September 2023: H. L. Mencken on Commerce, Culture, and Democracy
Please join us in September/October 2023 for a Virtual Reading Group with Jim Hartley.
We appreciate your interest in this virtual reading group. Unfortunately, this VRG is full and we are no longer accepting registrations. We invite you to check out our upcoming events here. We hope to see you at a future VRG!
“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.” H.L. Mencken, arguably the greatest prose stylist of the 20th century, was one of the most well-known essayists a century ago. Few escaped his withering pen. He wrote widely on politics, economics, education, and culture. This VRG explores a selection of essays from Mencken’s own collection of his best work. How perceptive was his evaluation of the United States? Is there an underlying philosophy in his writings or was he simply a curmudgeon or a misanthrope?
Session I: Tuesday, September 12, 2023, 3:00-4:00 pm EDT, Democratic Government
Mencken’s evaluation of government and democracy. Is he right about how the government works? Do government officials behave in this manner? Is democracy a good system for choosing leaders?
Readings:
H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing
- Government (pp. 145-153)
- Democracy (pp. 154-168)
- Roosevelt I (pp. 229-242)
- The Citizen and the State (pp. 621-624)
Session II: Tuesday, September 19, 2023, 3:00-4:00 pm EDT, A Commercial Society
Mencken’s description of the workings of an economy. Are his characterizations of the types of people living in the society accurate? Do they behave in the manner he describes? Does an economy structured along the ways he describes work well? Do people overestimate or underestimate the virtues and vices of commerce?
Readings:
H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing
- Types of Men (pp. 10-20)
- The Executive Secretary (pp. 357-360)
- The Husbandman (pp. 360-364)
- Zoos (pp. 365-367)
- Valentino (pp. 281-284)
- Economics (pp. 293-300)
- John D. (pp. 276-278)
- Coolidge (pp. 251-254)
- A Neglected Anniversary (pp. 592-597)
Session III: Tuesday, September 26, 2023, 3:00-4:00 pm EDT, Education and Culture
Mencken’s evaluation of culture. Does education work the way he describes? Is there a better way? Is he right about how cultural criticism should function? Are his evaluations of cultural figures perceptive?
Readings:
H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing
- Pedagogy (pp. 301-316)
- The Critical Process (pp. 429-440)
- Dreiser (pp. 501-505)
- The Man Within (pp. 485-489)
- Ambrose Bierce (pp. 492-496)
- Beethoven (pp. 523-527)
Session IV: Tuesday, October 3, 2023, 3:00-4:00 pm EDT, Iconoclast or Misanthrope?
What was Mencken trying to do? Are his essays those of an iconoclast destroying the pieties of the age? Or is Mencken a misanthrope who despises everyone he sees? On the whole is Mencken perceptive or merely a marvelous prose stylist? Does his work help improve the society?
Readings:
H. L. Mencken, A Mencken Chrestomathy: His Own Selection of His Choicest Writing
- Homo Sapiens (pp. 3-9)
- The Hills of Zion (pp. 392-398)
- In Memoriam: W.J.B. (pp. 243-248)
- The Sahara of the Bozart (pp. 184-195)
- The Libido for the Ugly (pp. 573-576)
- Christian Science (pp. 343-346)
- Chiropractic (pp. 346-350)
- Appendix (pp. 627)
Virtual Reading Groups
- One Fell Swoop: Reading All of Shakespeare’s Plays
- December 2023: H.G. Wells, Technocracy and Liberty
- November 2023: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War: the Gettysburg Address
- September 2023: Islam and Liberty
- September 2023: H. L. Mencken on Commerce, Culture, and Democracy
- August 2023: The Price of Power: Bring Up the Bodies and The Prince
- July 2023: Civil Society and Political Economy
- June 2023: The Challenges of Democracy in a Diverse Society
- April 2023: Understanding Reconstruction - the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments
- March 2023: Foundations of Modern Environmentalism
- February 2023: Bruno Leoni: Freedom and the Law
- January 2023: Oakeshott’s Moral Vision
- January 2023: The Messiness of Progress: Hilary Mantel’s Wolf Hall and David Hume’s Essays and Histories
- December 2022: Classical Tragedy and the World of Ideas
- December 2022: J.S. Mill “Of the Liberty of Thought and Discussion"
- November 2022: The Election of 1800: Jefferson v. Adams
- October 2022: Shakespeare’s First Tetralogy
- September 2022: The Evolution of American Federalism
- September 2022: Liberty and Virtue in the Axial Age
- August 2022: Jane Austen’s Persuasion: Aristocracy, Independence, and Economics
- May 2022: THE BILL OF RIGHTS: SELECT CASES IN CONSTITUTIONAL LAW
- April 2022: Education in a Free Society
- March 2022: Mary Wollstonecraft and the Rights of Women
- March 2022: Ancient v Modern Liberty
- February 2022: Joseph Schumpeter’s “Capitalism, Socialism, and Democracy”
- January 2022: James Madison and the Conflict Between the Executive and Legislative Branches
- November 2021: Pericles' Funeral Oration
- September 2021: Celebrate Constitution Day
- August 2021: Agriculture, the State, and Liberty
- June 2021: Adam Ferguson’s History of Civil Society
- May 2021: The Colonial Origins of the Bill of Rights