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)