A Mencken Chrestomathy

By: H. L. Mencken

Narrated by: Grover Gardner

Edited and annotated by H. L. M., this is a selection from his out-of-print writings. They come mostly from books - the six installments of the Prejudices series, A Book of Burlesques, In Defense of Women, Notes on Democracy, Making a President, A Book of Calumny, Treatise on Right and Wrong - but there are also magazine and newspaper pieces that never got between covers (from the American Mercury, the Smart Set, and the Baltimore Evening Sun) and some notes that were never previously published at all.

Listeners will find edification and amusement in his estimates of a variety of Americans - Woodrow Wilson, Aimee Semple McPherson, Roosevelt I and Roosevelt II, James Gibbons Huneker, Rudolph Valentino, Calvin Coolidge, Ring Lardner, Theodore Dreiser, and Walt Whitman.

Those musically inclined will enjoy his pieces on Beethoven, Schubert, and Wagner, and there is material for a hundred controversies in his selections on Joseph Conrad, Thorstein Veblen, Nietzsche, and Madame Blavatsky.

©1916, 1918, 1919, 1920, 1921, 1922, 1924, 1926, 1927, 1932, 1934, 1942, 1949 Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. (P)2020 Blackstone Publishing

Sensational Mencken

Amid the present cacophony there is no Mencken to be found; not even close. So it is with immense pleasure that one rereads, and in this case listens, to Mencken’s uncensored ideas conveyed in his glistening and unequaled use of American English. Gardner makes the text his own, as always. My lone complaint is that on the Apple Watch the chapters are displayed only numerically, and so it is difficult to figure out how to get back to a particular chapter.

Starting next with Mencken’s Notes on Democracy, I’d be a happy cherub if the complete works of H. L., Thomas Szasz, and Richard Mitchell were reproduced in audio.

Not Mencken’s best work

The sections in the first half of this recording are pretty good.

The second half of the recording is far from Meghan‘s best work. It is biased, negative, critical, bigoted,And, worst of all not entertaining.

This Compilation needs a good editor

His own selection of his writings.

Funnier, wiser, smarter than any satirist today. Ranks with Swift and Voltaire. For anyone like me who can get filled with misanthropic despair over current events in our republic, his writings are a helpful reminder that things were worse, much worse, 100 years ago. And that amusement is the only useful, intelligent response to the dreadful, moronic antics of the horrible human race.

And to celebrate intelligence, beauty, and nobility, what precious little of it exists in this world, as a rare gift.

Finally, Grover Gardner is simply perfect. I will always in the future read Mencken with his voice in my head.

Thank you Audible for bringing this to you library

The greatest book of all time read by the greatest voice of all time. Does it get any better than this?