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基本説明
This is the first full biography of Mencken: the author personally interviewed numerous people in Mencken's life, has read extensively his manuscript sources, here and in Germany, and has written an exciting and brilliant biography.
Full Description
A towering figure on the American cultural landscape, H.L. Mencken stands out as one of our most influential stylists and fearless iconoclasts--the twentieth century's greatest newspaper journalist, a famous wit, and a constant figure of controversy.
Marion Elizabeth Rodgers has written the definitive biography of Mencken, the finest book ever published about this giant of American letters. Rodgers illuminates both the public and the private man, covering the many love affairs, his happy marriage at the age of 50 to Sara Haardt, and his complicated but stimulating friendship with the famed theater critic George Jean Nathan. Rodgers vividly recreates Mencken's era: the glittering tapestry of turn-of-the-century America, the roaring twenties, depressed thirties, and the home front during World War II. But the heart of the book is Mencken. When few dared to shatter complacencies, Mencken fought for civil liberties and free speech, playing a prominent role in the Scope's Monkey Trial, battling against press censorship, and exposing pious frauds and empty uplift. The champion of our tongue in The American Language, Mencken also played a pivotal role in defining American letters through The Smart Set and The American Mercury, magazines that introduced such writers as James Joyce, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Langston Hughes.
Drawing on research in more than sixty archives including private collections in the United States and in Germany, previously unseen, on exclusive interviews with Mencken's friends, and on his love letters and FBI files, here is the full portrait of one of America's most colorful and influential men.
"This biography, the best ever on the sage of Baltimore, is exhaustive but never exhausting, and offers readers more than moderate intelligence and an awfully good time."
--Martin Nolan, Boston Globe
Contents
PROLOGUE: BOSTON, 1926 ; PART ONE: 1880-1914 ; 1. The Citizen of Baltimore ; 2. The Eternal Boy ; 3. August Mencken & Bro ; 4. Baltimore and Beyond ; 5. Terse and Terrible Texts ; 6. Plays and Players ; 7. The Great Baltimore Fire ; 8. A Man of Ability ; 9. A Young Man in a Hurry ; 10. Broadening Horizons ; 11. The Bad Boy of Baltimore ; 12. Outside, Looking In ; PART TWO: 1914-1919 ; 13. The Holy Terror ; 14. Mencken, Nathan, and God ; 15. Round One! ; 16. Berlin, 1917 ; 17. The Prevailing Winds ; 18. Over Here ; 19. The Infernal Feminine ; PART THREE: 1920-1930 ; 20. The Dry Millennium Dawns ; 21. Of Politics and Prose ; 22. That Man in Baltimore ; 23. The Duel of Sex ; 24. Old Discord and New Alliances ; 25. The Scopes Trial ; 26. In the Crucible ; 27. Banned in Boston ; 28. The Great God Mencken ; 29. A Sentimental Journey ; 30. The German Valentino ; 31. The Sea of Matrimony ; 32. Variations on a Familiar Theme ; PART FOUR: 1930-1935 ; 33. The Tamed Ogre of Cathedral Street ; 34. Hard Times ; 35. "Happy Days are Here Again" ; 36. Maryland, My Maryland ; 37. The Tune Changes ; 38. The Late Mr. Mencken ; 39. A Time to Be Wary ; 40. A Winter of Horror ; PART FIVE: 1936-1940 ; 41. Baltimore's Friendly Dragon ; 42. Mencken as Boss ; 43. Berlin, 1938 ; 44. Polemics and Prejudices ; 45. Triumph of Democracy ; PART SIX: 1941-1948 ; 46. The Weapon of Silence ; 47. On the Home Front ; 48. Mencken and the Guild ; 49. Friends and Relatives ; 50. The Man Who Hates Everything ; 51. The Great Upset of 1948 ; PART SEVEN: 1949-1956 ; 52. The Last Days ; EPILOGUE: THE PASSING OF AN ERA ; ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ; NOTES ; BIBLIOGRAPHY ; INDEX
