Better Than Buncombe: A Review of THE VINTAGE MENCKEN
Just as Friends and Seinfeld are staples of television comedy, though dated by wardrobe and production designs, H. L. Mencken is the kind of author who makes literacy a worthwhile pursuit, even if his language harkens back to the age of flappers and Depression-era cosmopolitanism. Words, like “popinjay,” “mountebank,” ragamuffin,” “dunderhead,” “cad,” “buncombe,” and “pishposh,” as well as references to such extinct enterprises as Tammany Hall and Bethlehem Steel, are noteworthy less for their appearance in his work than for their regularity, as if Montgomery Burns leapt out of an episode of The Simpsons and into existence, and then took up journalism. (It’s not beyond comprehension that a reader might bate their breath for the appearance of “23 skidoo”!) Even Mencken’s exemplary scenario of “the very essence of comedy” is drastically unfashionable by today’s standards: “a situation almost exactly parallel to that of the pompous old gentleman who kicks a plug hat lying on the sidewalk, and stumps his toe against the cobblestone within” (from Prejudices: Series 1). Now, I wore a bowler to my senior prom, and the courtyard of my parents’ house is composed of cobbles. But, such artifacts are more kitsch, or camp, in today’s society than regularities, and therein lies the rub. Why is Mencken still relevant (e.g., why does his name come up in my spellcheck)?
The answer is alluded to within my opening sentence: longevity, despite outward, fashionable tastes. There’s little doubt that television shows, like Friends and Seinfeld, will be enjoyed for generations to come, not for their ’90s-centric fashions and technologies, but for exactly the opposite; they—the shows, that is—refuse to be defined by their generation. Their jokes and insights are largely universal, rather than topical. And obsolete styles and trends are generally utilized as props for a story or punchline, not as the lynchpin of a given episode, let alone an entire show. It’s in this sense of cutting deep below the epidermis of his medium, straight to the meat, that Mencken becomes more than the coagulation of colloquial and archaic words on a printed page. For example, in “series one” of his six-volume opus Prejudices, he hails and derides and lampoons the likes of Emerson, London, Twain, Bernard Shaw, and the Bard—artists of legendary caliber—alongside writers and theater critics and plays that no one, save the obsessive scholar, knows to have existed. Perhaps, as he was a powerful critic and essayist himself—and as Prejudices was his introduction into global celebrity—Mencken had a hand in destroying the things, and people, he loathed, and this is why the latter group are no more? Regardless, little knowledge is necessary, concerning the subject matter of his smaller targets, as Mencken’s grievances are less with individuals or their handiworks, than their philosophies, politics, and misguidedness. In the scathe he lobs, there lies sidesplitting humor, immaculate prose, and bankable erudition, beyond the quixotic. Mencken doesn’t even have to be right—I myself disagree with a number of his platforms—but, like any great writer, not a line is skippable and not an argument proves lazy. Mencken came to prominence forty-odd years after the death of Mark Twain, a man to whom he’s often compared. Some forty years after his own passing, Christopher Hitchens had loftily been touted this era’s Mencken. Alas, will it truly be another twenty-eight years before mankind encounters another? I, and all of humanity, should hope not!
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Two thoughts crossed my mind, when I happened across a one-dollar, first-edition copy of The Vintage Mencken at a local antique shop:
1. “What a deal!”
2. “What’s the deal?”
Obviously, I purchased it. Other than a little foxing around the edges, and that ineradicable “old-book” smell, which paradoxically also clings to newer items at secondhand stores, it was as good as new–physically as well as conceptually.
Published on the occasion of his 75th birthday, the very first copy of this book was gifted to Mencken himself. As he wasn’t its architect, merely its inspiration, the hodgepodge of articles, essays, and memoir excerpts within reads like someone else’s “favorites” list. For this reason, readers may feel confused by anachronisms and abrupt shifts in subject matter. Granted, every piece of this compilation is a miniature masterpiece, unto itself; but, a little more order would be desirable.
When reviewing older essays, maintaining objectivity can be near-impossible. One finds any excuse to correlate past events with current. Personally, I find a great deal of Mencken’s writing cogent to the woes and throes of modern times. Maybe this is just a case of “those who don’t study history are doomed to repeat it.” Foregoing platitudes of this ilk, Mencken suggests the same, chastising his audience for their ongoing victimization by ancient ruses. A writer of conviction, sans political party, he was a champion of logic over devotion, rationalism over convictions.
The Vintage Mencken covers many topics, but pervasive threads of ugliness and moral decrepitude, and means of identifying them, interweave each article. In this capacity, Mencken’s thematic structures twin those of Don DeLillo’s fiction, with a dab of Cormac McCarthy for equal measure. (After all, a little dab'll do ya!) In an essay regarding architectural quagmires of rural America, as seen from a train passing between cityscapes, entitled “The Libido for the Ugly,” Mencken challenges, “Let some honest Privat Dozent in pathological sociology apply himself to the problem.” It’s worth noting how, decades later, Umberto Eco did just that, in his stellar On Ugliness, a compilation of Eco’s and others’ essays, excerpts, and artwork, concerning the importance and contradictory beauty of physical and philosophical hideousness. At one point, I had to put down Mencken’s book, in order to consult Eco’s, wondering if the former had been a posthumous contributor to the latter. (Unfortunately, no.)
A few years before publication of The Vintage Mencken, a stroke cost its namesake the ability to read and write. During this time, his brother cared for him, providing hospice and entertainment, i.e. recitations of Mencken’s own works…including this book. I find this factoid a little morbid, as its last full essay is a book review of Man: An Adaptive Mechanism, by Dr. George W. Crile, examining death and the human condition. According to the critique, Crile defines biological death as “acidosis…the failure of the organism to maintain the alkalinity necessary to its normal functioning.” Of this, Mencken quips, “I thus think death as sort of deleterious fermentation, like that which goes on in a bottle of Château Margaux when it becomes corked.” A whiskey man myself, and knowing little of wine, I prefer to imagine the bottle Mencken references a mundane, rather than extravagant, selection. (If this is true, Mencken’s observation is even funnier than it originally sounds.)
As he was a man of satire and irony, I also like to envision Mencken–even in his enfeebled state–chuckling at his former wit. It would’ve been a lark to be in the room when his brother continued, “Men upon whom we lavish our veneration reduce it to an absurdity at the end by dying of cystitis, or by choking on marshmallows or dill pickles.”
All-in-all, this is a wonderful book, and a fantastic entry point into the works of Mencken. His breadth and wisdom are timeless, and as he penned hundreds—thousands?—of essays, articles, and books over his lifetime, I’m certain that any reader could compose an equally entertaining “best of” Mencken book. In fact, I’d love for a publishing house to sift through his massive backlog and organize a new compendium, edited exclusively to reflect present turmoil. To any company up to the task, I’d also suggest spraying the edges of each copy with discoloring agent and a few puffs of “old-book” fragrance to remind today’s readers that our current tribulations are nothing more than resurrections of forgotten foibles and the human incapacity to amend them.
