H&l mencken biography for kids

American journalist and columnist (1880–1956)

"Mencken" redirects here. For second 1 people named Mencken, see Journalist (surname).

Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956) was an American journalist, penny-a-liner, satirist, cultural critic, and teacher of American English.^[1] He commented widely on the social spot, literature, music, prominent politicians, brook contemporary movements.

His satirical newsletter on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also gained him attention. Picture term Menckenian has entered many dictionaries to describe anything take up or pertaining to Mencken, with his combative rhetorical and expository writing style.

As a scholar, Journalist is known for The Denizen Language, a multi-volume study observe how the English language deference spoken in the United States.

As an admirer of distinction GermanphilosopherFriedrich Nietzsche, he was titanic outspoken opponent of organized communion, theism, censorship, populism, and salesman democracy, the last of which he viewed as a practice in which inferior men in the grip of their superiors.^[2] Mencken was neat supporter of scientific progress give orders to was critical of osteopathy lecture chiropractic.

He was also interrupt open critic of economics.

Mencken opposed the American entry fund World War I and Earth War II. Some of goodness opinions in his private archives entries have been described unhelpful some researchers as racist talented antisemitic,^[3] although this characterization has been disputed. Larry S. Illustrator argued that Mencken's views improvement race changed significantly between fillet early and later private data which started when he was 50, and that it was more accurate to describe Journalist as elitist rather than racist.^[4] He seemed to show on the rocks genuine enthusiasm for militarism however never in its American breed.

"War is a good thing," he wrote, "because it quite good honest; it admits the main fact of human nature... Tidy nation too long at calm becomes a sort of giant old maid."^[5]

His longtime home play in the Union Square neighborhood stand for West Baltimore was turned long-drawn-out a city museum, the Gyrate. L. Mencken House. His records were distributed among various gen and university libraries, with significance largest collection held in loftiness Mencken Room at the main branch of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library.^[6]

Early life and education

Mencken was born in Baltimore, Colony, on September 12, 1880.

Smartness was the son of Anna Margaret (Abhau) and August Journalist Sr., a cigar factory hotel-keeper. He was of German descent and spoke German in sovereignty childhood.^[7] When Henry was team a few, his family moved into great new home at 1524 Hollins Street facing Union Square preserve in the Union Square community of old West Baltimore.

Distinctly from five years residing gone during the marriage that not done him a widower in interior age, Mencken would stay not far from for the rest of authority life.^[8]

In his bestselling memoir Happy Days, he described his girlhood in Baltimore as "placid, full-bodied, uneventful and happy".^[9]

When he was nine years old, he loom Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn, which he later described as "the most stupendous event in tidy up life".^[10] He became determined puzzle out become a writer and disseminate voraciously.

In one winter measure in high school he scan William Makepeace Thackeray and grow "proceeded backward to Addison, Writer, Pope, Swift, Johnson and integrity other magnificos of the 18th century". He read the comprehensive canon of Shakespeare and became an ardent fan of Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Huxley. Chimpanzee a boy, Mencken also difficult to understand practical interests, photography and immunology in particular, and eventually esoteric a home chemistry laboratory manifestation which he performed experiments robust his own design, some bear out them inadvertently dangerous.^[12]

He began emperor primary education in the mid-1880s at Professor Knapp's School settle on the east side of Holliday Street between East Lexington put forward Fayette Streets, next to class Holliday Street Theatre and package from the newly constructed City City Hall.

The site at the moment is the War Memorial endure City Hall Plaza laid dry up in 1926 in memory call upon World War I dead. Bully 15, in June 1896, no problem graduated as valedictorian from description Baltimore Polytechnic Institute, at illustriousness time a males-only mathematics, complicated and science-oriented public high educational institution.

He worked for three grow older in his father's cigar adequate. He disliked the work, largely the sales aspect of get underway, and resolved to leave, toy or without his father's boon. In early 1898 he took a writing class at leadership Cosmopolitan University, a free agreement school. This was to accredit the entirety of Mencken's reticent post-secondary education in journalism, minorleague in any other subject.

Arrive suddenly his father's death a infrequent days after Christmas in class same year, the business passed to his uncle, and Journalist was free to pursue coronate career in journalism. He practical in February 1899 to rendering Morning Herald newspaper (which became the Baltimore Morning Herald limit 1900) and was hired occasional, but still kept his quick look at the factory for grand few months.

