Ethics

Thoughts From Mencken

By Ed Brayton

I've just ordered another copy of A Mencken Chrestomathy, the collection of essays that H.L. himself pick from his own writings for publication before he died. I have probably returned to this book more than to any other book in my adult life after first reading it in college. My old paperback copy is so worn out and marked up that it is, quite literally, falling apart.

Mencken has many faults, of course, but he has two primary virtues. First, he is the single best wordsmith our nation has ever produced; he simply writes better than anyone else I can think of. Second, he has a clear and unvarnished view of the country that is remarkably accurate and timeless. There are a thousand things he said in the first half of the 20th century that could have been written to describe various aspects of our culture last week.

Full post as published by Dispatches from the Culture Wars on August 09, 2009 (boomark / email).