An Exquisite Scourging

Reading, is an integral part of my life.  It has been since I was in the third grade, when my teachers, instead of mindlessly punishing me for inappropriate behavior in class, behaviors such as inattention, blurting out answers to questions, or disrupting teaching, would say, “John, get yourself a book and sit, quietly, in the back of the class and read.”  A punishment I readily assented to.  Today, those behaviors would be evaluated and, in all probability, medicated.

Needless to say, I’ve read more than a few books since those days.  But I had not read any H.L. Mencken until now.  I was first made aware of Mencken when I was rooting around in the archives of a weblog I enjoy.  I was searching for a posting dealing with Objectivism, when I stumbled upon a comment where the weblog author mentioned that an individual he respected had recommended that the author read more Mencken.  I made a mental note of this and, the next time I was at the library, I investigated the library’s shelves for Mencken’s works.  I found two, though one was a collection of Mencken’s work compiled by another individual.  The one actual work by Mencken was Heathen Days.  I plucked this autobiographical volume from the shelf and grabbed a seat.  I cracked open the book, read the first story, and I was on my way.  After reading the first story, I was so enthralled, I checked out the book, went to a local coffee hangout, and did not leave until I had finished the entire book three hours later.  In an email to a friend, I summed up my impression of the book by stating “What a ride!”  Needless to say, I went back to the library, that same day, returned Heathen Days and plucked the edited collection of Mencken’s work from the shelf, and headed home with the new material.  This book also, did not disappoint, and in fact, spurred me to visit our local book resellers to scour their shelves for works of Mencken.  I found one.  A Mencken Chrestomathy, and, it is in regards to this work, that I want to share a few thoughts.

Mencken is a critic of astounding breadth and depth.  Men, women, religion, morals, government, democracy, psychology, science, music, nothing and no one is beyond his scrutiny, and, in A Mencken Chrestomathy, Mencken has provided us with “a collection of choice passages;” as the word chrestomathy, “in its true sense,” means.  Mencken’s pen goes to work, flaying imbecility, immediately in the preface.  And he does not spare his chosen field of endeavor, journalism, from his penetrating gaze.  As I read, my pen was constantly in my hand, underlining choice phrases, annotating passages of hiliarity or noting an area of interest that bears further investigation.  What follows, are my impressions on various sections of this work of Mencken’s, which may entice you to read what Mencken has to say.

The first series of writings in A Mencken Chrestomathy deals with “Homo Sapiens” and is followed, closely on its heels, by “Types of Men.”  The thoughts that Mencken presents, in these two series of essays and articles, strike you with the intensity of one of Mencken’s favored forms of punishment.  The bastinado.  Thoughts such as “The simple fact is that most of man’s thinking is stupid, pointless and injurious to him.”  The blow from such a statement does not so much injure, as sharply draw you back to reality.  Whether you are friend, philosopher, bachelor or slave, Mencken has considered it and stripped away the dross with the alacrity of Zorro defrocking a young lass with his rapier.

In the series entitled “Women,” if Mencken were alive today, the feminists would form a special femi-nazi squad in order to hunt Mencken down and purify the race of men.  In the series on “Religion,” of special interest to me because of my mystical streak, Mencken put me before the mast and commenced my flogging.  When I was finally cut loose from the mast, I was not so much bloodied by Mencken’s pen, but, like a frat pledge during initiation, found myself asking “Might I have another, Sir.”

A series on “Morals” and “Crime and Punishment” quickly follow, and in the first essay in the latter series mentioned here, Mencken says this about penology.

The science of penology, in these days, is chiefly in the hands of sentimentalists, and in consequence it shows all the signs of glycosuria.

I was not familiar with the word “glycosuria,” but when I looked it up, I laughed and laughed and annotated my copy of the book with the note “Look up this word and laugh.”  In the next series, titled “Death,” Mencken had me laughing again with this observation from the essay “On Suicide.

“Half the time of all medical men is wasted keeping life in human wrecks who have no more intelligible reason for hanging on than a cow has for giving milk.

Mencken’s pen spares nothing.

The next series, on “Government,” begins with the essay “Its Inner Nature.”  He succinctly sums up the purpose of government in the very first sentence.

