Ciceronianus has a fascinating post up about H.L. Mencken, a guy who could inspire many of them.
I wonder if young people still regularly read (or see performed in some form) the old play/movie Inherit the Wind ?
For many of my generation, anyway, an interest in Mencken was first roused by the character based upon him in this play, E.K. Hornbeck, memorably played by Gene Kelly. (Yes, a non-dancing dramatic role by the Gene Kelly) in the 1960 movie.
Hornbeck is not written as an admirable character. We're supposed to side with Henry Drummond/Spencer Tracy/Clarence Darrow after all, (how can one not side with Spencer Tracy??) and we're supposed to see Hornbeck as being as much a dogmatist as Brady/Bryan, though a dogmatist of a contrary dogma. The Bryanesque character, by the way, was played by Frederick March.
William James, the titular figure and presiding genius of this blog, once referred to his own philosophical goal as ensuring a safe space between "the upper and the lower dogmatisms." He meant monistic idealism on the one hand and positivist materialism on the other. In a rough-and-read sense, though, the original play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee, and its various subsequent incarnations, posits Bryan as the advocate of the upper and Mencken as that of the lower dogmatism.
Still, "there is no such thing as bad publicity." This unfavorable treatment of Mencken is what put him on my mental map. And, as it happens, Ciceronianus' blog entry about Mencken is specifically about the actual newspaper columns the real-world H.L. Mencken was writing during the Scopes trial for the Baltimore Evening Sun.
I wonder if young people still regularly read (or see performed in some form) the old play/movie Inherit the Wind ?
For many of my generation, anyway, an interest in Mencken was first roused by the character based upon him in this play, E.K. Hornbeck, memorably played by Gene Kelly. (Yes, a non-dancing dramatic role by the Gene Kelly) in the 1960 movie.
Hornbeck is not written as an admirable character. We're supposed to side with Henry Drummond/Spencer Tracy/Clarence Darrow after all, (how can one not side with Spencer Tracy??) and we're supposed to see Hornbeck as being as much a dogmatist as Brady/Bryan, though a dogmatist of a contrary dogma. The Bryanesque character, by the way, was played by Frederick March.
William James, the titular figure and presiding genius of this blog, once referred to his own philosophical goal as ensuring a safe space between "the upper and the lower dogmatisms." He meant monistic idealism on the one hand and positivist materialism on the other. In a rough-and-read sense, though, the original play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee, and its various subsequent incarnations, posits Bryan as the advocate of the upper and Mencken as that of the lower dogmatism.
Still, "there is no such thing as bad publicity." This unfavorable treatment of Mencken is what put him on my mental map. And, as it happens, Ciceronianus' blog entry about Mencken is specifically about the actual newspaper columns the real-world H.L. Mencken was writing during the Scopes trial for the Baltimore Evening Sun.
I forgot Gene Kelly played that role. Spencer Tracy played his part well (they all did) but I suspect Darrow was not quite as noble as he was portrayed to be. He was a lawyer, after all. A good movie, which I hope is still watched.
ReplyDeleteI have yet to see Inherit the Wind, but have read bits of what Mencken wrote about the Scopes trial.
ReplyDeleteI have read the claim that the Scopes trial, the way Bryan made a fool of himself, the brilliance of Darrow, and the witty buffoonery of Mencken's reports of the trial, are why American fundamentalism became very inward looking for a generation. An inwardness perhaps ended by the activities of Billy Graham and Oral Roberts.
I am no longer sure when I encountered Mencken's name. It could have been when I read Richard Wright's Black Boy in high school. I may have first read Mencken when I was at Princeton 40 years ago. A few years later, I bought several paperback anthologies of his occasional pieces, including both volumes of his Chrestomathy. In the early years, I had to read him with a collegiate dictionary at my side, so rich was his vocabulary.
What I most admire about Mencken is the breadth of his reading and culture, notwithstanding his having never attended college, and instead having attended a high school emphasizing manual trades (at his father's insistence). Mencken is a splendid example of what I have in mind when I say that anyone fully literate can acquire a fair liberal education by intense reading between the ages of 16 and 30. Reading Mencken is great fun, unless one is hopelessly politically correct. He is also a great window on the American cultured mindset between 1900 and the New Deal, the prevailing mindset when Barzun was a student and fell in love with the USA. Best of all, among American essayists of his day, I submit that Mencken had the finest sense of humor.