Word: menckens
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...Mencken Chrestomathy, by H. L. Mencken edited and annotated by the author, Alfred A. Knont New York...
Ther is a notion in the land that the writings of Henry Louis Mencken were served up exclusively for a by-gone age, namely the Twenties, and it follows that they no longer merit attention. This notion was voted, on and passed, it would seem, by the professional critics of our letters, their camp-followers, and their spiritual confreres, all of whom are afflicted with the need either to treat things seriously or to ignore them altogether. Since Mencken clearly cannot be taken seriously in this day and age, the alternative is chosen, with the result that his books, except...
...cannot read very far into this big generous selection without relishing that it is a cardinal sin to take Mencken very seriously. Mencken does not take himself seriously, and he is always dismayed when his readers overdo the business. "One horse laugh," he says, "is worth ten thousand syllogisms," and he proceeds to provide many move horse-laughs than examples of neat, careful, judicious, and thorough thinking. I repeat that this is a matter of doctrine, not of accident. Speaking of great critics, he says that "they could make the thing charming, and that is always a million times more...
Quite early in its history, the Clinic began the practice of inviting visiting dignitaries and distinguished men from the University to come for the 40-cent lunch and talk with the staff. Julian Huxley, H. L. Mencken, and the psychologist Carl Jung are among the diverse visitors the Clinic has had. The late Robert Benchley also came. He arrived in the middle of the joke experiment. Benchley showed great interest in all the apparatus used to measure a person's internal and external responses to the jokes, and in a few weeks the Clinic staff was reading an elaborate parody...
...intense awareness of his contingency and freedom . . ."). Onetime Texas Congressman Maury Maverick's great contribution, gobbledygook, for the verbiage of officialdom, is also there, along with a learned note that it derives from the gobblings of turkeys. F.D.R. had contributed iffy (for questions) and H. L. Mencken ecdysiast (for stripteaser...