Prejudices, Reissued

I learn via the Arts and Letters RSS that H.L. Mencken's series, Prejudices, has been reissued as a single collection. I have hunted copies of the series -- collections of the Bad Boy of Baltimore's harshest critiques -- at used bookstores across America.

I've found Mencken fascinating first as the ultimate iconoclast; skeptical but not a cynic. His role in defining the early 20th century culturally is often underestimated.

More recently, I find him a presentist echo for today's chattering class on cable news. As Truman said, the only thing new in the world is the history we don't know, and it is very easy to point backwards to Mencken and say, there, there is the precursor of Bill O'Reilly; of Keith Obermann; of Glenn Beck; of Rachel Maddow.

In some ways yes, but in many, it does violence to the record. Mencken was, to use the now almost passe term, a hater. He was, however, a self-aware hater -- a critic who fully understood he was expressing his personal view of the upper class and those who perceived of themselves as successful.

A&L links to a review on Barnes and Noble's site by Katherine Powers:

Prejudices must be taken at its title's word: the pieces within are the enunciation of visceral, intransigent opinions, often pedestrian in their substance and riven by inconsistency. They are, in a word, journalism.

Oooh. That was, dare I say, a Mencken-esque turn of phrase by Powers.

I use Mencken extensively in my history class, and for those who would like a taste of what a really catty column reads like, pick up a Prejudiced or two. Sahara of Bozart comes quickly to mind, or his missives from the Scopes Trial. Powers reminds of the obituary column of William Jennings Bryan in which Mencken writes of midwestern statesman: a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without shame or dignity.

Next time you think a Limbaugh is biting, or a Dennis Miller turns an erudite riposte -- spend a little time in the 1920s.