As part of my preparation to submit a proposal for a religious biography of H. L. Mencken, I ran across a back issue of Menckeniana which had Jonathan Yardley‘s talk at the 2010 Mencken Day. The book critic for the Washington Post, here is how Yardley described his first encounter with Mencken:
I was absolutely bowled over. The power, wit, and originality of Mencken’s prose seized me and shook me to within an inch of my life.
Yardley would eventually pitch a biography of Mencken but could not complete the project. In turn he encouraged Terry Teachout to pick up the task. Yardley concedes that Teachout wrote a better book than he could have. One indication may be this astute observation by Teachout about Mencken’s style and its journalistic genesis:
It is, in short, a triumph of style. The fact that this triumph was the work of a common newspaperman has long served to obscure its singularity, especially among academic critics. “The smell of the city room,” Charles Angoff wrote in 1938, “was in everything he put between book covers.” But what Angoff meant as deadly criticism is in fact central to Mencken’s appeal. It was the discipline of daily journalism that freed him from the clutches of the genteel tradition. The city room was for Mencken what Europe was for Henry James: the great good place where he became himself.
And what would a post on Mencken be without a jolt of that prose? Here is Mencken on the joys of newspaper work when he started to write:
I believed then, and still believe today, that it was the maddest, gladdest, damndest existence ever enjoyed by mortal youth. The illusion that swathes and bedizens journalism, bringing in its endless squads of recruits, was still full upon me, and I had yet to taste the sharp teeth of responsibility. Life was arduous, but it was gay and carefree. The days chased one another like kittens chasing their tails.
Old Life 
I imagine that a “religious biography” of Mencken would run to, oh, 5 pages or so. Maybe 6. Heh. I think Teachout covered that ground pretty thoroughly – what there is of it to cover.
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Richard Z., I am a fan of Teachout’s book. But for Christianity alone, he has only 3 — count ’em, THREE — references to Christianity, and only six pages of discussion of Treatise on the Gods. Everywhere Mencken turned he encountered Christianity in some form, and wrote about most of those encounters.
I’m glad you’re not my editor.
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Though we have some theological differences, I like to read the prose of Mencken too.
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Since Baltimore will be the setting, see if you can work “The Wire” into it.
I was sitting at a track meet the other night and asked my in-laws if they had seen it. They said they had and remarked how much they liked Omar. This is why we have gotten along so well for the last 22 years.
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An even broader project I would be interested in is a book on 20th Century Public Intellectuals — Guys (and gals) like Mencken, Mark Van Doren, Edmund Wilson, James Agee, Mary McCarthy, Wallace Stegner, Larry McMurtry, & Christopher Hitchens. People with great minds who moved seamlessly from newspaper work to magazine work to criticism to fiction to non-fiction to screenwriting. A monumental project, no doubt, but a fascinating one.
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Erik, my in-laws (and my parents) would have had major strokes.
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D.G.,
I often look at my grandparents’ standards and my own and ask “Were they square or am I corrupted?”. I’m not sure if I want to know the answer. When I look at (boomer) parents I don’t ask quite the same question. Each generation has its own virtues and vices, I suppose.
What did your Baptist parents think of your adult choices, theological and otherwise?
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Erik, my parents were loving and forgiving (and I was not always an open book). It seemed to work pretty well, until they came over for a “dry” holiday meal. Doh!
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There is a lot to be said for not accentuating our differences with our parents. Focus on what we have in common and seek to honor them as the 5th commandment requires. The Westminster has been really helpful to me in thinking about the 4th & 5th commandments.
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Sometimes when we honor them and just do what we do we end up influencing them way more than if we were to argue with them.
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We 2Kers should think about those first 5 commandments a lot. Our opponents really have 6-10 covered. They think about those more than enough for all of us.
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Erik, the real fun is having Bible church fundie in-laws and mainline liberal parents (and Catholic extended family). But here is where Luke 14 comes in handy: “If anyone comes to me and does not hate his own father and mother…he cannot be my disciple.” Since the fifth is still operative, talk about temporal-eternal tension.
