Any best-of list dealing with American political satire has to include H.L. Mencken, who was the country's leading social critic between the world wars. This volume of new material was written at the end of his life, well after his epochal days at the Smart Set and the American Mercury were over and his pro-German sentiments had driven him from the national stage. My Life as Author and Editor is taken from the immense unfinished manuscript that was deposited in the Enoch Pratt Free Library upon Mencken's death; in accordance with his wishes, the packet was not read for 35 years. To modern readers, it is not scandalous as much as fiercely opinionated; Mencken pulls no punches regarding the people he met and the life he led from 1896 to 1923. Fitzgerald, Dreiser, Pound, Joyce, and many others all pass under Mencken's gimlet eye. Along the way, plenty of the author's criticism is heaped on "Life in These United States," the stupidity and lack of sophistication that Mencken raged against his entire career. Better examples of Mencken's satire can be found, but as an introduction to the author's gruff charm and bombast, My Life as Author and Editor is well-suited. And, of course, it is a necessity for the devoted Mencken fan. --Michael Gerber

From Publishers Weekly
Mencken's unfinished, leisurely memoir, which he set aside in 1948 following a severe stroke and ordered locked away for 35 years after his death, covers his literary apprenticeship, his co-editorship of The Smart Set and his feuds and friendships with Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Alfred Knopf and others. There is much of the bellicose Mencken here, lamenting "the always dipping curve of American imbecility," deflating the Algonquin Roundtable literati and offering ruthlessly candid literary portraits. Yet, along with the dour sage of Baltimore, we get Mencken the vivacious gadabout, tippler and admirer of women as his intellectual equals. Mencken annoys with his frequent anti-Semitic remarks, his pro-German stance in WW I and other prejudices. Washington Post book critic Yardley, who has trimmed the original manuscript by 60%, provides an informative introduction to this period piece, which focuses on the years 1908-1923, with forays into the '30s and '40s. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

FROM OUR EDITORS

In this candid memoir, sealed in a vault for 35 years after Mencken's death, the literary figure recounts his career as a critic, essayist, and editor of the ground-breaking magazine Smart Set and observes the literary crowd of his day (Sinclair Lewis, Fitzgerland, Dreiser) as well as his own Prohibition-day soir￯﾿ﾽes.

ANNOTATION

Sealed in a vault for 35 years--upon the direction of Mencken himself--this account of the writer's early career is so telling and uproariously opinionated that it might have provoked a storm of libel suits, had it been published immediately after his death.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

After thirty-five years in a sealed vault, the autobiography of America's great social and literary critic now comes to light, edited and with an introduction by Jonathan Yardley. H. L. Mencken stipulated in his will that the manuscript not be read for thirty-five years so that no one mentioned in its pages would still be alive on publication, thus giving the author the freedom to write what he pleased. The narrative contains many profiles and reminiscences covering Mencken's years in the magazine world, particularly with the Smart Set, which he co-edited with George Jean Nathan. The heart of the book, however, lies in the descriptions of the relationships - rivalries, feuds, friendships and mentorships - that Mencken carried on with many of the significant writers of the twentieth century, including Theodore Dreiser, James Joyce, Willa Cather, Ezra Pound, Eugene O'Neill, Frank Harris, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Aldous Huxley and Sinclair Lewis. Full of wonderfully revealing anecdotes and biting observations, these pages are spiked with his trademark outrageous and pugnacious wit, as well as his alarming frankness. Although the memoir breaks off in the early 1920's because of a stroke he suffered in 1948, it contributes significantly to our understanding of the legendary literary era of which he was at the center. It also makes abundantly clear - if proof were ever needed - why he was our greatest social commentator, and why he has had an enduring impact on American society and letters.

SYNOPSIS

In this candid memoir, sealed in a vault for 35 years after Mencken's death, the literary figure recounts his career as a critic, essayist, and editor of the ground-breaking magazine Smart Set and observes the literary crowd of his day (Sinclair Lewis, Fitzgerland, Dreiser) as well as his own Prohibition-day soir￯﾿ﾽes.

