Description

Franklin Library leather edition of "A Mencken Chrestomathy," Edited and Annotated by H.L. Mencken, a Limited edition, one of the 100 GREATEST MASTERPIECES OF AMERICAN LITERATURE series, Illustrated with Frontispiece Portrait by Al Hirschfeld, published in 1980. Bound in hunter green leather, the book has matching French moire silk end leaves, acid-free paper, Symth-sewn binding, gold gilding on three edges, a satin book marker----in near FINE condition. Henry Louis Mencken, who lived from 1880-1956, was a Baltimore journalist, critic, and essayist. Mencken is best known for the aggressive iconoclasm of his editorial policies, especially during the First World War, when he exhibited a savagely satirical reaction against the blunders and imperfections of democracy and the cultural gaucheries of the American scene. Mencken was vehement in his denunciation of European patronage of this country, and in his advocacy of an indigenous civilization. His view were highly influential. Arkansas Governor Dr. Charles Brough got into an argument with Mencken who criticized Arkansas as a backward state with redneck hillbillies. Brough, who earned at Ph.D. at JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY in Baltimore, was a great champion of Arkansas. Mencken labeled Brough "the braying ass of the Ozarks." Mencken said: "Next to the clerk in holy order, the fellow with the foulest job in the world is the schoolmaster. Both are underpaid, both fall steadily in authority and dignity, and both wear out their hearts trying to perform the impossible." Mencken called President George Washington "the Rockefeller of his time," the richest man in the U.S., a promoter of stock companies, a land-grabber, an exploiter of mines and timber. . .he had a liking for forthright and pugnacious men, and a contempt for lawyers and schoolmasters. He was not pious. He drank whiskey whenever he felt chilly. . .he knew far more profanity and Scripture, and used and enjoyed it more." Mencken asks, "Does the average strong, successful man confine himself to one woman? Has he ever?" And "The prostitute is disesteemed today, not because her trade involves anything intrinsically degrading or even disagreeable, but because she is assumed to have been driven into it by dire necessity . . .the truth is that prostitution is one of the most attractive of the occupations practically open to the women who practice it, and the prostitute commonly likes her work, and would not exchange places with a shop girl or a waitress for anything in the world." Or "Henry James would have been vastly improved as a novelist by a few whiffs from the Chicago stockyards." "If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl." His definition of a Christian: "One who is willing to serve three Gods, but draws the line at one wife." Favorite definitions: An Archbishop: "a Christian ecclesiastic of a rank superior to that attained by God." A Courtroom: "A place where Jesus Christ and Judas Iscariot would be equals, with betting odds in favor of Judas." "Bachelors know more about women than married men. If they didn't they'd be married, too." A Misogynist: "A Man who hates women as much as women hate one another." Or Alimony: "The ransom that the happy pay to the devil." "He marries best who puts it off until it is too late." The New Deal: "It began like the Salvation Army, by promising to save humanity. It ended, again like the Salvation Army, by running flophouses and disturbing the peace." "Conscience is a mother-in-law whose visit never ends." "Show me a Puritan and I'll show you a son-of-a-bitch." Finally: my ABSOLUTE FAVORITE: "Nothing is so abject and pathetic as a politician who has lost his job, save only a retired stud-horse." 679 pages. I offer Combined shipping.