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Terry Teachout

The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken Paperback – Illustrated, November 4, 2003

by Terry Teachout (Author)

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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. Now Terry Teachout takes on the man Edmund Wilson called "our greatest practicing literary journalist," brilliantly capturing all of Mencken's energy and erudition, passion and paradoxes, in a masterful biography of this iconoclastic figure and the world he shaped.

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Editorial Reviews

Review

“Mencken has finally met a worthy biographer. Teachout is the kind of tour guide a first-rate biography requires.” (Ken Auletta)

“(Mencken’s) life is worth recounting and is here expertly and fairly summarized ... An important book.” (Paul Johnson, author of Modern Times)

“Many more people will discover the delights of Mencken’s work, thanks to Terry Teachout’s judicious but lively assessment.” (George F. Will, syndicated columnist)

“Teachout has brought Mencken to life, in all his rich comic irascibility. The Skeptic is irresistible.” (Sam Tanenhaus, author of Whittaker Chambers)

“A fascinating biography that has much of the neat phrasing and sly wit that the rancorous writer displayed himself.” (Publishers Weekly)

“A balanced, judicious assessment, flecked with sharply critical insights.” (Washington Post Book World)

About the Author

Terry Teachout writes about literature and the arts for the New York Times, Time, National Review, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and Commentary. His books include A Second Mencken Chrestomaby, a manuscript he rediscovered among Mencken's private papers. He lives in New York City.

Product details

Publisher : Harper Perennial; Illustrated edition (November 4, 2003)
Language : English
Paperback : 410 pages
ISBN-10 : 006050529X
ISBN-13 : 978-0060505295
Item Weight : 13.6 ounces
Dimensions : 5.31 x 1.01 x 8 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #337,895 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #598 in Journalist Biographies
- #1,814 in Author Biographies
- #5,263 in United States Biographies

Customer Reviews:
41 ratings

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Paul Augustson

Good

Reviewed in the United States on August 23, 2018

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Good

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Morton I. Blankman

Terry Teachout has created this magnificent piece of work on ...

Reviewed in the United States on February 24, 2015

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Terry Teachout has created this magnificent piece of work on H.L.Mencken who was a magnificent piece of work himself. Thanks Terry .

One person found this helpful

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David Robinette

Excellent

Reviewed in the United States on February 23, 2015

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Probably the definitive Mencken biography. Excellent writing.

Helpful

Roland Droitsch

THE AUTHOR DOES AN EXCELLENT JOB IN BRINGING MENCKEN INTO FOCUS

Reviewed in the United States on July 17, 2014

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THIS IS AN INTERESTING BOOK TO READ ABOUT A WELL-KNOWN INDIVIDUAL. THE AUTHOR DOES AN EXCELLENT JOB IN BRINGING MENCKEN INTO FOCUS. MENCKEN WAS A BRILLIANT WRITER BUT HAD A VERY ABSTRACT CHARACTER. HOWEVER, BRINGING THIS AUTHOR INTO FOCUS WAS BOTH INTERESTING AND COMPLEX, SHOWING THAT MENCHEN WAS A DIFFICULT PERSON TO UNDERSTAND AND WRITE ABOUT.

One person found this helpful

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Moresby

Reading what a poor writer and commonplace thinker like Teachout has to say ...

Reviewed in the United States on February 10, 2015

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Reading what a poor writer and commonplace thinker like Teachout has to say about Mencken is like watching someone trying to solve a system of differential equations using roman numerals.