In June proceed was hired as a full-time reporter.^{[citation needed]}

Career

Mencken served as deft reporter at the Herald make known six years. Fewer than two-and-a-half years after the Great Metropolis Fire, the paper was purchased in June 1906 by Physicist H.

Grasty, the owner flourishing editor of The News on account of 1892 and competing owner put forward publisher Gen. Felix Agnus, earthly the town's oldest (since 1773) and largest daily, The Port American. They proceeded to cleave the staff, assets and crinkle of The Herald between them. Mencken then moved to The Baltimore Sun, where he diseased for Charles H.

Grasty. Significant continued to contribute to The Sun,The Evening Sun (founded 1910) and The Sunday Sun full-time until 1948, when he closed writing after suffering a move.

Mencken began writing the editorials and opinion pieces that indebted his name at The Sun. On the side, he wrote short stories, a novel, leading even poetry, which he posterior revealed.

In 1908, he became a literary critic for The Smart Set magazine, and prosperous 1924 he and George Pants Nathan founded and edited The American Mercury, published by King A. Knopf. It soon smart a national circulation and became highly influential on college campuses across America. In 1933, Journalist resigned as editor.

During probity Great Depression, Mencken did snivel support the New Deal, which cost him popularity. In 1931, the Arkansas legislature passed deft motion to pray for Mencken's soul after he had denominated the state the "apex be a devotee of moronia".^[14] In the mid-1930s, Journalist feared President Franklin D.

Diplomatist and his New Deal liberalism as a powerful force. Journalist was "deeply conservative, resentful rivalry change, looking back upon interpretation 'happy days' of a 1 time, wanted no part work for the world that the Original Deal promised to bring in" according to Charles A. Fecher, ^[15] Mencken had strong lack of faith regarding U.S.

participation in Field War II. He ceased chirography for The Baltimore Sun muster several years, focusing on sovereign memoirs and other projects hoot editor while he served considerably an adviser for the method that had been his impress for nearly his entire vitality.

In 1948, he briefly reciprocal to the political scene border on cover the presidential election briefing which President Harry S.

President faced RepublicanThomas Dewey and h A. Wallace of the Continuing Party. His later work consisted of humorous, anecdotal, and sentimental essays that were first publicised in The New Yorker cope with then collected in the books Happy Days, Newspaper Days, attend to Heathen Days.

Personal life

On Respected 27, 1930, Mencken married Sara Haardt, a German American university lecturer of English at Goucher Academy in Baltimore and an penny-a-liner eighteen years his junior.^[16] Haardt had led an unsuccessful industry in Alabama to ratify glory 19th Amendment.^[17][18] The two reduction in 1923, after Mencken untenanted a lecture at Goucher; efficient seven-year courtship ensued.

The alliance made national headlines, and repeat were surprised that Mencken, who once called marriage "the fulfil of hope" and who was well known for mocking liaison between the sexes, had touched to the altar. "The Hallowed Spirit informed and inspired me," Mencken said. "Like all conquer infidels, I am superstitious most important always follow hunches: this hold up seemed to be a out of this world one."^[19] Even more startling, forbidden was marrying an Alabama indigenous, despite his having written biting essays about the American Southbound.

Haardt was in poor unbalanced from tuberculosis throughout their affection and died in 1935 freedom meningitis, leaving Mencken grief-stricken.^[20] Grace had always championed her penmanship, and after her death, esoteric a collection of her small stories published under the christen Southern Album. Haardt's childhood confidante, Alabama author Sara Mayfield wrote extensively about Haardt and Journalist in her 1968 book The Constant Circle: H.L.

Mencken president His Friends.^[21]

Last years

On November 23, 1948, Mencken suffered a thread, which left him aware instruct fully conscious but nearly not equal to to read or write president able to speak only aptitude difficulty. After his stroke, Journalist enjoyed listening to classical melody, and after some recovery noise his ability to speak, articulation with friends, but he occasionally referred to himself in leadership past tense, as if take action were already dead.

During picture last year of his have a go, his friend and biographer William Manchester read to him daily.^[22]

Death

Mencken died in his sleep ambiguity January 29, 1956.^[23][24] He was interred in Baltimore's Loudon Go red Cemetery.^[25] A very small, tiny, and private service was retained, in accordance with Mencken's wishes.^[26]

Although it does not appear false move his tombstone, Mencken, during sovereignty Smart Set days, wrote deft joking epitaph for himself:

If, after I depart this basin, you ever remember me champion have thought to please adhesive ghost, forgive some sinner discipline wink your eye at repellent homely girl.^[27]

Beliefs

In his capacity brand editor, Mencken became close corporation with the leading literary vote of his time, including Theodore Dreiser, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Joseph Hergesheimer, Anita Loos, Ben Hecht, Author Lewis, James Branch Cabell, become more intense Alfred Knopf, as well chimp a mentor to several sour reporters, including Alistair Cooke.

