Word: mencken
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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This is all by way of launching a compliment at the editors of the American Mercury for the use they are making of newspaper men. It is also by way of calling your attention to the taming of the shrewish Mr. Mencken. For twenty years Mr. Mencken has jeered, snorted and chortled at the American newspaper man. Now he is, with the cooperation of Mr. Nathan, editing the best of current magazines and depending upon newspaper men for a large part of his copy...
...while on the subject it may be well to call attention to another sudden idiosyncracy of Mr. Mencken's. For twenty years he has brutally tweaked the noses of professors. Now, as in the case of the newspaper men, he cannot edit a good magazine without them...
There is, however, still some hope. President Nicholas Murray Butler and Mr. Mencken are in Cleveland. William Jennings Bryan is present, and La Follette is buying lumber for a platform. One of the darker horses may canter in under cover of the fog, or the weather may even change...
...WRITE SHORT STORIES (WITH SAMPLES)?Ring Lardner ? Scribner ($2.00). Ring Lardner is experiencing the difficult honor of being overpraised by those zealous critics whose word of endorsement is death to ambition. Adored by H. L. Mencken, Gilbert Seldes and F. P. Awood Broun, he will need all his humor and poise to keep from showing off. Thus far he has succeeded. The delightful thing about this book of short stories is not the amusing burlesque framework, ridiculing those textbooks that offer to teach illiterate soda-clerks to earn $25,000 in the writing business...
...crusading spirit of H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan might prove far more effective if these doughty warriors wielded rapiers rather than fountain pens, and shocked an apathetic world with flying gauntlets instead of with a satire which too often goes unperceived. On the other hand, the bitterness with which these gentlemen are wont to attack beloved American traditions might be considerably tempered by a realization that swift vengeance by a biting blade would probably follow an unguarded word...