4 people found this helpful

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Larry N. Stout

"Getting real"

Reviewed in the United States on November 18, 2012

What might we expect of someone who worked very hard to earn an epithet like "The Skeptic" except that he was throroughly skeptical -- I myself would say cynical, or, let's make that justifiably cynical in great measure, too cynical in part. That he did not categorically exclude Jews from his nearly universal cynicism should not surprise anyone, nor should that be used as an excuse to villify Mencken with the overused "anti-Semite" brush. Although we might agree that Mencken had a dark side (and who doesn't?), and that he was capable of crass overstatement (and who isn't?), and that much of his darkest self was buried and forever lost to history, in my view the bulk of his overall equal-opportunity skepticism was firmly rooted in the plain truth about all kinds of people. In fact, I think it would be a very good thing if someone much like Mencken had today a prominent place in the press, in bookstores, and on television; how refreshing he would be in lieu of the personality-cult, corporate-culture faux news of American television. If you are much offended by Mencken, perhaps you are paranoid, or hiding your own dark side, or sanctimonious, or just generally uncomfortable with the unvarnished truth about human intellectual and ethical frailty. I doubt that I would have liked Mencken in person, and I am confident that he would not have liked me, but I nevertheless appreciate much of what he wrote. As for our book here, suffice to say that it is biography, and that no biography can possibly be utterly accurate, or completely devoid of the biographer's own slants, which must be especially true in the case of a subject as quirky and thorny as HL Mencken. If you want to understand Mencken, start with what he wrote (but that is a mountain of prolixity, so go first for a digest of his most-trenchant, most-revealing aphorisms).

2 people found this helpful

Helpful

A Great Book about a Complex Personage

Reviewed in the United States on July 22, 2007

H.L.M. was one of the greater journalists who ever lived in America. More so than almost anyone, he lifted an intellectual class up from the chains of religious orthodoxy. He had an amazing gift for epigrams, penses, and bon mots. He also promoted several authors we take for granted today into the limelight which first shone upon them. Finally, he wrote some of the best books (e.g., Happy Days) about turn of the century life.

However, he was also an anti-Semite (although he had many close Jewish friends) and was utterly blind to the evils of Hitler. As he gets older, his grasp of world begins to weaken.

Today I'm sure the politically correct crowd writes him off without thought as 'a dead, white, male', little appreciating the high irony that H.L.M. created virtually single handedly the liberal atmosphere of discourse on which they depend.

Teachout has done a superb job of updating his life from numerous sources which have only become available recently. It is a tale rich in period detail and interesting characters. Dreiser, Sinclair, Knopf, Bryan, Twain and others walk through this narrative and each leaves a memorable wake behind them.

You should read this book for the quotes from H.L.M. alone. The period details and the famous personages in the narrative will significantly compound the reward you get for reading this book.

4 people found this helpful

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Claire Hall

An Impressive Introduction To The Sage Of Baltimore

Reviewed in the United States on May 22, 2004

It's now been almost half a century since H.L. Mencken's death, but the debate over his life and works only seems to grow more passionate. Much of this was undoubtedly the design of the Sage of Baltimore himself. He took great care in preserving and ordering his papers, and wrote two volumes of memoir and a diary designed to be opened only long after his departure. The publication of these works--the diary, "My Life as Author and Editor," and "Thirty-five Years of Newspaper Work," helped spark a new round of debate about Mencken, and also helped pave the way for Terry Teachout's fine biography.
Teachout has mined the rich Mencken trove to produce a life story that's vivid, engaging and a pleasure to read. He confronts the Big Questions about Mencken--especially his anti-Semitism--quite directly. He celebrates the man's achievements, points out his faults and blind spots, but does so through the perspective of a life-long interest in the man. As he explains in the introduction, his eighth-grade social studies teacher gave him his first book on Mencken.
In a relatively brief 349 pages, Teachout manages to cover the sweep of the Mencken story...from the boy reporter who first made his mark at the end of the 19th century, to the literary critic who made such a splash in the teens and twenties ("discovering" the likes of Dreiser and Sinclair Lewis); to the memorable battles he waged against the "booboisie," the great unknowing masses who he saw as the scourge of society; to the self-trained scholar who performed pioneering work in the field of the American language. It's a great introduction to the man for anyone who isn't familiar with him, and can be read with pleasure by those who do know him. A first-rate biography in every sense.--William C. Hall

12 people found this helpful

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