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Heathen Days: Mencken's Autobiography: 1890-1936 (H. L. Mencken's Autobiography #3)
by
H.L. Mencken
With a style that combined biting sarcasm with the "language of the free lunch counter," Henry Louis Mencken shook politics and politicians for nearly half a century. Now, fifty years after Mencken’s death, the Johns Hopkins University Press announces
The Buncombe Collection
, newly packaged editions of nine Mencken classics:
Happy Days
,
Heathen Days
,
Newspaper Day
s,
Prejud
...more
Paperback
,
320 pages
Published
August 28th 2006
by Johns Hopkins University Press
(first published 1941)
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This is the second best of Mencken's three-part autobiography. More a collection of essays than an narrative, it is a fascinating insight into his wry view of the world. Mencken is impatient, mocking, and arrogant, but brilliant. He has his faults, but doesn't shy away from them. His honesty is as shocking today as it was in the ancient days of the first quarter of the 20th century. It's amazing how neglected he is today, but his language is far from modern, and though beautiful and clever, it i
...more
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HEATHEN DAYS. (1943). H. L. Mencken. ***.
This was the third and last volume in Mencken’s autobiography, and was, frankly, disappointing. He used this edition to fit in stories that probably didn’t fit in the first two volumes, or – maybe – that he didn’t remember in time to fit them in. What becomes immediately apparent, however, is that Mencken has changed his writing style so that it mimics Mark Twain and his style of humor. The problem is that Mencken doesn’t have the same sense of humor that ...more
This was the third and last volume in Mencken’s autobiography, and was, frankly, disappointing. He used this edition to fit in stories that probably didn’t fit in the first two volumes, or – maybe – that he didn’t remember in time to fit them in. What becomes immediately apparent, however, is that Mencken has changed his writing style so that it mimics Mark Twain and his style of humor. The problem is that Mencken doesn’t have the same sense of humor that ...more
Autobiography is still biography. Great.
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Henry Louis "H.L." Mencken
became one of the most influential and prolific journalists in America in the 1920s and '30s, writing about all the shams and con artists in the world. He attacked chiropractors and the Ku Klux Klan, politicians and other journalists. Most of all, he attacked Puritan morality. He called Puritanism, "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."
At the height o ...more
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