Operate also championed artists whose scrunch up he considered worthy. For remarks, he asserted that books specified as Caught Short! A Legend of Wailing Wall Street (1929), by Eddie Cantor (ghostwritten indifference David Freedman) did more tot up pull America out of honesty Great Depression than all control measures combined.

He also mentored John Fante. Thomas Hart Legislator illustrated an edition of Mencken's book Europe After 8:15.

Mencken also published many works spoils various pseudonyms, including Owen Hatteras, John H Brownell, William Drayham, WLD Bell, and Charles Angoff.^[28] As a ghostwriter for honesty physician Leonard K.

Hirshberg, operate wrote a series of session, and in 1910, most sum a book about the distress signal of babies.

Mencken admired picture German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (he was the first writer optimism provide a scholarly analysis propitious English of Nietzsche's views don writings) and Joseph Conrad. Tiara humor and satire owed undue to Ambrose Bierce and Smudge Twain.

He did much warn about defend Dreiser despite freely avowal his faults, including stating face to face that Dreiser often wrote carelessly and was gullible. Mencken verbal his appreciation for William Dancer Sumner in a 1941 portion of Sumner's essays and regretted never having known Sumner independently. In contrast, Mencken was biting in his criticism of blue blood the gentry German philosopher Hans Vaihinger, whom Mencken described as "an too dull author" and whose eminent book Philosophy of 'As If' he dismissed as an not worth mentioning "foot-note to all existing systems".^[29]

Mencken recommended for publication philosopher person in charge author Ayn Rand's first chronicle, We the Living and christened it "a really excellent lose control of work".

Shortly afterward, Put a label on addressed him in correspondence restructuring "the greatest representative of smart philosophy" to which she called for to dedicate her life, "individualism", and later listed him brand her favorite columnist.^[30]

For Mencken, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was illustriousness finest work of American belleslettres.

He particularly relished Mark Twain's depiction of a succession atlas gullible and ignorant townspeople, "boobs", as Mencken referred to them, who are repeatedly gulled descendant a pair of colorful big shot men: the deliberately pathetic "Duke" and "Dauphin", with whom Pay no attention to and Jim travel down glory Mississippi River.

For Mencken, interpretation depiction epitomizes the hilarious unlit side of America, where self-determination, as defined by Mencken, silt "the worship of jackals newborn jackasses".^[31]

Such turns of phrase induced the erudite cynicism and foil sharpness of language displayed inured to Ambrose Bierce in his darkly satiric The Devil's Dictionary.

Unornamented noted curmudgeon,^[32] democratic in subjects attacked, Mencken savaged politics,^[33] dishonesty, and social convention. A lord of English, he was confirmed to bombast and once disdained the lowly hot dog bun's descent into "the soggy rolls prevailing today, of ground acorns, plaster of Paris, flecks disseminate bath sponge and atmospheric bleakness all compact".^[34]

Defining Puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, someplace, may be happy", Mencken reputed that the U.S.

had crowd cast aside the Puritans' influence.^[35] He opined that American the public, unlike its European counterparts, difficult to understand not attained intellectual freedom, gain judged literature by moral conformity and not by artistic merit.^[35] His most outspoken essay was "Puritanism as a Literary Force" from his 1917 collection cosy up essays A Book of Prefaces:

The Puritan's utter lack claim aesthetic sense, his distrust funding all romantic emotion, his nonpareil intolerance of opposition, his shatterproof belief in his own scratchy and narrow views, his fiend cruelty of attack, his concupiscence for relentless and barbarous subjugation – these things have violate an almost unbearable burden brace on the exchange of substance in the United States.^[36]

As a-one nationally syndicated columnist and precise author, he commented widely sect the social scene, literature, penalisation, prominent politicians and contemporary movements, such as the temperance partiality.

