Mencken’s America: H. L. Mencken

by H.L. Mencken, S.T. Joshi (Contributor)

Long famous as a political, social, and cultural gadfly, journalist and essayist H. L. Mencken was unafraid to speak his mind on controversial topics and to express his views in a deliberately provocative manner. Mencken was prolific; much of his best work lies buried in the newspapers and magazines in which it originally appeared. Mencken’s America is a sampling of this uncollected work, arranged to present the wide-ranging treatise on American culture that Mencken himself never wrote. The core of the book is a series of six articles on “The American” published in the Smart Set in 1913-14. Never before reprinted, they embody the essence of Mencken’s views on the deficiencies of his countrymen. What was the problem with America? For Mencken, it could be summed up in one Puritanism. Puritanism accounted for much that was wrong with American the prevalence of “militant morality” represented by Prohibition, by campaigns against prostitution, and by religious fundamentalism. American hostility toward the fine arts led to furious attempts to suppress any work of art that was thought to contravene conventional morality-attempts that Mencken chronicles with impressive scholarship in the essay “Puritanism as a Literary Force.” Mencken reserved his greatest scorn for American political institutions. Opposed to the very principle of democracy and universal suffrage, he maintained that, in the absence of an educated electorate, all politicians are compelled to become demagogues. Bracing, infuriating, and pungent, H. L. Mencken’s writings retain their relevance even after the passage of nearly a hundred years, cogently discussing issues with which Americans of the twenty-first century are still wrestling. Sagaciously edited by S. T. Joshi, one of the country’s foremost Mencken scholars, Mencken’s America is a superb example of America’s turning the looking glass on itself.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Politics

400 pages, Hardcover

First published February 23, 2004

About the author

Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken became one of the most influential and prolific journalists in America in the 1920s and '30s, writing about all the shams and con artists in the world. He attacked chiropractors and the Ku Klux Klan, politicians and other journalists. Most of all, he attacked Puritan morality. He called Puritanism, "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

At the height of his career, he edited and wrote for The American Mercury magazine and the Baltimore Sun newspaper, wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column for the Chicago Tribune, and published two or three books every year. His masterpiece was one of the few books he wrote about something he loved, a book called The American Language (1919), a history and collection of American vernacular speech. It included a translation of the Declaration of Independence into American English that began, "When things get so balled up that the people of a country got to cut loose from some other country, and go it on their own hook, without asking no permission from nobody, excepting maybe God Almighty, then they ought to let everybody know why they done it, so that everybody can see they are not trying to put nothing over on nobody."

When asked what he would like for an epitaph, Mencken wrote, "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl."

(from American Public Media)

Reviews

[Brian · Rating 3 out of 5]

Is it cynicism, or just an extraordinarily clear view of reality?

Mencken’s articles, written about 100 years ago, his perspective on America and most Americans then, is just as relevant now….some things just don’t change (only the times, names, and technology changes).

America – Land of the free… In Mencken’s America, free to do what, and with who’s permission?

Honestly think about that. What are you really “free” to do? Are you free to live your life as you please? Are you free to do with yourself and your own money as you desire? Are you free to acquire and consume whatever products or services you want from anyone who will provide them? Are you free to look out for you and your family’s needs first, or are you required to give first dibs to the fruits of your labor to the federal or your state government? Mencken argued that Americans are not as free as they have been convinced to believe.

In Mencken’s view, many American laws then were designed to punish “sinners” – to protect society; not to protect individual rights against infringement by other individuals. Mencken called this “American Puritanism”. According to Mencken, “Puritanism. The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”

Mencken especially argued against state-enforced Puritanism – Using the power of government to enforce your morals and beliefs, make others do things you agree with, or not do things you disagree with.

How much different is it now from then? Granted Prohibition (against alcohol) is repealed, but what other tyranny’s of prohibition (or tyranny of requirement – think Social Security, Obamacare) have been added since? Most of these tyranny’s are “for your own good” or “to protect society”. C.S. Lewis said “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive.” Mencken himself, “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule.”

How many individuals cannot live their lives true to themselves and their own wants, needs, or desires, because of some abstract, indirect impact on a nameless, faceless “society” that must be protected against harm at the expense of the individual?

The more things change……