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A Second Mencken Chrestomathy: A New Selection from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit
by
With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces The Buncombe Collection, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics: Happy Days, Heathen Days, Newspaper Days, Prejud
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Paperback, 528 pages
Published
September 27th 2006
by Johns Hopkins University Press
(first published January 17th 1995)
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Start your review of A Second Mencken Chrestomathy: A New Selection from the Writings of America's Legendary Editor, Critic, and Wit
This morning I wrote a singularly catchy tune entitled
I think I left my radio on this morning.
After about an hour straight of continually singing the song my office cubicle mate reminded me that I did not own a radio, so I then proceeded to head down to the men's locker room in order to (1) brush my teeth with toothpaste, (2) floss my teeth, (3) brush my teeth with raw baking soda, (4) brush my teeth, again, with toothpaste, and to finally (5) swirl and rinse my mouth out with mouthwash.
So ...more
After about an hour straight of continually singing the song my office cubicle mate reminded me that I did not own a radio, so I then proceeded to head down to the men's locker room in order to (1) brush my teeth with toothpaste, (2) floss my teeth, (3) brush my teeth with raw baking soda, (4) brush my teeth, again, with toothpaste, and to finally (5) swirl and rinse my mouth out with mouthwash.
So ...more
Oct 23, 2016
Michael
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Cynics, Mencken fans, American historians
Recommended to Michael by:
Serendipity
Shelves:
politics
I read this as part of my exploration of “the great cynics” at the turn of the millennium, the others being Ambrose Bierce and Jonathan Swift. Mencken was the one I knew the least about going in, and I started with this “second” Chrestomathy because it happened to be easily found at Shakespeare & Co.
Mencken will not disappoint anyone looking for cynical writing, and so far as I can tell the “second” Chrestomathy is as good a place to start as any. “Chrestomathy” was a word Mencken appears to ha ...more
Mencken will not disappoint anyone looking for cynical writing, and so far as I can tell the “second” Chrestomathy is as good a place to start as any. “Chrestomathy” was a word Mencken appears to ha ...more
A wonderfully entertaining, irreverent, and beautifully-written selection of essays, but also a fascinating trip back to the 1920s through the eyes of a Bourbon Democrat on the eve of that breed's extinction. Fun to read alongside the work of Frank Kent -- Mencken's Baltimore Sun colleague and ideological sympathizer.
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Mar 08, 2009
Douglas Wilson
rated it
really liked it
·
review of another edition
Shelves:
wordsmithing
Great.
Mencken was one of the funniest and most articulate American essayists and journalists. Great writing even if it is extremely bigoted.
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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 o ...more
At the height o ...more
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“It is not materialism that is the chief curse of the world, but idealism. Men get into trouble by taking all their gaudy visions and hallucinations seriously.”
—
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“It seems to be little noticed that this yearning to dragoon and terrify all persons who happen to be lucky is at the bottom of the puerile radicalism now prevailing among us, just as it is at the bottom of Ku Kluxery. The average American radical today likes to think of himself as a profound and somber fellow, privy to arcana not open to the general; he is actually only a poor fish, with distinct overtones of the jackass. What ails him, first and last, is simply envy of his betters. Unable to make any progress against them under the rules in vogue, he proposes to fetch them below the belt by making the rules over. He is no more an altruist than J. Pierpont Morgan is an altruist, or Jim Farley, or, indeed, Al Capone. Every such rescuer of the downtrodden entertains himself with gaudy dreams of power, far beyond his natural fortunes and capacities. He sees himself at the head of an overwhelming legion of morons, marching upon the fellows he envies and hates. He thinks of himself in his private reflections (and gives it away every time he makes a speech or prints an article) as a gorgeous amalgam of Lenin, Mussolini and Genghis Khan, with the Republic under his thumb, his check for any amount good at any bank, and ten million heels clicking every time he winks his eye.”
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