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Huan Yi
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since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688
Waukegan

0 posted 2007-08-05 05:09 PM


.


I’m finishing a biography of H. L. Mencken
and it leads me to reflect and ask: has there
ever been a successful man of letters, poet,
journalist, etc. who, in hindsight at the facts of his life,
did not, in large part, turn out to be an ass?

Fortunately for me perhaps, Mark Strand is still
too much alive for anyone to touch him.


.

© Copyright 2007 John Pawlik - All Rights Reserved
Balladeer
Administrator
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since 1999-06-05
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Ft. Lauderdale, Fl USA
1 posted 2007-08-05 06:46 PM


It would depend on how you define ass, I would think.
serenity blaze
Member Empyrean
since 2000-02-02
Posts 27738

2 posted 2007-08-05 07:26 PM


and even my ass keeps redefining herself...

But does it really matter?

I believe it takes a certain amount of arrogance to put the pen to page to begin with--so to hell with the opinions regarding the personality--it takes a certain amount of arrogance to make a judgement for even the kindest of eulogies, anyhow.

Don't let it get you down, John. The appendage of post-mortem critics doesn't change what was writ, nor what moves you still. It is part of the human condition, sadly, to attack--and if they can't attack the most pristine works of art, they will go for the human jugular of social conscience.

Sorry, for the bitters, too.

*shrug*

That's another part of the human condition.




TomMark
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since 2007-07-27
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3 posted 2007-08-05 08:59 PM


"14 If a man craves attention because of his poems,
he shall be like a jackass in moonlight."
--Mark Strand

If a man doesn't...

Huan Yi
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since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688
Waukegan
4 posted 2007-08-06 08:39 PM


.


Mike,

By his own diaries
the man was a racist and a bigot,
and the only defense offered
is that he was no worst that some in his own time,
and he was harder on poor Southern whites
than on blacks and Jews.

That pretty much puts him
in my defintition.

He was a man of
misanthropic animosities
and doesn’t deserve, at least,
my respect.


John

.

Brad
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since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
5 posted 2007-08-07 02:17 AM


quote:
He was a man of
misanthropic animosities


Indeed, and the fact that he could write makes him extremely interesting.

I've never really understood how you can call a misanthrope a racist and a bigot. Your own post points to the fact that he hated everybody -- just not always equally.


rwood
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since 2000-02-29
Posts 3793
Tennessee
6 posted 2007-08-07 06:46 AM


When picked apart, all of our secret/public imperfections removed, much of what's left will always be ass in someone's eyes.
Huan Yi
Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688
Waukegan
7 posted 2007-08-07 02:08 PM


.

Brad,

He made exception for some High Germans
of which he considered himself one.  He considered
war good for strengthening and purging the species
of weaknesses.  He kept silent on what was happening
in Germany though he could see for himself what was
coming during a trip he made to it in 1938.  As to both
World War I and II he felt the United States had
backed the wrong side.

.

Brad
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since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
8 posted 2007-08-07 08:29 PM


Perhaps, Vidal says it best:

quote:
   ... A babble of words that no one understands now fills the airwaves, and language loses all meaning as we sink slowly, mindlessly, into herstory rather than history because most rapists are men, aren't they?

    Mencken is a nice antidote. Politically, he is often right but seldom correct by today's stern standards. In a cheery way, he dislikes most minorities and if he ever had a good word to say about the majority of his countrymen, I have yet to come across it. Recently, when his letters were published, it was discovered that He Did Not Like the Jews, and that he had said unpleasant things about them not only as individuals but In General, plainly the sign of a Hitler-Holocaust enthusiast. So shocked was everyone that even the New York Review of Books' unofficial de-anti-Semitiser, Garry Wills (he salvaged Dickens, barely), has yet to come to his aid with An Explanation. But in Mencken's private correspondence, he also snarls at black Americans, Orientals, Britons, women, and WASPs, particularly the clay-eating Appalachians, whom he regarded as subhuman. But private irritability is of no consequence when compared to what really matters, public action.
    Far from being an anti-Semite, Mencken was one of the first journalists to denounce the persecution of the Jews in Germany at a time when the New York Times, say, was notoriously reticent. On November 27, 1938, Mencken writes (Baltimore Sun), "It is to be hoped that the poor Jews now being robbed and mauled in Germany will not take too seriously the plans of various politicians to rescue them." He then reviews the various schemes to "rescue" the Jews from the Nazis, who had not yet announced their own final solution.


I'm not going to defend Mencken further. He was all the things you say he was (but not, of course, a supporter of national socialism), but I am truly happy for this thread. It's a perfect opportunity to quote from Mencken as much as I like.

Mencken on democracy:

quote:
We live in a land of abounding quackeries, and if we do not learn how to laugh we succumb to the melancholy disease which afflicts the race of viewers-with-alarm... In no other country known to me is life as safe and agreeable, taking one day with another, as it is in These States. Even in a great Depression few if any starve, and even in a great war the number who suffer by it is vastly surpassed by the number who fatten on it and enjoy it. Thus my view of my country is predominantly tolerant and amiable. I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind.



