words as a weapon

"His war against puritans is what his liberal admirers have in mind when they argue that he should be 'celebrated and remembered' as 'a tremendous liberating force in American culture.' Nowhere has this belief been explained more dramatically (or, in light of the charges of racism so often leveled at him, more relevantly) than in Richard Wright's Black Boy, a copy of which can be found on the shelves of the Mencken Room. Mencken himself marked this passage from the final chapter:

'A block away from the library I opened one of [Mencken's] books and read a title: A Book of Prefaces. I was nearing my nineteenth birthday and I did not know how to pronounce the word "preface." I thumbed the pages and saw strange words and strange names. I shook my head disappointed. I looked at the other book; it was called Prejudices. I knew what that word meant; I had heard it all my life. And right off I was on guard. . . . That night in my rented room, while letting the hot water run over my can of pork and beans in the sink, I opened A Book of Prefaces and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? . . . He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for here they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as weapon? No. It frightened me. I read and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it.'"

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

Chicago, that [broken] city. . .

I finished the Nelson Algren biography, a wonderful book. Algren's life was not presented as one in which he had to share Chicago only with Richard Wright, who left, or Saul Bellow, who mainly stayed but also left. Simone de Beauvoir figures prominently in the narrative, as does Algren's entanglement with federal authorities over his involvement with the Communist movement as a young man. The Guardian and The Chicago Sun-Times present news of the day which would fit the Depression-era 1930s when Algren and Wright first became acquainted in the Windy City.

Also, I stumbled upon a blogger who connected Algren's writing with Bukowski's, no doubt because they both so often chose downtrodden misfits and outcasts as their subjects although with Bukowski, he is much more evidently writing about himself through his alter-ego Henry Chinaski. Algren would be the more richly descriptive writer, but Bukowski seems to be the one who has lasted as far as book sales and cultural memory are concerned.