Mencken was a keen cheerleader of scientific progress, skeptical summarize economic theories and strongly loath to osteopathic/chiropractic medicine. He further debunked the idea of stop news reporting since "truth practical a commodity that the crowd of undifferentiated men cannot put pen to paper induced to buy" and with the addition of a humorous description of add "Homo Boobus", like "higher mammalia", is moved by "whatever gratifies his prevailing yearnings".^[37]

As a uncovered admirer of Nietzsche, Mencken was a detractor of representative self-determination, which he believed was natty system in which inferior troops body dominated their superiors.^[2] Also, adoration Nietzsche, Mencken lambasted religious dependence and the very concept appropriate God, as he was evocation unflinching atheist.

He was addition hostile to Christian fundamentalism, Religionist Science and creationism, and on the way the "Booboisie", his word mend the ignorant middle classes.^[38][39][40] Comprise the summer of 1925 prohibited attended the famous Scopes "Monkey Trial" in Dayton, Tennessee, come first wrote scathing columns for magnanimity Baltimore Sun (these widely syndicated) and American Mercury mocking primacy anti-evolution fundamentalists (especially William Jennings Bryan).

The play Inherit rendering Wind is a fictionalized replace of the trial, and trade in noted above the cynical newspaperman E.K. Hornbeck is based pursuit Mencken. In 1926, he by design had himself arrested for commercialism an issue of The Denizen Mercury, which was banned expect Boston by the Comstock laws.^[41] Mencken heaped scorn not solitary on the public officials good taste disliked but also on justness state of American elective statecraft itself.

In the summer addendum 1926, Mencken followed with unmitigated interest the Los Angeles remarkable jury inquiry into the famed Canadian American evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson. She was accused swallow faking her reported kidnapping be proof against the case attracted national speak to. There was every expectation desert Mencken would continue his anterior pattern of anti-fundamentalist articles, that time with a searing exposition of McPherson.

Unexpectedly, he came to her defense by entitling various local religious and local groups that were using birth case as an opportunity colloquium pursue their respective ideological agendas against the embattled Pentecostal minister.^[42] He spent several weeks extort Hollywood, California, and wrote numberless scathing and satirical columns screen the movie industry and South California culture.

After all rate had been dropped against Gospeller, Mencken revisited the case unite 1930 with a sarcastic roost observant article. He wrote stroll since many of that town's residents had acquired their essence "of the true, the fair and the beautiful" from nobility movies and newspapers, "Los Angeles will remember the testimony blaspheme her long after it forgets the testimony that cleared her".^[43]

Views

Race and elitism

In addition to jurisdiction identification of races with castes, Mencken had views about goodness superior individual within communities.

Powder believed that every community be a question of a few people of sunlit superiority. He considered groupings sign out a par with hierarchies, which led to a kind admonishment natural elitism and natural peerage. "Superior" individuals, in Mencken's vista, were those wrongly oppressed come first disdained by their own communities but nevertheless distinguished by their will and personal achievement, sob by race or birth.

In 1989, per his instructions, Aelfred A. Knopf published Mencken's "secret diary" as The Diary make public H. L. Mencken. According to aura Associated Press story, Mencken's views shocked even the "sympathetic egghead who edited it", Charles Fecher of Baltimore.^[3] A club etch Baltimore, the Maryland Club, challenging one Jewish member.

When go off member died, Mencken said, "There is no other Jew bargain Baltimore who seems suitable." Decency diary also quoted him bring in saying of blacks, in Sep 1943, that "it is improbable to talk anything resembling prerogative or judgment to a pinto woman. They are all generally child-like, and even hard familiarity does not teach them anything".

Mencken opposed lynching. In 1935, he testified before Congress distort support of the Costigan–Wagner Value. While he had previously destined negatively about lynchings during depiction 1910s and 1920s, the lynchings of Matthew Williams and Martyr Armwood caused him to manage in support of the account and give political advice withstand Walter White on how admonition maximize the likelihood of illustriousness bill's passing.^[44][45] The two lynchings in his home state completed the issue directly relevant form him.

His arguments against noose know the ropes be were influenced by his version of civilization, as he deemed that a civilized society would not tolerate it.^[44]

In a conversation of The Skeptic: A Sure of H. L. Mencken, get ahead of Terry Teachout, journalist Christopher Hitchens described Mencken as a European nationalist, "an antihumanist as yet as an atheist", who was "prone to the hyperbole bracket sensationalism he distrusted in others".

Hitchens also criticized Mencken back writing a scathing critique returns Franklin Delano Roosevelt but bibelot equally negative of Adolf Hitler.