Henry Louis Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken

His life:

He was born and spent most of his life in the city of Baltimore,

Maryland. He was the son of German immigrant parents. He completed

high school but did not attend university, only graduated from Baltimore

Polytechnic Institute at 16. He became a reporter on the Baltimore

Morning Herald.

A few years later, he joined the staff of its rival newspaper, the Baltimore

Sun or Evening Sun, first as a reporter, then as its drama critic and editor,

a position which he held until 1941.

In 1930, Mencken (in 50) married German American Sara Haardt, a

professor of English at Goucher College in Baltimore College, but Haardt

was in poor health from tuberculosis throughout their marriage and she

died in 1935.

When he was 68, Mencken suffered a stroke that left him aware and fully

conscious but nearly unable to read or write, and to speak with some

difficulty. Mencken died in his sleep on January 29, 1956.

His ideas

He was a central figure in American intellectual life during the 1920's. He

launched the most cutting attacks of any writer against America's middle

class culture. He invented the word

words

caustic, witty essays, he derided (mock) the institution which supported

the middle class.

He hated narrow-minded religion. He believed strongly in intellectual

freedom and fought all attempts to censor literature and drama. He felt

that the greatest threat of censorship came from the country's religion

of the Bible.

He hated commercialism. He did not support democracy because he

considered the masses too ignorant and greedy to exercise it wisely.

Quotation:

I believe that religion, generally speaking, has been a curse to mankind,

that its modest and greatly overestimated services on the ethical side have

been more than overcome by the damage it has done to clear and honest

thinking. I believe that no discovery of fact, however trivial, can be

wholly useless to the race, and that no trumpeting of falsehood, however

virtuous in intent, can be anything but vicious. I believe that all

government is evil, in that all government must necessarily make war

upon liberty. I believe that the evidence for immortality is no better than

the evidence of witches, and deserves no more respect. I believe in the

complete freedom of thought and speech. I believe in the capacity of man

to conquer his world, and to find out what it is made of, and how it is run.

I believe in the reality of progress. I believe that it is better to tell the truth

than to lie. I believe that it is better to be free than to be a slave. And I