The Vintage Mencken

Rating:
Summary: A Writer and His Times
Review: H. L. Mencken was born in Baltimore in 1880 and for his developmental years was a "bookworm." He resolved to pursue a more active life as he grew and discovered his niche in journalism. In 1899 he went to work for the Baltimore Morning Herald and found the going difficult at first, but as he persisted he discovered that was where he was most suited and kept the title "newspaperman" the rest of his life. He remained in his home town and continued to live in the home his family had lived in rather than seeking career advancement in larger markets. One of the first essays in this collection is one he wrote about his hometown, "The Baltimore of the Eighties." Another early one describes the local YMCA. His piece on Theodore Dreiser contains a segment on the art of communicating via the written word. A tribute to William Jennings Bryan which was published in the American Mercury in 1925 is included in this collection. Other pieces are on the people, times, circumstances, and issues of the era in which he made his observations. While I do not agree with him on many topics, his work demonstrates the efforts of a skilled writer.

Rating:
Summary: A Writer and His Times
Review: H. L. Mencken was born in Baltimore in 1880 and for his developmental years was a "bookworm." He resolved to pursue a more active life as he grew and discovered his niche in journalism. In 1899 he went to work for the Baltimore Morning Herald and found the going difficult at first, but as he persisted he discovered that was where he was most suited and kept the title "newspaperman" the rest of his life. He remained in his home town and continued to live in the home his family had lived in rather than seeking career advancement in larger markets. One of the first essays in this collection is one he wrote about his hometown, "The Baltimore of the Eighties." Another early one describes the local YMCA. His piece on Theodore Dreiser contains a segment on the art of communicating via the written word. A tribute to William Jennings Bryan which was published in the American Mercury in 1925 is included in this collection. Other pieces are on the people, times, circumstances, and issues of the era in which he made his observations. While I do not agree with him on many topics, his work demonstrates the efforts of a skilled writer.

Rating:
Summary: Vicious without being vengeful.
Review: How I wish Mencken were alive today, taking aim at all of the manifestations of American bufoonery: political correctness, television evangelists, daytime talk shows and Bill Clinton; his work would never be finished. This volume wonderfully demonstrates why he was the most influential journalist, editor, book reviewer and writer of his day. If you don't read all these essays, be sure not to miss 'The Anglo-Saxon', 'The Hills of Zion' and 'In Memoriam: W.J.B.'

Rating:
Summary: A good intro - but I expected a little more
Review: Mencken was a well known editor, book reviewer and writer. The selected essays are interesting and often very funny, but I somehow expected a more comprehensive and well-rounded selection of his writings. The book is certainly entertaining and sometimes insightful - hence a purchase to be considered. However, a better job could have been done in selecting the material for the book - including perhaps a selection of his famous aphorisms.

Rating:
Summary: Mencken was a great newspaper journalist and writer
Review: Please read this book for a refreshing view from a highly intelligent author from the early 20th century...Mencken was *not* a confirmed racist - this tag was applied to him when some of his personal diaries were published and his writings were compared against the current day "PC" language test. If you were to strike up a conversation with any person 90 years ago I would think their speech would shock modern sensibilities on the race issue. In Menckin's case, I encourage you to read about his actions in the race issue - the fact that as an editor he published African-American authors when no other mainstream publications would do so. That he opposed segregation and had many friends he actively and publicly supported that were of a diverse nature religiously and racially.

If you want a good weekend read with bookends from the beginning and the end of the twentieth century, pick up "The Vintage Mencken" and "Eat the Rich" or "Parliament of Whores" from P.J. O'Rourke, the current HL Mencken scholar at the Cato Institute. You will have a refreshing libertarian infusion which will help you withstand the current New Left and Religious Right babble that is so pervasive in the media these days.

Rating:
Summary: You will laugh
Review: The Vintage Mencken, edited by Alistair Cooke, will have readers reaching for their dictionaries and laughing uproariously at the same time. Mencken, in savage and truculent language, denounces politicians, YMCA's,educational systems, American authors, police officers, and other manifestations of quackery. An excellent introduction to the work of the man called "The Sage from Baltimore."

Rating:
Summary: Where They Poured Coca-Cola Just Like Vintage Wine
Review: Things aren't what they used to be; but what's more, they *really* were, and you can get no better picture of the first half of the American century than this book provides. Primarily consisting of Mencken's *The Free Lance* columns for the Baltimore Sun-Times, this book provides a picture of a Mencken even most literati are unfamiliar with today; the scrupulous, knowledgeable, sceptical reporter. And if such a trade be considered optional from the observer's standpoint, perhaps this is why current "curmudgeonly" pretenders to this ever-lovin' Democrat's throne as cultural critic do all of the (easy) carousing and none of the spadework Mencken performed for literati (including the odd "Aframerican" and bluestocking).

But, as this book shows, there was more to the Roaring Twenties and other poorly-remembered eras than even buncombe and carnivals, and more to Mencken's attitude towards American mores than haberdashery. However, what there is not more to is Mencken's loathing of FDR: it is simply a sign of a sea-change in American life, where the stumbling, angry, concerned "competent" Mencken represented began to be waved away by a well-supported, knowing hand -- eventually to great acclaim. What would good ole H.L. Mencken have to say about the present? He would too sad to speak. But he reveled in his time: and the result is solider than any effort at Christian charity, however learned.

Rating:
Summary: Where They Poured Coca-Cola Just Like Vintage Wine
Review: Things aren't what they used to be; but what's more, they *really* were, and you can get no better picture of the first half of the American century than this book provides. Primarily consisting of Mencken's *The Free Lance* columns for the Baltimore Sun-Times, this book provides a picture of a Mencken even most literati are unfamiliar with today; the scrupulous, knowledgeable, sceptical reporter. And if such a trade be considered optional from the observer's standpoint, perhaps this is why current "curmudgeonly" pretenders to this ever-lovin' Democrat's throne as cultural critic do all of the (easy) carousing and none of the spadework Mencken performed for literati (including the odd "Aframerican" and bluestocking).

But, as this book shows, there was more to the Roaring Twenties and other poorly-remembered eras than even buncombe and carnivals, and more to Mencken's attitude towards American mores than haberdashery. However, what there is not more to is Mencken's loathing of FDR: it is simply a sign of a sea-change in American life, where the stumbling, angry, concerned "competent" Mencken represented began to be waved away by a well-supported, knowing hand -- eventually to great acclaim. What would good ole H.L. Mencken have to say about the present? He would too sad to speak. But he reveled in his time: and the result is solider than any effort at Christian charity, however learned.