The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken

The Skeptic: A life of H. L. Mencken, by Terry Teachout (HarperCollins, 432 pp., $29.95)

IN a hotel in upstate New York that I love, dating from the century before last, there is a hallway hung with photographs of the famous guests of the past. All are Anglo-Saxon men; most wear beards. One is a president (Hayes), one an industrialist (Carnegie), one a naturalist (William Burroughs). The majority are Protestant clergymen. They came to the hotel to discuss international arbitration and the treatment of Indians, and to commune with nature. They are dead, as we all shall be soon enough. More, they are gone: wiped from memory, almost from history. As far as the country that was once theirs is concerned, they might never have lived. Who dismissed them? Among others, H. L. Mencken, the subject of Terry Teachout’s splendid and engrossing book.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.

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The Skeptic: A life of H. L. Mencken, by Terry Teachout (HarperCollins, 432 pp., $29.95)

IN a hotel in upstate New York that I love, dating from the century before last, there is a hallway hung with photographs of the famous guests of the past. All are Anglo-Saxon men; most wear beards. One is a president (Hayes), one an industrialist (Carnegie), one a naturalist (William Burroughs). The majority are Protestant clergymen. They came to the hotel to discuss international arbitration and the treatment of Indians, and to commune with nature. They are dead, as we all shall be soon enough. More, they are gone: wiped from memory, almost from history. As far as the country that was once theirs is concerned, they might never have lived. Who dismissed them? Among others, H. L. Mencken, the subject of Terry Teachout’s splendid and engrossing book.

About the Author

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout is the drama critic of the Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. Satchmo at the Waldorf, his 2011 play about Louis Armstrong, has been produced off Broadway and throughout America.