A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writings

I really like this book. Mencken's prose and unflinching attitude is like no other author I have read. I don't know if they used the middle finger in the early 1900s but if so, then HLM was its personification. If you were to tally his word usage in the book I believe "idiot", "imbecile", "buffoon", "moron" and "mountebank" would be near the top.This book contains one of my favorite essay and the single biggest reason to own this book, his piece on the critical process. It's only a 10 page essay but it's probably the most eloquent. For whatever reason he put it around page 450, but I would recommend reading it first. It puts a reader in the right frame of mind for reading Mencken's essays. He explains a worthwhile critic is not so much concerned with truth or detail. Instead a truly great critic takes the target of the criticism and uses it to develop his own original ideas. It separates those who would just be archivists with those who would be artists. Clearly, Mencken was not concerned with the former, he was concerned with art and he was an artist.

H.L. Mencken worked for newspapers for 50 years, living and working in Baltimore the entire time. His niche was criticism and commentary, at which he excelled. There is no one to match his wit and style. H.L.M. was not a reporter, he was a stylist: it's the way he said what he said that is important.This book is a collection of Mencken's writings, mostly from previous books he wrote: the "Prejudices" series, "In Defense of Women", "A Book of Burlesques", et al. Some of the offerings are from the magazines he edited: "American Mercury" and "Smart Set", with a few newspaper articles for good measure. The copyright listings go back as far as 1917.Mencken discusses everything from men and women, government, morals, religion, music and history, to odd fish, quackery, pedagogy, psychology and buffooneries.Listed under the latter rubric, one will find a work entitled "A Neglected Anniversary", which started the famous bathtub hoax, explained by the author in his notes, for those unfamiliar with the Great Man and his life and times.A second of Mencken's commentaries, which seems to have gained more fame than some of the others, is "The Sahara of the Bozart", page 184. The American South is H.L.M.'s subject here, thus: "Down there a poet is now almost as rare as an oboe-player, a dry-point etcher or a metaphysician. It is, indeed, amazing to contemplate so vast a vacuity...that stupendous region of worn-out farms, shoddy cities and paralyzed cerebrums...it is almost as sterile, artistically, intellectually, culturally, as the Sahara Desert. There are single acres in Europe that house more first-rate men than all the states south of the Potomic...." Ouch!One may not agree with his opinions, but one must acknowledge that he expresses them very well, and that reading his writings is great entertainment. H.L. Mencken is probably the greatest American writer of the 20th Century, if not of all time. Enjoy.

If I were stranded on an island and could have only one book to read, this would be it. Mencken's insight and erudition are unsurpassed, and seldom matched. He is, I'm sure, the greatest American ever to live.

This book, like all of Mencken's writings, is a lesson in delivering devastating criticism in the form of highly literate and beautifully flowing prose. It helps, of course, to be able to side with the author on his opinions, but is no impediment to enjoyment if you can't -- unless, I presume, you're one of his targets. Basically, no one writes like this anymore. Many believe that if you're going to insult people, crass and vulgar expression is the way to go. Mencken not only shows a better way, but demonstrates the level of intelligence necessary for harsh criticism to have an impact -- it's very difficult to fault someone with such obvious gifts. It also helps to have a dictionary to hand while you're reading, preferably a large and perhaps old one. Mine doesn't have "buncombe" in it, although the way it's used leaves little doubt as to what's meant. Also, the sheer variety of subject matter both here and in the Second Mencken Chrestomathy allows you to jump around freely. I couldn't find a duff article in either book, whether I agreed with his opinions or not, and I couldn't possibly recommend it any higher.