Mencken: The American Iconoclast
“[Mencken] single-handedly ushered American letters into the 20th century…and he did all of it in a swaggering, sarcastic and yet elegant prose style that remains—or ought to remain, anyway—the model for every columnist, critic and blog-militant in this famously polarized age…Let us hope that this comprehensive study of Mencken’s life introduces a new generation of readers to this enemy of falsehood and destroyer of pretense, this man whose response to the absurdity of the culture wars was laughter.”
Washington Post
A towering figure on the American cultural landscape, H. L. Mencken stands out as one of our most influential stylists and fearless iconoclasts—he was the twentieth century’s greatest newspaper journalist, a famous wit, and a constant figure of controversy. He fought for civil liberties and free speech when few others would, yet he held paradoxical views of minorities and was conflicted as a German-American during the two world wars. Marion Rodgers frames the public and the private man in a vivid recreation of his era, from the roaring twenties to the depressed thirties and on through World War II. Covered in the book are the many love affairs that made him known as “The German Valentino,” his happy marriage at age fifty, and his pivotal role in introducing James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Langston Hughes to the American literary scene.
Praise