Huan Yi
Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688
Waukegan
9 posted 2007-08-08 09:58 PM


Brad,


“ Politically, he is often right but seldom correct by today's stern standards. In a cheery way, he dislikes most minorities and if he ever had a good word to say about the majority of his countrymen, I have yet to come across it. Recently, when his letters were published, it was discovered that He Did Not Like the Jews, and that he had said unpleasant things about them not only as individuals but In General, plainly the sign of a Hitler-Holocaust enthusiast. . .

I do not believe in democracy, but I am perfectly willing to admit that it provides the only really amusing form of government ever endured by mankind. ‘

Are you then  to suggest that however a deplorable example
as a human being ,so long as he’s good at the craft for which
he was/is well paid we should understand if not embrace him?

By the way he said that if all the Dust Bowl farmers
and Southern sharecroppers immediately died
or were killed off the rest of America would be better for it.


John

Brad
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since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
10 posted 2007-08-08 10:52 PM


I am saying that we should read him.

What you decide to do after that is your own business.

quote:
If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.

--Mencken

Brad
Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
11 posted 2007-08-08 11:03 PM


quote:
If all lawyers were hanged tomorrow, and their bones sold to a mah jong factory, we'd be freer and safer, and our taxes would be reduced by almost a half."

--Mencken

quote:
Kill all the lawyers

--Shakespeare

Are you up in arms over these as well?


TomMark
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since 2007-07-27
Posts 2133
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12 posted 2007-08-09 01:45 PM


John,

You are right. I shall say that Mencken is rotten meat because he had no heart for his human fellas.

A rotten meat...however rotten, will attract flies and butteredflies.

Also many people want to know him simply because we do not read out those interesting charactors from ordinary people. After all, he had his voice back then. and history only preserves these  extremists...for 15 minutes or 50 years.



Brad
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since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
13 posted 2007-08-09 07:46 PM


quote:
Puritanism - The haunting fear that someone, somewhere may be happy.


Brad
Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
14 posted 2007-08-09 07:53 PM


quote:
A man's women folk, whatever their outward show of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity. His most gaudy sayings and doings seldom deceive them; they see the actual man within, and know him for a shallow and pathetic fellow. In this fact, perhaps, lies one of the best proofs of feminine intelligence, or, as the common phase makes it, feminine intuition.


quote:
Misogynist - A man who hates women as much as women hate one another.


TomMark
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since 2007-07-27
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15 posted 2007-08-09 08:50 PM


One can never expect to find ivory in a dog's mouth.

He was indeed talking nonsense. Twice civilized language could not tame the beast's tongue.

TomMark
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16 posted 2007-08-09 08:56 PM


Mencken is not a naked man. He were in a skin of wolf to cover his own scared soul.
TomMark
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since 2007-07-27
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17 posted 2007-08-09 08:56 PM


"After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations."

H. L. Mencken, on Shakespeare

[This message has been edited by TomMark (08-10-2007 01:01 AM).]

hush
Senior Member
since 2001-05-27
Posts 1653
Ohio, USA
18 posted 2007-08-10 12:30 PM


I don't know, the quotes on women (particularly the first one) seem pretty spot on...

Just because someone is an ass, does that make the truth less so when it comes from his mouth? I think it's important to view the art both in context and out of context of the artist. This may be a bad example, but I think Courtney Love is a trainwreck of a disaster of a person... and her songwriting is too painfully obviously influenced by those around her- but that doesn't stop me from thinking "Live Through This" is one of the best albums I've ever heard.

Huan Yi
Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688
Waukegan
19 posted 2007-08-10 02:12 PM



.


“Marriage: the end of hope."

"Love:  the delusion that one woman is different from another. “

“Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.”


H. L. Mencken

.

TomMark
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since 2007-07-27
Posts 2133
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20 posted 2007-08-10 05:03 PM


0 Huan

“Marriage: the end of hope."

Does that  mean that marriage ends hope or marriage is the result of hope?
whoevver cut this verse out....hello, not every hope is marriage related.


"Love:  the delusion that one woman is different from another. “

Love from women including love from
1. Mother
2. grandmather
3  Aunts
4. Sisters
5. female friends
6. colleagues
7. wives
8. daughters
9 granddaughters

Mencken was old enough to tell the differences.

“Bachelors know more about women than married men; if they didn't they'd be married too.”

obviously "bachelors" of his kind are those men who had given everything including selfesteem, dignity and integrity  to women due to stupidity. Good women do not take those from men.  And they went  through all of this, still had no idea about women....


Brad
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since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
21 posted 2007-08-10 07:15 PM


quote:
No other entertainment gave him greater pleasure than reporting from the conventions; nor did anyone appreciate his efforts more than Mencken himself. One reporter, peering through Mencken's window late at night after one rally, recalled watching him at work alone in his hotel room, pounding out copy on a typewriter propped on a desk. He would type a few sentences, read them, slap his thigh, toss his head back, and roar with laughter. Then he would type some more lines, guffaw, and so on until the end of the article.

