Books in Brief: A Carnival of Buncombe

A Carnival of Buncombe: Writings on Politics, by H. L. Mencken, edited by Malcolm Moos (University of Chicago, paperback, 370 pp., $10.95)

The University of Chicago Press here reprints a classic Mencken collection, which has been out of print since Johns Hopkins first published it in 1956. Some 69 of Mencken’s famed Monday articles for the Baltimore Evening Sun are included, all of them substantiating the claims that Joseph Epstein, who has written a new Foreword for this edition, makes for their author. These are, first, that Mencken had “a special point of view” rather than a collection of opinions, and second, that, “Along with Ernest Hemingway, H. L. Mencken devised one of the few original and unmistakable American prose styles of the current century.” In sum, this is very rich stuff. Faced with what he felt were the nonentities of the 1920s, Mencken looked back with a certain fondness to Teddy Roosevelt: “Life fascinated him and he knew how to make his doings fascinating to others,” said Mencken; and “There was a time when the White House was frequented by interesting and amusing persons, notably during the reign of Roosevelt, but of late it is only a hangout for trash.” Faced with what he felt was a procession of woodenheads, Mencken extravagantly supported La Follette in 1924, A1 Smith in 1928, and FDR in 1932. Yet by 1936 he had come to see, more clearly than anybody else, the very real dangers posed by the New Deal, “a gallimaufry of transparent quackeries” that “convinced millions of the lazy lowly that the taxpayer owes them a living.” There was a new game being played in Washington, and Mencken knew it. A Carnival of Buncombe gives the lie to those critics who believe Mencken was in decline in the 1930s: The truth is that he was better and sharper than ever, if not quite so humorous. But then again, it is one thing to mock an antique like Prohibition, and quite another to attack the advent of the welfare state.

JM

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A Carnival of Buncombe: Writings on Politics, by H. L. Mencken, edited by Malcolm Moos (University of Chicago, paperback, 370 pp., $10.95)

The University of Chicago Press here reprints a classic Mencken collection, which has been out of print since Johns Hopkins first published it in 1956. Some 69 of Mencken’s famed Monday articles for the Baltimore Evening Sun are included, all of them substantiating the claims that Joseph Epstein, who has written a new Foreword for this edition, makes for their author. These are, first, that Mencken had “a special point of view” rather than a collection of opinions, and second, that, “Along with Ernest Hemingway, H. L. Mencken devised one of the few original and unmistakable American prose styles of the current century.” In sum, this is very rich stuff. Faced with what he felt were the nonentities of the 1920s, Mencken looked back with a certain fondness to Teddy Roosevelt: “Life fascinated him and he knew how to make his doings fascinating to others,” said Mencken; and “There was a time when the White House was frequented by interesting and amusing persons, notably during the reign of Roosevelt, but of late it is only a hangout for trash.” Faced with what he felt was a procession of woodenheads, Mencken extravagantly supported La Follette in 1924, A1 Smith in 1928, and FDR in 1932. Yet by 1936 he had come to see, more clearly than anybody else, the very real dangers posed by the New Deal, “a gallimaufry of transparent quackeries” that “convinced millions of the lazy lowly that the taxpayer owes them a living.” There was a new game being played in Washington, and Mencken knew it. A Carnival of Buncombe gives the lie to those critics who believe Mencken was in decline in the 1930s: The truth is that he was better and sharper than ever, if not quite so humorous. But then again, it is one thing to mock an antique like Prohibition, and quite another to attack the advent of the welfare state.