When H. L. Mencken talked, everyone listened -- like it or not. In the Roaring Twenties, he was the one critic who mattered, the champion of a generation of plain-speaking writers who redefined the American novel, and the ax-swinging scourge of the know-nothing, go-getting middle-class philistines whom he dubbed the "booboisie." Some loved him, others loathed him, but everybody read him. Now Terry Teachout takes on the man Edmund Wilson called "our greatest practicing literary journalist," brilliantly capturing all of Mencken's energy and erudition, passion and paradoxes, in a masterful biography of this iconoclastic figure and the world he shaped.
About the Author :
Terry Teachout writes about literature and the arts for the New York Times, Time, National Review, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Commentary. His books include A Second Mencken Chrestomaby, a manuscript he rediscovered among Mencken's private papers. He lives in New York City.
Review :
"Terry Teachout's life of Mencken is an important book. Mencken was the nearest approach to an American Dr. Samuel Johnson, both for the passion he brought to the study of the language and the virtuosity with which he used it. His life is worth recounting and is here expertly and fairly summarized." - Paul Johnson
"What a feast of a book! Terry Teachout has brought H. L. Mencken vibrantly to life, in all his rich comic irascibility. He also takes us back to a time, decades before the advent of "the media," when American culture was led out of the wilderness by a handful of fearless literary men, none greater than the self-created Baltimore genius who poured forth millions of sentences, every one of them crackling with intelligence, on a wealth of subjects: Nietzsche, Dreiser, Calvin Coolidge, not to mention lynch mobs, Puritans, teetotalers, censors, and of course the entire 'booboisie.' The Skeptic is irresistible--just like Mencken himself. I wish I'd written it." - Sam Tanenhaus
"Who now reads Mencken? Not nearly as many people as Mencken's still-astonishing writings deserve. But many more people will discover the delights of Mencken's work, thanks to Terry Teachout's judicious but lively assessment of the more-often-lively than judicious journalist and critic." - George F. Will
"Mencken has finally met a worthy biographer. Teachout is the kind of tour guide a first-rate biography requires." - Ken Auletta
"As brisk and smart, as smooth-as-silk an account as we're likely to find. . . . [A] discerning portrait." - New York Times
"Beautifully written [and] full of insight. . . . Remind[s] us of the full dimensions of Mencken's career and remarkable role he played in U.S. cultural history." - Wall Street Journal
"(Mencken's) life is worth recounting and is here expertly and fairly summarized ... An important book." - Paul Johnson, author of Modern Times
"Many more people will discover the delights of Mencken's work, thanks to Terry Teachout's judicious but lively assessment." - George F. Will, syndicated columnist
"Teachout has brought Mencken to life, in all his rich comic irascibility. The Skeptic is irresistible." - Sam Tanenhaus, author of Whittaker Chambers
"A fascinating biography that has much of the neat phrasing and sly wit that the rancorous writer displayed himself." - Publishers Weekly
"A balanced, judicious assessment, flecked with sharply critical insights." - Washington Post Book World