--Marion Elizabeth Rogers

quote:
In brief, she assumed that, being a man, I was vain to the point of imbecility, and this assumption was correct, as it always is.

--Mencken

Huan Yi
Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688
Waukegan
22 posted 2007-08-10 09:00 PM


.


And guess who played with dogs  . . .


Mencken led and fostered an attitude of contempt.
To praise him then, given he would almost
no doubt have extended that scorn to the worshiper  is a
form of pathetic intellectual masochism, ( and if
that were a quote from the great H. L. many would
bow their heads).

By the way, he felt that England and France, even more the United States,
should not concern themselves with Germany solving its backyard problems
with the Czechs and the Poles.

He in fact regretted his ancestors having moved from Germany.
  
.

Brad
Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
23 posted 2007-08-10 09:44 PM


quote:
Mencken led and fostered an attitude of contempt.
To praise him then, given he would almost
no doubt have extended that scorn to the worshiper  is a
form of pathetic intellectual masochism,


Indeed, and the scorn would have been well earned.

My best friend is a lawyer. One day, a casual day I am told, he wore a T-shirt with "Kill all the lawyers" to his firm. He was immediately excoriated by a female colleague for encouraging such attitudes.

Some people just never get it.

Why do you search for a messiah in the words of a journalist?

rwood
Member Elite
since 2000-02-29
Posts 3793
Tennessee
24 posted 2007-08-11 05:36 AM


"Some people just never get it."

True, but I feel he honed cynicism and sarcasm with an art that most people can only cartoon with any guts. I'm not saying I support or admire his every word. I'm saying he's a twist of lime in the vanilla Corona'd writing world.

quote:
There are people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.


Personally, I'm guilty of being a bibliobibuli at times, but I'm not able to own up to that word while drunk on anything else. Blibliobliboolo bliblioblublub. Correction: Delivery is tough while sober, as well.

Brad
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since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
25 posted 2007-08-11 08:53 PM


Not every word, of course.

quote:
I'm saying he's a twist of lime in the vanilla Corona'd writing world.


I like this.

quote:
Personally, I'm guilty of being a bibliobibuli at times, but I'm not able to own up to that word while drunk on anything else. Blibliobliboolo bliblioblublub. Correction: Delivery is tough while sober, as well.


Isn't that the key?

That we see as much of ourselves in the victims as we do the victimizer.

Huan Yi
Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688
Waukegan
26 posted 2007-08-11 09:58 PM


.

"Why do you search for a messiah in the words of a journalist?"


I don't but he was something like that
for those who considered themselves
the elite in the 1920's and for some
time beyond and therefore influenced
the attitudes of an era.

.

TomMark
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since 2007-07-27
Posts 2133
LA,CA
27 posted 2007-08-13 12:30 PM


Brad,

I know what you mean.

Tomtoo

rwood
Member Elite
since 2000-02-29
Posts 3793
Tennessee
28 posted 2007-08-13 07:17 AM


"Isn't that the key?

That we see as much of ourselves in the victims as we do the victimizer."


Yep, or the "characters" as much as the "author", etc.

being believable must have a strong aspect of humanity attached, whether that be a respectable or deplorable trait. I think it's important that we see ourselves, even in the events of the deplorable. It helps me stay away from that role if I don't like myself in that particular characterization.

Consistency is key to me. At least then I know who or what I'm dealing with. Mencken was consistent.

I once had a friend who was an "upstanding" woman of society. She was all about reputation, good deeds, community involvement, class, refinement, etc.

I found out her father was an illegal gun dealer who operated out of a liquor store and was a high member of the KKK. It seems she spent her life trying to stamp out the seeds her father planted, but she let one grow into a strangling vine: Prejudice.

That's what made her whole life unbelievable to me. Her good deeds were a liquor store front for her father's bad seed, and she could never own up to it in public. This made her inconsistent and fragile in her loyalty as a friend, to me. Sorry if it seems I'm passing judgment, but actually she judged me as unworthy of her friendship because I felt my friends were worth more to me than being called "the black people," (or worse) behind their backs.

We parted ways, and I lost her "influence" among certain social circles, but I'm consistently hopeful she'll stray one day, free from the thing that she shackled herself to her father with.

Whatever is written/exposed isn't always a revealing. That's why I appreciate it when it is, even if I disagree.



Huan Yi
Member Ascendant
since 2004-10-12
Posts 6688
Waukegan
29 posted 2007-08-17 09:24 PM


.


There is something
in the Western mentality
that insists on being the sinner.
The ones, who guilty,
are deserving of blame.
A sort of cultural Mia Culpa
without which there is no salvation.


.

Brad
Member Ascendant
since 1999-08-20
Posts 5705
Jejudo, South Korea
30 posted 2007-08-17 10:03 PM


On the contrary, the villification of the other is an attempt at exculpation. Villifying culture, even if it's your own, is simply one more method of exculpation.

Personally, the idea that 'we must feel guilty'  can be countered in two ways: either it is wrong and history is ignored and/or twisted, or it is accepted but tempered with a little humor.

I prefer the latter. Mencken's writing depends on the interaction between the two.


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