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| AUTHOR: | H.L. MENCKEN |
| CATEGORY: | Book |
| MANUFACTURER: | Knopf |
| ISBN: | 0679413154 |
| TYPE: | (Henry Louis),, 1880-1956, 20th Century American Prose, 20th century, American Journalism, Authors, American, Biography, Biography / Autobiography, Biography/Autobiography, Editors, Literary, Mencken, H. L, United States, Biography & Autobiography / Literary |
| MEDIA: | Hardcover |
| # OF MEDIA: | 1 |
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Customer Reviews of My Life As Author And Editor
The Sage of Baltimore, interrupted Even after all this time, we still feel the impact of H. L. Mencken's arrival on the literary scene in the opening years of the 20th century. He wrote millions of words, and has been the subject of many biographies. Despite all the ink spilled by and about him, the fragmentary nature of his autobiographical works still strikes one as a tragedy. He began keeping a diary from the mid-Thirties, when he was over fifty, and his career-ending stroke cut this autobiography off just before he started writing about his glory years of the Twenties.
It's a pity, certainly, but editor Jonathan Yardley has done a splendid job editing the manuscript down to this book. Yardley succeeded in accomplishing his goal, to "let Mencken be Mencken" and to keep himself in the background. One approvingly contrasts this style of editing with David Cairns well-researched but fussily-footnoted _Memoirs of Hector Berlioz_.
So, we have Mencken's own account of the beginnings of his career, and his encounters with publishers, editors, poets, writers, and other notables of the 1910s. The only person who gets treated as an equal is his partner at _The Smart Set_ magazine, George Jean Nathan. Most everyone else has their weaknesses and strengths--if they have any strengths in his eyes--baldly and succinctly described. We meet the then up-and-coming Theodore Dreiser, Edgar Lee Masters, and Ezra Pound, to mention a few. Mencken gives us some flash-forwards every now and then--we see Pound as a raving brownshirt in the Thirties, demanding to be published in Mencken's magazine. Mencken prints the text of the withering reply he sent back.
Mencken's tone can be off-putting for a neutral reader. He frequently comes across as suaver-than-thou, unconned and unconnable. But most likely only people who already love Mencken will read this anyway, so they will enjoy themselves nonetheless. And he is very funny in some vignettes. Read the one where he and Nathan pretend to be interested in a tramp poet's tour of Greenwich Village.
There are two paragraphs early on in the book which may serve as the thesis statement for his whole life and career. In them, he describes how he was never attracted to religion or its secular imitations, nor ever considered himself a tool of the plutocracy. And indeed, a review of his output does show that he fell into his distinctively cynical style very early in his career, and never seemed to find cause to depart from it. In this biography he relates his activities and his reasons for them with very few emotional asides. Like a speakeasy gin-and-tonic, this is astringent stuff--but it hits the spot.