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I was able to recently navigate the “not a teetotaler” issue with my Southern Baptist parents and it went much better than expected. It’s equally wrong to be insensitive to your parents or to be a phony before them, I think.
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Zrim,
It’s a respectful, loving, honoring hatred.
Kind of like the people in church that we love, but really can’t stand.
No one said this Christian thing was simple.
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Chortles – I was able to recently navigate the “not a teetotaler” issue with my Southern Baptist parents and it went much better than expected. It’s equally wrong to be insensitive to your parents or to be a phony before them, I think.
Erik – If your experience is like mine, your dad will be drinking with you in two years. You’ll have one beer and your dad will have like four. He’s been abstaining all these years for your sake and now the pressure’s off.
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I adored Hitchens as well. But when one writes about the timely and not the timeless, where style must stand in for substance, sic transit gloria mundi.
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Enlightening,, Tom, thanks. To which I can only add: Quidquid latine dictum, altum videtur.
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Chortles, for the record, I did “come out” with my parents when I was the best man at a wedding where they had to see me give the toast. But that didn’t go well. So I abstained (and hid the bottles) when they visited.
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D.G.,
When did you come out as a Presbyterian and how was that received?
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Erik, in grad school in Baltimore. It was fine. No infant baptisms that day.
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While we’re talking authors I should say that Thomas Hardy’s “Under the Greenwood Tree” is rife with lines and passages of interest to the 2ker and anyone concerned with church music. It’s a quick read, entertaining,and illuminating.
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Thanks, Chortles.
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‘No infant baptisms that day.’ Yea, that’s the pushback from baptist in-laws;’ did you wet-hand any babies today’. My last 5th commandment response; ‘No, but we did go over to First Baptist and catcall a baby dedication, so it was still a good day.’ The prior response was; ‘No, but we did give some new parents a starter rosary kit and scapular’ I always know it went well, when my father-in-law gives a grunt and takes another sip and my mother-in-law eye’s start darting back and forth.
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For Eric the Ned:
“Ah, Sam was a man,” said Mr. Penny, contemplatively.
“Sam was!” said Bowman.
“Especially for a drap o’ drink,” said the tranter.
“Good, but not religious-good,” suggested Mr. Penny.
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“Then the music is second to the woman, the other churchwarden is second to Shiner, the pa’son is second to the churchwardens, and God A’mighty is nowhere at all.”
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Sean, Baptist MILs are fun, especially when you end up with a couple of pre-teen nieces from a sleepover and they have to accompany you to a Presbyterian church that serves wine for communion and you advise them that since they’re not communicant that it’d be a good idea to abstain but they don’t listen because they don’t know what the word “communicant” means and they drink the wine anyway and your MIL’s biggest concern isn’t so much ignorant eating and drinking but the fact that now they have a good chance at becoming alcoholics from that little vial of booze.
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Zrim, I like the fact that it’s a good chance, as in likely. It reminds me of an old man, retired sheriff, at a PCA up the road who decided that the young folks(under 45) were becoming a deleterious influence due to our quarterly poker, whiskey and cigar night. I tried to explain to him that the larger threat was the loss of particularization of our faith with the pastor trying to follow Keller in his post modern theological church speak, and not being very good at it, and the word faith influence coming from one of his brother elder’s wife as she indoctrinated the women of the church in all things Joyce Meyer. He decided that, no, that wasn’t it.
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Zrim, a Baptist friend of the family hasn’t worn pants since her baptism and wouldn’t let a thief in her mouth (alcohol) to steal her soul. Meanwhile she smokes cigs and has a radar detector in her car so she won’t get caught speeding. Oh yeah, and a July 4 party every year with an impressive assortment of illegal fireworks. We sometimes threaten our kids by telling them they’ll have to stay at her house “next weekend.”
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If you don’t have a good Baptist in your life you owe it to yourself to go find one. Hold out for a lease with an option to buy.
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M&M, we’ve made a similar threat because it would mean church where the pastor tosses fortune cookies from the stage and baptized pop music. On those days I’m convinced I’ve quite ruined my children, I remember that at least they are well scandalized by fortune cookies being thrown at them in church and baptized pop music.
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