Other writers can be listed: Thomas Nelson Page, Augusta Evan Wilson, George Cary Eggleston, Mary Johnston. Evetts Haley’s “Plutarchian biographies”) recall a lost way of life with nostalgia.But more than that, they offer a model they believe to be superior in most respects to the present.
And yet, for all its size and all its wealth and all the “progress” it babbles of, it is almost as sterile, artistically, intellecturally, culturally, as the Sahara Desert…The picture gives one the creeps… A self-respecting European, going there to live, would not only find intellectual stimulation utterly lacking; he would actually feel a certain insecurity, as if the scene were the Balkans or the China Coast….[It is] senile [and] crass, gross, vulgar and obnoxious…a vast plain of mediocrity, stupidity, lethargy, almost of dead silence.
In the North, of course, there is also grossness, crossness, vulgarity.
The “Sahara of the Bozart” opens with lines that are easily among the most famous written about the South in this century: “Alas, for the South!
Her hooks have grown fewer— She never was much given to literature.” In the lamented J.
His peculiar qualities have a high social value, and are esteemed. And furthermore, this superiority at the top is ever-so faintly reflected in the conduct of the lesser multitudes in their manners, their “civility.” And in their worst aspects the ignorant masses of the South are seen as suffering corruption from an alien influence: The tone of public opinion is set by an upstart class but lately emerged from industrial slavery into commercial enterprise—the class of “hustling” business men, of “live wires,” of commercial club luminaries, of “drive” managers, of forward-lookers and right-thinkers—in brief of third-rate Southerners inoculated with all the worst traits of the Yankee sharper. The philistinism of the new type of town-boomer Southerner is not only indifferent to the ideals of the Old South; it is positively antagonistic to them…It is inconceivably hollow and obnoxious.
One observes the curious effects of an old tradition of truculence upon a population now merely pushful and impudent, of an old tradition of chivalry upon a population now quite without imagination. What remains of the ancient tradition is simply a certain charming civility in private intercourse—often broken down, alas, by the hot rages of intolerance, but still generally visible.One thinks of the interstellar spaces, of the colossal reaches of the now mythical ether.Nearly the whole of Europe could be lost in that stupendous region of fat farms, shoddy cities and paralyzed cerebrums: one could throw in France, Germany and Italy, and still have room for the British Isles.In fact, this desolate picture, however accurate it may or may not have been, is much the same view as that of the post-bellum Southern plantation romancers.Using his own irreverent style, Mencken argues, in effect, that the 20th century South remains a frontier for Northern conquest and reconstruction.Gordon Coogler, author of these elegiac lines, there was the insight of a true poet.He was the last bard of Dixie, at least in the legitimate line.“The Sahara of the Bozart” is a bit more complex than that.It is not really a slur at all, at least not a malicious one, and Mencken does not limit his attention to the shortcomings of the South.Indeed, his famous essay is more properly regarded as an endorsement of the Old South and an introduction to the high chivalric tradition in Southern letters.He spoke bitterly of the barreness of the New South because (as incredible as it may seem at first glance) Mencken was really a defender of the Faith, an apologist for the old order and a crusader for moonlight and magnolias.
Comments Hl Mencken Essays
Bill Moyers Essay On HL Mencken and Politics -
Bill Moyers reflects on a new biography of the late great curmudgeon H. L. Mencken. “He began his career as a police reporter. And his time on the crime beat.…
H. L. Mencken as a Boy? Oh, Boy! National Endowment for.
Photograph of H. L. Mencken sitting at his desk at The Baltimore Herald. a two-volume edition of Mencken's Prejudices, his literary and political essays from the.…
H. L. Mencken and the South Abbeville Institute
Mencken's “Sahara of the Bozart” is one of the most famous essays of 20th century American letters. Since its appearance in 1919, the essay.…
H. L. Mencken The New Yorker
Read more from H. L. Mencken on The New Yorker.…
Memorial Service by H. L. Mencken - Don Parrish
H. L. Mencken's essay on the gods; source of the phrase 'God is dead'.…
Analysis The Penalty of Death, by H. L. Mencken Essay
Mencken's “The Penalty of Death” At first glance, it is difficult to tell if H. L. Mencken is for or against the death penalty. He wrote his essay, “The Penalty of Death,”.…
The Vintage Mencken by H. L. Mencken - Goodreads
Shelves great-essays. The first I ever heard of HL Mencken was when I read his obit with a pic of his moon face with a stubby cigar in the middle of his mouth.…
Footnote on Criticism An Essay by H. L. Mencken A.
Footnote on Criticism An Essay by H. L. Mencken. III. Footnote on Criticism From Prejudices, Third Series. NEARLY all the discussions of.…
Prejudices" Complete — The World According to HL Mencken
As I note about H. L. Mencken in an essay-review piece in the 2010 Nov/Dec issue of the Columbia Journalism Review, his influence as a critic.…