FROM THE CRITICS

Chicago Sun-Times

"Well worth the wait . . . irreverent, inimitable, often outrageous . . . and, above all, compelling."--Chicago Sun-Times.

Publishers Weekly

Mencken's unfinished, leisurely memoir, which he set aside in 1948 following a severe stroke and ordered locked away for 35 years after his death, covers his literary apprenticeship, his co-editorship of The Smart Set and his feuds and friendships with Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ezra Pound, Alfred Knopf and others. There is much of the bellicose Mencken here, lamenting ``the always dipping curve of American imbecility,'' deflating the Algonquin Roundtable literati and offering ruthlessly candid literary portraits. Yet, along with the dour sage of Baltimore, we get Mencken the vivacious gadabout, tippler and admirer of women as his intellectual equals. Mencken annoys with his frequent anti-Semitic remarks, his pro-German stance in WW I and other prejudices. Washington Post book critic Yardley, who has trimmed the original manuscript by 60%, provides an informative introduction to this period piece, which focuses on the years 1908-1923, with forays into the '30s and '40s. (Jan.)

BookList - Gilbert Taylor

After reposing for 35 years, Mencken's editorial reflections are in hand, as hot to the touch as any of his previous controversial writings. Mencken's amusing arrogance is here in large-caliber doses, touched off by his indomitable unwillingness to sympathize with human folly and ignorance. The main exponents of such imbecility are "do-gooders in general practice," bulwarks of virtue, and censors. One of the last once hauled before court on an obscenity charge Mencken's pulp magazine catering to the "booboisie," the "Parisienne Monthly". Mencken's lawyer gained acquittal the old-fashioned way, by bribing the judge. Mencken's narrative of the incident embodies his archly brusque honesty, which is fully vented in telling of his salad days as coeditor of the "Smart Set: A Magazine of Cleverness", which folded in 1923. That date closes the memoir, for Mencken's stroke precluded recollections of his first publishing effort, "American Mercury". Nonetheless, this memoir contains hilarious stories of beery evenings on the New York literary circuit, a vocabulary capacious enough to require the immediate assistance of a dictionary (to look up "brummagen" and "objurgation"), and a fund of derogatory epithets certain to pose anew questions about Mencken's disdain for women and Jews. The public at last can make their own inspection.

Kirkus Reviews

The unmistakable iconoclasm of Mencken resounds again in this memoir of his early days in the literary trade. The original 1,000- page manuscript, sealed in a vault for 35 years after Mencken's death, has been trimmed 60 percent by Pulitzer-winning book-critic Yardley (Our Kind of People, 1989, etc.). Many of the deleted passages evidently dwelled on the trivial—and even in the finished product only an accountant could love Mencken's itemizations of his financial affairs. Admirers might wish that Yardley had also used the blue pencil on the casually flagrant stereotypes that litter this memoir much as they did The Diary of H.L. Mencken (1989), particularly those brief but pungent comments like the one about publisher Philip Goodman, who remained Mencken's friend "until the shattering impact of Hitler made him turn Jewish on me." The autobiography lacks some of the raffish nostalgia of Mencken's Days trilogy, an absence reflecting bitterness over America's second war with his beloved Germany, but it still offers an invaluable record of Mencken's impact on American letters until the early 1920's (a 1948 stroke prevented him from chronicling his stewardship of the American Mercury and his later journalism). Mencken is justifiably proud of how he and George Jean Nathan turned the cash-starved Smart Set into a forum for America's brightest newcomers. He cheerfully recalls the feuds and quirks (often alcohol-induced) of now-obscure neophytes, as well as of the more famous, including Scott Fitzgerald, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, Ezra Pound, and Aldous Huxley. Mencken's description of his stormy friendship with Theodore Dreiser is masterful, as admiring of the latter's clumsy genius asit is exasperated with his oafishness ("Whenever an obvious fact competed for his attention with a sonorous piece of nonsense, he went for the nonsense"). Often comically brilliant in detailing Mencken's "sharp and more or less truculent dissent from the mores of my country"—and always brutally frank about others' foibles and his own prejudices.