Download A Mencken Chrestomathy His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing HL Mencken Books

Product details Paperback 627 pages Publisher Vintage; 1st Vintage Books ed edition (April 12, 1982) Language English ISBN-10 0394752090

A Mencken Chrestomathy His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing HL Mencken Books Reviews

• While it's easy to read material one agrees with, it is a testament to the quality of the writing when you can't put something down even when you disagree and/or have no idea what the author is talking about. Such is Mencken. His use of the English language is of such a high order that even when discussing arcane topics and persons long dead and unknown today I savored every word. Mencken's skewering of major political figures makes today's commentary look pale and anemic. His rewriting of the declaration of independence "in plain American" alone is worth the price of the book as is his analysis of William Jennings Bryan. The imagined commentary of Cheops on his trials and tribulations during the building of his pyramid would, today, let's just say, be "slightly" controversial in it's use of a certain racial epithet (unless, of course, it was done as rap video by the "appropriate" artist). Mencken is the curmudgeon's curmudgeon and so his view of human nature does not comport with the utopian view of human perfectibility via the use of the force of the state as was common in the Progressive Era. He therefore has "the reformer" and "uplifter" in his sights on a frequent basis. He is well-worth reading today.
• “It’s not that we don’t have enough scoundrels to curse; it’s that we don’t have enough good men to curse them.”
  -G.K. Chesterton
  
  Mr. Mencken in his polemical style has no qualms about cursing scoundrels in this book... Some have viewed him as a disdainful misanthropic sourpuss, but this is not the case. He exposes the world as it really is and knew that the existing social order is a swindle and its cherished beliefs mostly delusions. I rate this book at 3 stars because Mencken never ventures beyond the mundane and merely offers up numerous real-life proofs that confirm what George Santayana stated years ago
  
  The world is a perpetual caricature of itself; at every moment it is the mockery and the contradiction of what it is pretending to be.
  -George Santayana
  
  Nonetheless, Mencken provides a fresh breathe of air to those of us who've been smothered by political correctness, governmental propaganda, and the manufactured ideas of the ruling class.
• When you read this book you can't help but think how much smarter Mencken was than you. He was also a very hard worker and took his writing seriously. I had to look up vocabulary words from this book more than any other before or since. I've also never read anything so cynical and biting. Mencken frequently brings things up you'd have never thought about, such as the quality of a man who writes histories, how cowardly mankind is, and how weird William Jennings Bryan was, among many other things. Almost every essay is very short, but no word is wasted. Can't recommend this book enough, it would also make a great gift for precocious teenagers and college students.
• This is not a book to sit down and read straight through. It's a book to savor a piece or two before bed, or in an idle moment. Mencken is a great and idiosyncratic stylist, and really fun to read. I became a fan from reading his obit in 1955, as a college freshman, and promptly bought an anthology of his writings, though not this one. I'm slowly working my way through this book, with great pleasure. I'm not as cynical as I was at nineteen, so I disagree with a lot of it. But that doesn't diminish my enjoyment. I disagree with P.J. O'Rourke too, but I still enjoy him.
• I was first introduced to H.L. Mencken by a Jewish friend when I was in my 20's. I've been hooked ever since. Times have changed a lot since then and the Republic is no more. But even so, there once was a time in this country when the press wasn't controlled and paid to spit out propaganda. For one brief shining moment it published freely, unfettered by dictate from government or the mob.
  
  This man lived on the edge of that time. His wit, his intellectual ability to think outside the box of events, the people and their culture, taking place around him then, would by today's intellectually fascist standard, fuzzily defined as political correctness by Bill Clinton back in 1990, will not be welcome by those of the strictly herd mentality of today. some of which sit, sadly to say, at today deleting reviews and comments from like-minded individuals, who will call a spade a spade rather than lie or gloss over their own opinions. I take no pleasure in saying that. In fact, it vexes me deeply, but it is an opinion that has become quite apparent to me when reading book reviews and their comment threads. And it smacks of the dictatorship behind political correctness. I would much rather read what someone actually thought, than what any apparatchik anywhere thinks anyone should say, imply or
  convey. And no, I'm not talking about name calling. But with the loss of freedom of press, it only follows that those who value it, lose our freedom of speech as well.
  
  If you're someone who also appreciates hearing someone's unvarnished opinion, has a sense of humour towards your culture, yourself, religion, and doesn't think the government and politicians are the greatest thing since sliced bread, you will find reading this book to be a breath of much needed fresh air from today's stifling, politically correct pollution that passes for informative commentary and opinion.
  
  These are the most valuable, interesting and refreshing aspects of reading H.L. Mencken IMHO and why I give this book 5 stars. He spoke his unvarnished opinion, as did many others of his time. It's what made people real and news and events informative, not glossed over. And they were allowed to have different opinions. They didn't have to tow the line of opinion of the editor or the owner of the newspaper to keep their job.
  
  This is a keeper.