Mencken's Nietzsche

"[H.L.] Mencken was too commonsensical, too solidly grounded in the reporter's world of things as they are, to readily grasp the essence of so tortured a soul. His Nietzsche is an all-American type, a world-improving, can-do go-getter delighted to have through the fraud of Christianity and gone beyond good and evil: 'He applied the acid of critical analysis to a hundred and one specific ideas, and his general conclusion, to put it briefly, was that no human being had a right, in any way or form, to judge or direct the actions of any other being. Herein we have, in a few words, that gospel of individualism which all our sages preach today.'"

~~ from The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken by Terry Teachout

pay a little

Why pay a little when you can pay a lot? Right. Sincerely, if anyone is interested in a $10 shipped paperback copy of Auggie's Revenge or slightly more for Fight for Your Long Day, I may well be able to deliver.

anything other than indigestible

"[H.L.] Mencken, who at no time in his life found [Henry] James's prose to be anything other than indigestible, fired back with the brassy self-confidence of a self-made man whose style owed nothing to The Wings of the Dove and everything to Huckleberry Finn: 'The average newspaper reporter writes better English than Henry, if good English means clear, comprehensible English. . . . Take any considerable sentence from any of his novels and examine its architecture. Isn't it wobbly with qualifying clauses and subassistant phrases? Doesn't it wriggle and stumble and stagger and flounder? Isn't it "crude, untidy, careless," bedraggled, loose, frowsy, disorderly, unkempt, uncombed, uncurried, unbrushed, unscrubbed? Doesn't it begin in the middle and work away from both ends? Doesn't it often bounce along for a while and then, of a sudden, roll up its eyes and go out of business entirely?'"

~~ from The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken by Terry Teachout

AWP, the unaffordable conference

If money's tight, it's highly possible I could send you a copy of Auggie's Revenge for ten dollars—including shipping—or possibly less. Find me on social media and send a private message.

#AWP2026

As AWP in Baltimore approaches, it is only by coincidence, but I seem to be reading Terry Teachout's biography of one of city's most famous literary sons: Henry Louis Mencken. So far, it's good.

Close Encounters

Befriend Luke and Leia 

  Or Mork and Mindy, 

Lois Lane and Clark Kent,

  Or Close Encounters windy.