Mencken S Americana

"By far the Mercury's most popular section was a regular feature Mencken entitled "Americana." This department featured a wide assortment of newspaper clippings, wire reports, church bulletins, publicity releases, and other sources which depicted various individuals and organizations - frequently of rural origin - in the throes of some foolish action which Mencken deemed ludicrous enough for its inclusion."--BOOK JACKET.

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. This is a collection of work previously only published in newspapers and magazines.

The American Language, first published in 1919, is H. L. Mencken's book about the English language as spoken in the United States. Mencken was inspired by "the argot of the colored waiters" in Washington, as well as one of his favorite authors, Mark Twain, and his experiences on the streets of Baltimore. In 1902, Mencken remarked on the "queer words which go into the making of 'United States.'" The book was preceded by several columns in The Evening Sun. Mencken eventually asked "Why doesn't some painstaking pundit attempt a grammar of the American language... English, that is, as spoken by the great masses of the plain people of this fair land?" It would appear that he answered his own question. In the tradition of Noah Webster, who wrote the first American dictionary, Mencken wanted to defend "Americanisms" against a steady stream of English critics, who usually isolated Americanisms as borderline barbarous perversions of the mother tongue. Mencken assaulted the prescriptive grammar of these critics and American "schoolmarms", arguing, like Samuel Johnson in the preface to his dictionary, that language evolves independently of textbooks. The book discusses the beginnings of "American" variations from "English", the spread of these variations, American names and slang over the course of its 374 pages. According to Mencken, American English was more colorful, vivid, and creative than its British counterpart.

A towering figure on the American cultural landscape, H.L. Mencken stands out as one of our most influential stylists and fearless iconoclasts--the twentieth century's greatest newspaper journalist, a famous wit, and a constant figure of controversy. Marion Elizabeth Rodgers has written the definitive biography of Mencken, the finest book ever published about this giant of American letters. Rodgers illuminates both the public and the private man, covering the many love affairs, his happy marriage at the age of 50 to Sara Haardt, and his complicated but stimulating friendship with the famed theater critic George Jean Nathan. Rodgers vividly recreates Mencken's era: the glittering tapestry of turn-of-the-century America, the roaring twenties, depressed thirties, and the home front during World War II. But the heart of the book is Mencken. When few dared to shatter complacencies, Mencken fought for civil liberties and free speech, playing a prominent role in the Scope's Monkey Trial, battling against press censorship, and exposing pious frauds and empty uplift. The champion of our tongue in The American Language, Mencken also played a pivotal role in defining American letters through The Smart Set and The American Mercury, magazines that introduced such writers as James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Langston Hughes. Drawing on research in more than sixty archives including private collections in the United States and in Germany, previously unseen, on exclusive interviews with Mencken's friends, and on his love letters and FBI files, here is the full portrait of one of America's most colorful and influential men. "This biography, the best ever on the sage of Baltimore, is exhaustive but never exhausting, and offers readers more than moderate intelligence and an awfully good time." --Martin Nolan, Boston Globe

Having edited several other volumes of American writer Mencken's (1880-1956) writings, Joshi here reprints his book reviews from their original appearance in the Smart Set, American Mercury, and other magazines and newspapers between 1908 and the 1930s. He includes four essays reflecting on reviewing books. The reviews are in sections on establishing the canon, some worthy second-raters, trade goods, and thoughts on literary criticism. Only names and titles are indexed. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Previously published: New York: A.A. Knopf, 1921.

Good Press presents to you this meticulously edited H. L. Mencken collection: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche A Book of Burlesques A Book of Prefaces In Defense of Women Damn! A Book of Calumny The American Language The American Credo Heliogabalus: A Buffoonery in Three Acts Ventures Into Verse Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956) was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. As a scholar, Mencken is known for The American Language, a multi-volume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States and the book on Friedrich Nietzsche's philosophy.

In six volumes of Prejudices published between 1919 and 1927, H. L. Mencken collected some of the best essays he ever wrote and established the style that made him a titan of the free press. Thirty years later, James T. Farrell, Mencken's friend and the author of the Studs Lonigan trilogy, read again through the Prejudices and found them still relevant and stimulating. From the six original volumes, he selected thirty-five essays--each a stick of dynamite with a burning fuse. Here is Mencken at his hyperbolic best--from his thundering blows against politics, through his piercing deflations of pious reputations, to his tireless fusillades against the American plutocracy. He tallies the dubious merits of farmers, professors, economists, congressmen, and preachers. He calculates the displeasures of living in California--and the advantages of living in America: "Here the general average of intelligence, of knowledge, of competence, of integrity, of self-respect, of honor is so low that any man who knows his trade, does not fear ghosts, has read fifty good books, and practices the common decencies stands out as brilliantly as a wart on a bald head." "It should be clear to the reader that the preparation of this volume was to me a joy, a labor of love, and a privilege. These selections... represent Mencken when he was at the peak of his influence and had, in fact, become a legend. Here is some of his wittiest and most buoyant writing. Something of his wide range of interests and his broad field of reference is to be found in these essays. Many of them are unforgettable. Here in my opinion, is some of the very best of H. L. Mencken."--James T. Farrell, in the Introduction