» A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing

A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: SUPERB....BUT THEN WHAT WOULD YOU EXPECT? IT'S MENCKEN'S OWN SELECTION.
Comment: If you love Mencken, trust him to select his best writing. This is the book for you. Only topics of a timeless nature are included. None of the dated topics, obscure names or three generation old gossip included in other collections.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Mencken is talented.
Comment: This book is an excellent item for the individualist who knows how to appreciate a critical thinker. It's hard to put down.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: The Baltimorean Belle-Lettrist...
Comment: Most human beings can't write worth a damn. Mencken was an anomaly--a once-in-a-generation anomaly. This book represents over six-hundred pages of his best work, culled (by Mencken himself) from a fifty-year career in journalism. It is enjoyable and educational, and you can't ask for much more than that. Of course, Mencken allows his fulsome personality free rein, and hypersensitive, humorless, religious, and/or idealistic folks may be put off. Mencken needed those people to make fun of, to pinpoint their hypocrisy, silliness, uselessness to society, etc.; ergo, they may feel roughly used. Everyone else should have a good laugh.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: new h.l. mencken fan- life's full circle is timeless.
Comment: so many topics so little time. i found quickly the time to delve into the genius as presented. humor,candor,insight going lightly before you.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: A book for pricking poo-flinging monkeys
Comment: "but my sense is that his times were really the last 1900s, not even the times when he wrote."
-- Bruce Applebaum

Does the man who wrote this presume to judge between good and bad writing?

Mencken was, in a literal sense of the term, a prick. He seems to have surveyed his society for inflated egos to deflate with his acrid pen. Mencken is dead, but the sensitive stuff of which Mr Applebaum's ego-baloon is made is easily punctured. Even Mencken's ghost can do it, and has. As his deflating ego sqeeked out its last whine, Mr A. became indignant, set out pugnaciously for revenge on Mencken by writing his blurb, and tripped over his shoelaces.

If you are the kind of nitwit that flings words like ``racist'' and ``bigot'', like an angry monkey throws his poo, at any white man bold enough to suggest that the different races may have different attributes, than you need to read this book. The prick of it may send you howling from your tree, but you may find your way out of the jungle.

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