply. I believe that 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 be ignorant.”
The Artist: A Drama Without Words
