The Enduring Mencken (Book Review‪)‬

The Skeptic: A Life of H. L. Mencken, by Terry Teachout, New York: HarperCollins, 2002. 432 pp. WHILE THE STATURE OF MOST of the well-known American writers who gained fame in the 1920s was settled long ago, the debate on the lasting significance of H. L. Mencken's work goes on. It will not be settled by Terry Teachout's fine biography of Mencken (1880-1956), though Teachout succeeds admirably in describing Mencken with sympathetic understanding while not ignoring his flaws. (1) He manages to put the controversy over Mencken's anti-Semitism in perspective, concluding that Mencken indeed harbored prejudices about Jews but never tried to do harm nor approved of any attempt to injure Jews as a group. Mencken had no sympathy for Nazism, Teachout makes plain, but he rightly faults Mencken for failing to grasp that "Adolf Hitler was something more than a Ku Kluxer."