Posted on 01/28/2006 7:32:20 AM PST by Borges
After drinking two mild Gibson cocktails and enjoying a crackling fire and the lively conversation, Mencken again complained of not feeling well, and before going upstairs to his third-floor back bedroom, again spoke to Cheslock.
"Louis, this is the last time you'll see me," he said to his old friend, Rodgers wrote.
At 9:15 p.m., Cheslock left the Hollins Street residence and drove home through a gathering sleet storm.
Mencken climbed into bed, turned on the radio, and fell asleep listening to a Mozart concert.
Early Sunday morning, when Rancho Brown, a Johns Hopkins Hospital orderly, arrived to help get Mencken bathed and dressed, he was unable to awaken him.
His physician reckoned that Mencken had died in the wee hours of Jan. 29, 1956.
(Excerpt) Read more at baltimoresun.com ...
That's a pretty good explanation, x. I think you've hit the nail right on the head.
I'm what you might call "later in life" but I really don't think I'll spend a whole lot of time exploring the man any further. When people who (apparently) think the sun rose and set on the man jump to full put-down mode whenever somebody criticizes him, that tells me something right there.
I guess I'd agree with well under half of what Mencken said. I certainly do not share his contempt for Christianity, for instance. But he was original, interesting, clever, and wickedly funny. Wouldn't mind having his gifts. I think he was the closest thing American liberals have had to a Coulter or a Steyn, and he wouldn't entirely fit the mold of a liberal today -- he may have been anti-war, anti-religion, and so forth, but he was also anti-government.
Self-ping
.
new tag bump
"In all that gargantuan paradise of the fourth-rate," he contended, "there is not a single picture gallery worth going into, or a single orchestra capable of playing the nine symphonies of Beethoven, or a single opera-house, or a single theater devoted to decent plays." Most southern poetry and prose was drivel, he charged, and "when you come to critics, musical composers, painters, sculptors, architects and the like, you will have to give it up, for there is not even a bad one between the Potomac mud-flats and the Gulf."
New York..a third rate Babylon.
H.L. Mencken
Congress consists of one third, more or less, scoundrels; two thirds, more or less; idiots, and three thirds, more or less, poltroons.
H.L. Mencken
Bookmark
I love the guys stuff.
L
Thus explaining his deep and abiding "love" for the Roosevelts.
That is excellent!
He loved the Roosevelts like Cindy Sheehan loves Feinstein.
My favorite cynic bump!
He wanted them to be more liberal?
I would say PJ O'Rourke is more of a modern day Menken than Steyn.
You're perhaps right about that. Steyn came most quickly to mind because his name is constantly on everyones lips. They are all rhetorical street brawlers!
Menckeniana is a quarterly journal published by his beloved Pratt Free Library on Cathedral street in Baltimore and a bargin at $15 per year.
Terry Teachout's recent biography is a wonderful read as well. Mencken's use of language, his anti-statism and his suspicion of organized religion are what drew me to him, however, the fact that his writing makes me laugh out loud is what keeps me coming back; ultimately this is why he survives--people like to laugh.
"The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts. He ascribes all his failures to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity and damfoolishness, to the machinations of werewolves assembled in Wall Street, or some other such den of infamy."Rush Limbaugh makes fun of conspiracy kooks and perpetual victims. I believe Rush performs a public service. We all need reminders not to succumb to lazy thoughts and easy excuses.
I have searched several times for a suitable biography but wasn't satisfied with what I found. Of course, I was only judging books by their cover, so to speak.
I remember when the Teachout bio was published...I was definitely interested but, after hearing some media chat, I decided not to read it. Can't remember quite why. Now that you have recommended it strongly, I may rethink my decision. (I think that was the time when Mencken's reputation was hurt by some anti-Semitic writings, although the "some of my best friends are..." defense seemed to have merit.)
I did purchase a volume of his diaries a few years back...an awful read. But I have only myself to blame. Anyone reading someone else's diary gets what he deserves.
I'll also checkout Menckeniana. Thanks.
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