000			02993nam a2200265 a 4500
001			025351
005			20231009193223.0
008			131108s2002 nyuaf b 001 0beng
010			_a2002024953
020			_a9780060505288
050	0	0	_aPS3525.E43 _bZ84 2002
082	0	0	_a92 MEN
100	1		_aTeachout, Terry
245	1	4	_aThe skeptic _b: a life of H.L. Mencken _c/ Terry Teachout
250			_a1st edition
260			_aNew York _b: HarperCollins _c, c2002.
300			_axv, 410 p., [8] p. of plates _b: ill. _c; 24 cm.
504			_aIncludes bibliograpical references (p. [391]-398) and index.
520			_a"When H.L. Mencken talked, everyone listened - like it or not. In the Roaring Twenties, he was the one critic who mattered, the champion of a generation of plain-speaking writers who redefined the American novel, and the ax-swinging scourge of the know-nothing, go-getting middle-class philistines whom he dubbed the "booboisie." Some loved him, others loathed him, but everybody read him." "From his carefree days as a teenage cub reporter in turn-of-the-century Baltimore to his noisy tenure as founding editor of the American Mercury, the most influential magazine of the twenties, Mencken distinguished himself with a contrary spirit, a razor-sharp wit (he coined the term "Bible Belt"), and a keen eye for such up-and-coming authors as Theodore Dreiser, Sinclair Lewis, Willa Cather, and F. Scott Fitzgerald. He covered everything, form the Scopes evolution trial to the 1948 presidential elections, in the pages of the Baltimore Sun. He wrote bestselling books about the failure of democracy, the foibles of the female sex, and what he memorably called "the American language." But his favorite topic was the one he saw wherever he looked: the sterile, life-denying strain of puritanism that he believed was strangling the culture of his native land." "No modern writer has been more controversial than J. L. Mencken. His fans saw him as the fearless leader of the endless battle against ignorance and hypocrisy, while his enemies dismissed him as a cantankerous, self-righteous ideologue. The surging popularity of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the politician he hated most, eventually caused his star to fade, but the unsparing vigor of his critique of American life and letters - and the raucously colloquial prose style in which he blasted the Babbitts - retains its freshness and relevance to this day." "Terry Teachout has combed through reams of Mencken's private papers, including the searingly candid autobiographical manuscripts sealed after his death in 1956. Out of this material he has fashioned a portrait of the artist as intellectual gadfly, working newspaperman, devoted husband, and faithless lover."--BOOK JACKET.
600	1	0	_aMencken, H.L. (Henry Louis), 1880-1956
650		4	_aAuthors, American _y-20th century _v--Biography
650			_aJournalists _z-United States _v--Biography
650		4	_aEditors _z-United States _v--Biography
942			_cMO
999			_c265543 _d265543