Mencken - Softcover

Bode, Carl

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0809306271 ISBN 13: 9780809306275

Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press, 1973

Synopsis

This is the first biography since his death of the man Edmund Wilson has called the greatest practicing literary journalist” since Poe. It is also the first fully documented life to be issued. Mr. Bode has based his book on a host of Mencken letters, many unpublished; on family papers; on a variety of Mencken materials in print and out; and on many taped interviews with remaining friends of Mencken as well as with some of his old enemies. Two other things about the book are important firsts.” The book analyzes Mencken’s writing as it related to his life. And the book indicates the relation of Mencken to his time

 

Mr Bode’s Mencken takes us from the almost pastoral Baltimore of the 1880’s when Mencken was a boy; through World War I when Mencken was termed a traitor; into the Roaring Twenties when he was the decade’s leading intel­lectual, magazine editor, and newspaper man; into the Depression when his influence sank to nearly nothing; then into the 1940’s when he issued his mellow reminiscences; and finally to his last years in Baltimore.

 

Among the chapters are: Daily and Sunday,” Dreiser and the Fruits of Dissidence,” The Mercury: Mencken’s Mind and Art,” Mainstay of the Sun,” Mencken, Darwin, and God,” Mencken in Love,” The Circus of Dr. R.,” and Friends and Familiars.”

About this title

About the Author:

Carl Bode is Professor of English at the University of Maryland. He has written widely on various phases of American literature, particularly on twentieth-century culture.

Review:

No other study has been nearly as successful as this one in presenting the late H. L. Mencken in context.” Gerald J. Johnson, Chicago Sun-Times Book Week

The most recent and best to date of the many biographies of Henry Louis Mencken is Carl Bode’s carefully re­searched book and much documented study of one of the most influential writers on the American scene from 1900 to 1950 A fine, even defini­tive biography.” Best Sellers

Magnificent biography.... A Menck­enian accomplishment.” Robert Kirsch, Los Angeles Times Calendar

About this edition

• Publisher: Southern Illinois University Press
• Publication date: 1973
• ISBN 10: 0809306271
• ISBN 13: 9780809306275
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 480