A Mencken Chrestomathy, H. L. Mencken
A Mencken Chrestomathy, H. L. Mencken
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A Mencken Chrestomathy

Author: H. L. Mencken

Narrator: Grover Gardner

Unabridged: 26 hr 35 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 02/27/2021

Synopsis

Edited and annotated by H. L. M., this is a selection from his out-of-print writings. They come mostly from books—the six installments of the Prejudices series, A Book of Burlesques, In Defense of Women, Notes on Democracy, Making a President, A Book of Calumny, Treatise on Right and Wrong—but there are also magazine and newspaper pieces that never got between covers (from the American Mercury, the Smart Set, and the Baltimore Evening Sun) and some notes that were never previously published at all.Listeners will find edification and amusement in his estimates of a variety of Americans—Woodrow Wilson, Aimee Semple McPherson, Roosevelt I and Roosevelt II, James Gibbons Huneker, Rudolph Valentino, Calvin Coolidge, Ring Lardner, Theodore Dreiser, and Walt Whitman. Those musically inclined will enjoy his pieces on Beethoven, Schubert, and Wagner, and there is material for a hundred controversies in his selections on Joseph Conrad, Thorstein Veblen, Nietzsche, and Madame Blavatsky.

About H. L. Mencken

H. L. Mencken (1880–1956) was an American journalist, critic, essayist, satirist, and scholar. He began his career on local newspapers in 1899, becoming a reporter for the Baltimore Morning Herald and then serving on the staff of the Baltimore Sun. He is best known for the aggressive iconoclasm of his editorial policies, challenging cherished beliefs and institutions. The term “Menckenian” has entered multiple dictionaries to describe anything of or pertaining to Mencken, including his combative rhetorical and prose style.

About Grover Gardner

Grover Gardner is an award-winning narrator with over a thousand titles to his credit. Named one of the “Best Voices of the Century” and a Golden Voice by AudioFile magazine, he has won three prestigious Audie Awards, was chosen Narrator of the Year for 2005 by Publishers Weekly, and has earned more than thirty Earphones Awards.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Frederick on June 13, 2007

Over the years I've read bits and pieces of this collection of bits and pieces. I was most fascinated with it when I was in my early twenties. My father was a big reader and he would, on occasion, ask me to get THE MENCKEN CHRESTOMATHY out of his study so he could read a passage to me and my brother......more

Goodreads review by Mark on June 02, 2010

"A Mencken Chrestomathy" was originally published in 1948, when H L Mencken was 68, shortly before a stroke ended his writing career. It's my favorite collection of Mencken's writings, possibly because he selected the contents himself. He had been a journalist, literary critic and cultural gadfly fo......more

Goodreads review by Johnny on July 25, 2008

People need to read more Mencken. "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."......more

Goodreads review by Aaron on April 12, 2012

H. L. Mencken is one of those famous American writers that I'd heard about but never bothered to check out until after I watched The Wire, which is set in his native Baltimore and whose last episode had an epigraph by him. He's a worthy successor to Mark Twain in many ways: a strong background in jo......more

Goodreads review by Dave on October 08, 2014

Mencken is a curious figure. He was an unabashed elitist with an absolute disdain for much of humanity. He was also a lover of civilization, or at least certain of civilization's highest accomplishments like classical music, literature, and science. He was a devout classist, sometimes marking nine o......more

Quotes

“The culling of the best, the choicest passages, from the famous Prejudices, which in their day made Mencken leader of the iconoclasts, shocker of the conservatives, and favorite of the younger generation.” Kirkus Reviews

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