H.L. Mencken, Homebrewer

[Wiley50]

http://home.earthlink.net/~ggsurplus/mencken.html

H.L. Mencken, Homebrewer
"No one ever went broke underestimating the taste of the American public."

You have undoubtedly heard that phrase before, perhaps in a discussion of politics, television or light beer. I comes to use from Henry Louis Mencken, and alone would have been enough to earn him a place in our collective memory. But he gave us more.

Newspaperman, editor and writer, H.L. Mencken was the foremost literary and social critic of the 1920s, co-founder and editor of The American Mercury magazine, creator of the landmark linguistic study, The American Language, the man who urged Clarence Darrow to defend John T. Scopes in the famous "Monkey Trial," and an ardent foe of censorship, narrow-mindedness and prudery. And so he is remembered by most as a man with a well-sharpened pencil and an equally well-sharpened wit.

Unless, of course, you're a homebrewer. In that case, you may remember him at home in Baltimore, opening a tin of malt syrup, wreathed in steam from his brewpot, or perhaps hovering over his stoneware crock studying a spider web of white scum, or seated in his favorite chair flinching as a bottle detonates in the basement.

A Passion for His Craft

For H.L. Mencken was a homebrewer with a passion for his craft and a missionary's zeal when it came to spreading the word. The coming of Prohibition sounded to him like a clarion call and the starter's gun combined. By day, he lambasted the Drys from his desk, and by night he fought them in the kitchen.

[CBGLuthier]

1. racist asshat

To quote Mr. Mencken further

The educated Negro of today is a failure, not because he meets insuperable difficulties in life, but because he is a Negro. His brain is not fitted for the higher forms of mental effort; his ideals, no matter how laboriously he is trained and sheltered, remain those of a clown.

So, to turn a phrase, FUCK HIM!!!!

[Wiley50]

2. OOh! I Did Not Know That

Wish I could delete the thread now

[Spider Jerusalem]

3. Mencken was, occasionally, guilty of racist and anti-Semitic sentiments, it's true...

but when one looks at the totality of his writing, rather than cherry-picking the worst things he ever said, he's really more a misanthrope than a bigot. His biggest fault was his tendency to think in stereotypes (one he unfortunately shared with most of the lesser writers of his day); as to his racism, there's this (review from the New York Times, 13 Feb. 1984, of a book on Mencken's influence on black writers):

* THE SAGE OF HARLEM: H. L. Mencken and the Black Writers of the 1920s. By Charles Scruggs. (Johns Hopkins University, $21.50.) During the 1920's, H. L. Mencken was a dominant force in American literature as coeditor of The Smart Set and editor of The American Mercury. Charles Scruggs, an associate professor of English at the University of Arizona, makes a reasonably convincing case that Mencken's influence extended to black writers and that he had an impact on the first flowering of American black literature, known as the Harlem Renaissance. As editor of The American Mercury (1924-1933), Mencken published 54 articles by or about blacks, a record it is doubtful any white editor has equaled since. As a critic, he was not bashful in writing about black literature and life (or anything else), and such black writers as James Weldon Johnson, George Schuyler, W. E. B. Du Bois and Walter White urged blacks to read him. Black writers were attracted to Mencken's ferocious attacks on the South, which gave them a model of principled outspokenness. His championing of satire led many black writers to use it as an effective form of social commentary. Finally, Mencken espoused a romantic ''idea of the city'' at a time when blacks were becoming an urban people. Mr. Scruggs' argument for Mencken's influence on the Harlem Renaissance would have been strengthened if he had compared Mencken's influence as an editor with that of Du Bois, who edited the N.A.A.C.P. magazine, Crisis, and Charles S. Johnson, who edited the National Urban League's Opportunity. Nornetheless, he adds to our understanding of the Harlem Renaissance and does so in clear and concise prose admirably free of academic jargon. - Julius Lester

[Wiley50]

6. Gee! I just Wanted To Talk About BEER

His Homebrew ideas were rad

[toddaa]

7. Mencken was a very complicated person

Both personally and historically. Mentioning his name in liberal circles is bound to get you in trouble. I love most of his writing, but there are bits in there that just make me grimace. Much like his hero, Friedrich Nietzsche, the guy's writing was the equivalent of lobbing hand grenade into a crowded marketplace. Regardless of all that, he was one of the 20th century's greatest American writers.

[blues90]

4. look up Libido for the ugly by HL Mencken

Here he does a pretty good job at attacking the white business world .

[mitchum]

5. Yes, he was also a reactionary asshole who championed a rigid social order

Fuck Mencken. I'll take Twain or Bierce any day as the TRUE American iconoclasts.

[La_Fourmi_Rouge]

8. He hated everyone equally, I think...

It is worth a mention that, reportedly, Mencken made his famous remark with regard to P.T. Barnum.

Mencken won me over when he invented a new word, pronouncing himself an "omnibibulist", one who enjoys drinking an enormously wide variety of alcoholic bevrages. Anyone truly interested in his contribution to American letters should check out the C-SPAN "American Writers" series, which includes a fine study of his life and writing.

H.L. Mencken: The American Language