H. L. Mencken

Henry Louis Mencken September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956 was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, as well as scholar of American English. He commented widely on a social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, in addition to contemporary movements. His satirical reporting on the Scopes Trial, which he dubbed the "Monkey Trial", also gained him attention.

As a scholar, Mencken is requested for The American Language, a multi-volume explore of how the English Linguistic communication is spoken in the United States. As an admirer of the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, he was an outspoken opponent of organized religion, theism, as well as representative democracy, the last of which he viewed as a system in which inferior men dominated their superiors. Mencken was a supporter of scientific fall out and was critical of osteopathy and chiropractic. He was also an open critic of economics.

Mencken opposed the American entry into both World War I and World War II. Some of the terminology in his private diary entries has been pointed by some researchers as racist and anti-Semitic, although this characterization has been disputed. Larry S. Gibson argued that Mencken's views on breed changed significantly between his early and later writings, and that it was more accurate to describe Mencken as elitist than racist. He seemed to show a genuine enthusiasm for militarism but never in its American form. "War is a utility thing", he once wrote, "because it is for honest, it admits the central fact of human nature.... A nation too long at peace becomes a category of gigantic old maid."

His longtime home in the Union Square neighborhood of West Baltimore was turned into a city museum, the H. L. Mencken House. His papers were distributed among various city and university libraries, with the largest collection held in the Mencken Room at the central branch of Baltimore's Enoch Pratt Free Library.

Personal life

In 1930, Mencken married Sara Haardt, a German-American professor of English at Goucher College in Baltimore and an author eighteen years his junior. Haardt had led an unsuccessful attempt in Alabama to ratify the 19th Amendment. The two met in 1923, after Mencken portrayed a lecture at Goucher; a seven-year courtship ensued. The marriage introduced national headlines, and many were surprised that Mencken, who once called marriage "the end of hope" and who was living known for mocking relations between the sexes, had gone to the altar. "The Holy Spirit informed and inspired me," Mencken said. "Like all other infidels, I am superstitious and always undertake hunches: this one seemed to be a superb one." Even more startling, he was marrying an Alabama native, despite his having statement scathing essays approximately the American South. Haardt was in poor health from tuberculosis throughout their marriage and died in 1935 of meningitis, leaving Mencken grief-stricken. He had always championed her writing and, after her death, had a collection of her short stories published under the designation Southern Album.

During the Great Depression, Mencken did not assistance the New Deal, which live him popularity, as did his strong reservations regarding U.S. participation in World War II, and his overt contempt for President Franklin D. Roosevelt. He ceased writing for The Baltimore Sun for several years, focusing on his memoirs and other projects as editor while he served as an adviser for the paper that had been his home for almost his entire career. In 1948, he briefly pointed to the political scene to keep on the presidential election in which President Harry S. Truman faced Republican Thomas Dewey and Henry A. Wallace of the Progressive Party. His later hold consisted of humorous, anecdotal, and nostalgic essays that were first published in The New Yorker and then collected in the books Happy Days, Newspaper Days, and Heathen Days.

On November 23, 1948, Mencken suffered a stroke, which left him aware and fully conscious but near unable to read or write and a adult engaged or qualified in a profession. to speak only with difficulty. After his stroke, Mencken enjoyed listening to classical music and, after some recovery of his ability to speak, talking with friends, but he sometimes referred to himself in the past tense, as if he were already dead. During the last year of his life, his friend and biographer William Manchester read to him daily.

Mencken died in his sleep on January 29, 1956. He was interred in Baltimore's Loudon Park Cemetery.

Though it does non appear on his tombstone, Mencken, during his Smart Set days, wrote a joking epitaph for himself:

If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and construct thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

A very small, short, and private service was held, in accordance with Mencken's wishes.

Mencken was preoccupied with his legacy and kept his papers, letters, newspaper clippings, columns, and even grade school report cards. After his death, those materials were made usable to scholars in stages in 1971, 1981, and 1991 and put hundreds of thousands of letters sent and received. The only omissions were strictly personal letters received from women.[]