Commentary: Mencken and the inferior man
Published April 03, 2004
A neo-Confederate sympathizer recently posted a blog entry extolling the virtue of writer H.L. Mencken, who died in 1956. He claimed he was saluting progress in race relations. Al Barger admits the only books he has ever read are those of Ayn Rand. It shows. If he had an even middling understanding of American history, the distorted views of it he expresses would not occur. But, of more interest for this entry, is why Barger is attracted to Mencken.
First, let's consider who the writer was. Henry Louis Mencken was born in Baltimore 15 years after the end of the Civil War. The core belief of the Old South, that some people are better than others, would influence him his entire life. He would embrace the myth of the genteel Southern aristocracy while dismissing most Americans as 'boobs' for decades. An irony of Mencken's career was that the petit bourgeoisie that championed him did not realize he looked down on it.
Mencken began working as a newspaper columnist in his teens. His most prominent role was as founder and editor of the American Mercury, from 1925 to 1933. The magazine reflected Mencken's romantic delusions about the South.
To try to understand the southern identity in historical terms is to quickly realize that over time there have been many Souths: the sunny South, the savage South, the agrarian South, the Jim Crow South, the violent South, the cracker South, the frontier South, the antebellum South; H.L. Mencken's Old South, populated by "men of delicate fancy, urbane instinct and aristocratic manners — in brief, superior men — in brief, gentry," the suffering South, the moral South, and the list goes on.
To have a gentry, one must have riffraff. Mencken considered everyone inferior to his "superior men." But, he believed Jews and blacks to be most inferior of all.
Much of the biography about Mencken has been lightweight, focusing on the humor of his writing and admiring his idiocyncracies. However, reporter Terry Teachout has produced a book that takes a more critical look at the Sage of Baltimore.
To cut right to the thorniest issue: Mencken, Teachout writes, "was an anti-Semite"; that fact "cannot now reasonably be denied."
- Commentary: Mencken and the inferior man
- Published: April 03, 2004
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- Section: Politics
- Writer: Mac Diva
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I happened across this essay, H. L. Mencken: Neo-Confederate, at Lew Rockwell.com. I don't agree with everything in it, but think it does say useful things about Mencken's relationship to the South. I am not sure Mencken would want to be claimed by the neo-Confederate movement, though. They are not genteel enough.
There is an another online essay citing Terry Teachout's analysis of Mencken here. It includes reference to Mencken's over identification with Germany, which led him to praise Nazi leaders later in life, among other interesting material.
This passage captures the big picture well:
Even in success, Teachout explains how Mencken was always conflicted internally, between populism and elitism, between civilized criticism and blatant prejudice. The book makes no attempt to absolve him of his obvious streak of racism, anti-Semitism in particular, though the author does point out that once he wrote a piece, for which he received death threats, condemning lynching, which at that time was not uncommon, as well as the fact that he employed and befriended many Jews, even at a time when it was not considered compulsory for white businessmen to practice equality. Mencken's contradictory nature is evident, particularly for a man whose prose came off as the epitome of self-assuredness.
Diva, I'll be checking out Mencken in more depth in a few weeks after things settle down here for me. That last quote you posted kind of summarizes what I've read about him thus far, that he was a walking contradiction in many ways.
Thank you, bhw. I was beginning to wonder if posting information about H.L. Mencken from solid sources is a bad thing-:). Where can one go and see mainstream literary criticism dismissed as 'making up facts'? Only at BU. U? Un-critics.
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A reader of the entry in which Al Barger quotes Mencken (in a very Bargerian way) asked about putting the writer into perspective. Though the length of a blog entry precludes an in-depth look, I believe this one explains Mencken's views on race, and how they influenced his life and writing, fairly well.
If you are not up on Mencken, I don't think it necessary to rush to the library and load up on books. His reputation as a writer is pretty much history. The American Mercury articles, for which he was most famous, did not travel well and now are of little interest. Mencken has had a slight rebirth, along with Ayn Rand and other writers with conservative leanings, but that is more political than literary. Unless you are a paleo-conservative, your time can be better spent.