All government, in its essence, is a conspiracy against the superior man: its one permanent object is to oppress him and cripple him.

The series ends on just such a succinct note, in fact, the final essay is titled “Note on a Cuff”

The saddest life is that of a political aspirant under democracy.  His failure is ignominious and his success is disgraceful.

In the next series, “Democracy,” Mencken’s blade continues to whistle through the air, slicing choice morsels for us to consume.  Such as this from “A Glance Ahead.”

Democracy, in fact, is always inventing class distinctions, despite its theoretical abhorrence of them.

Following the series on “Democracy,” Mencken’s razor sharp mind slices, oh so quickly, into “Americans,” “The South,” “History, “Statesmen,” and “American Immortals,” followed by, with no less a sharp gaze, a short series on “Odd Fish.”  Following these sorties, Mencken parses “Economics,” “Pedagogy” is lashed with the observation,

The virtue of a college degree is that it shuts off the asking of certain kinds of questions, some of them embarassing.  It is a certificate of safety, both to the holder and to the nation in general.

“Psychology” “Science,” and general “Quackery” do not escape unscathed either.

“The Human Body,” “Utopian Flights,” and “Sovenirs of a Journalist,” which follow “Quackery,” also do not disappoint.  Mencken’s pen strokes these subjects also with the precise cuts of an Exacto knife.  He deftly wields his weapon, removing impairments to your ability to rationally consider the matters at hand.

In the series entitled “Criticisms,” Mencken states a personal observation which I have found, in myself, to be most beneficial.

A hearty slating always does me good, particularly if it be well written.  It begins by enlisting my professional respect; it ends by making me examine my ideas coldly in the privacy of my chamber.  Not, of course, that I usually revise them, but I at least examine them.  If I decide to hold fast to them, they are all the dearer to me thereafter, and I expound them with a new passion and plausibility.  If, on the contrary, I discern holes in them, I shelve them in a pianissimo manner, and set about hatching new ones to take their place.  But “constructive” criticisms irritates me.  I do not object to being denounced, but I can’t abide being schoolmastered, especially by men I consider imbeciles.

“Literature” is Mencken’s next foray into battle and the titles of these essays are entertaining in and of themselves.  “The Divine Afflatus,” “The Poet and His Art,” “The Author at Work,” “The Blue Nose” and others in this series, and in the series “Literati,” cause some trepidation in me as I write these words.  I wonder if my words would withstand the clarity of his mind.

It is only fitting, that the series “Music” follows the two just mentioned.  In this series we are treated to Mencken’s love of classical music and his disdain for jazz.  Following “Music,” is “The Lesser Arts,” to wit, in Mencken’s estimation, painting.  Two passages from within this series especially struck me.  This, from “Art Critics”

Every time a new revolutionist gives a show he issues a manifesto explaining his aims and achievements, and in every such manifesto there is the same blowsy rodomontadizing that one finds in the texts of the critics.  The thing, it appears, is very profound.  Something new has been discovered.  Rembrandt, poor old boy, lived and died in ignorance of it.

And this, from “Hand-Painted Oil Paintings,” which called to mind Melissa and I sniggering at individuals at a Monet exhibit in Chicago, who sat, staring intently, for fifteen minutes, half an hour, an hour, at one particular painting.

If a man stands before a given painting for more than five or ten minutes, it is usually a sign of affectation: he is trying to convince himself that he has more delicate perceptions than the general.

Within this same series, Mencken parries at “Art Galleries,” “Actors,” “Oratory,” and in “The Libido for the Ugly,” architecture, amongest others.  None escape without a mark.

The last two series in A Mencken Chrestomathy are “Buffooneries” and “Sententiae.”  Fitting reading as a denouement to the care Mencken took in compiling these works.  This work, is, without a doubt, the most enjoyable work I have ever read.  A Mencken Chrestomathy will not end up on my bookshelf.  It will remain on my nightstand, alongside the Good Book I delve into from time to time.  It is only fitting, I think, as Mencken’s words are even more powerful, in light of their clarity and non-obfuscated delivery, than what has been toggled together by a bunch of men hundreds of years ago and labeled as divine.

As the title of this piece states, reading A Mencken Chrestomathy is an exquisite scourging.

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