Is Mencken Worth It?

Henry Louis Mencken (1880-1956), the Sage of Baltimore (a town not notably long on sages), was the most vivid literary journalist of the 20th century, and perhaps the most enduring, in part because such writing generally lasts about as long as a hatch of mayflies. Mencken's style, it's commonly said, has prolonged his posthumous lifeâ??boisterous, bludgeoning, bloody-minded, his prose whaled the tar out of every native piety he found insufferable, which pretty well covered them all. Although he called himself pre-eminently a "critic of ideas," his ideas reportedly withered and died decades ago. No decent person, according to the consensus of decent persons, could possibly read his undemocratic animadversions, not to say plug-ugly screeds, without revulsion. Mencken made no bones about his hatred for democracy and scorn for religion, particularly for the brand of Christianity practiced in the Bible Belt, a term he coined, interchangeable with the Hookworm and Pellagra Belt, another lip-smacking Menckenism. But then he was the most melodious of haters, and at the time anyway found a readership willing to dance to his tune.