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Mencken
This is the first biography since his death of the man Edmund Wilson has called the “greatest practicing literary journalist” since Poe. It is also the first fully documented life to be issued. Mr. Bode has based his book on a host of Mencken letters, many unpublished; on family papers; on a variety of Mencken materials in print and out; and on many taped interviews with remaining friends of Mencken as well as with some of his old enemies. Two other things about the book are important “firsts.” The book analyzes Mencken’s writing as it related to his life. And the book indicates the relation of Mencken to his time
Mr Bode’s Mencken takes us from the almost pastoral Baltimore of the 1880’s when Mencken was a boy; through World War I when Mencken was termed a traitor; into the Roaring Twenties when he was the decade’s leading intellectual, magazine editor, and newspaper man; into the Depression when his influence sank to nearly nothing; then into the 1940’s when he issued his mellow reminiscences; and finally to his last years in Baltimore.
Among the chapters are: “Daily and Sunday,” “Dreiser and the Fruits of Dissidence,” “The Mercury: Mencken’s Mind and Art,” “Mainstay of the Sun,” “Mencken, Darwin, and God,” “Mencken in Love,” “The Circus of Dr. R.,” and “Friends and Familiars.”
Mr Bode’s Mencken takes us from the almost pastoral Baltimore of the 1880’s when Mencken was a boy; through World War I when Mencken was termed a traitor; into the Roaring Twenties when he was the decade’s leading intellectual, magazine editor, and newspaper man; into the Depression when his influence sank to nearly nothing; then into the 1940’s when he issued his mellow reminiscences; and finally to his last years in Baltimore.
Among the chapters are: “Daily and Sunday,” “Dreiser and the Fruits of Dissidence,” “The Mercury: Mencken’s Mind and Art,” “Mainstay of the Sun,” “Mencken, Darwin, and God,” “Mencken in Love,” “The Circus of Dr. R.,” and “Friends and Familiars.”
- GenresBiography
452 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1969
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August 23, 2015
Well. Here is a very good expose of the most brilliant journalist in the history of America. Bode has done his research and brought us about as close as can be known about Mencken's career and writings. Mencken's influnace can be seen in the writers of the time such as Sinclair Lewis and Sherwood Anderson and also in the investigative reporting we have today. If Mencken was alive today he would be sharing an apartment in Moscow with Edward Snowden. Of course there would be problems for them. Mencken loved sea food and lots of bourbon where as Snowden perfers pizza, hamburgers and pepsi. Sounds like to would be a nightmare brewing or perhaps simmering.
Displaying 1 of 1 review