Minority Report: HL Mencken's Notebooks

Minority Report: HL Mencken's Notebooks
New York: Alfred A. Knopf. 1956.

Why read it? If you have not read something by H.L. Mencken, you have missed one of the truly memorable misanthropes in civilization, who wrote in a style that infuriated most of his readers. He is a wall-to-wall critic of almost everything to be encountered in American society in his own day and today, and each of his shafts brings from readers the response, "Damn it, he's right!" Well, half-right, anyway. Anyone who reads H.L. Mencken never forgets him. The variety of his targets in this collection from his notebooks is listed below.

A random collection of cynical, ironic, unexpected and, rarely, straightforward notes on a variety of subjects. Topics include religion, winter weather, character, marriage, victims of crime, murder, the hereditary or environmental causes of crime, government, genius, the higher planes of thought, substitutes for thought, life, laughter, war, law and human nature, human conduct, man as machine, the proclivity toward doing evil, Catholic Confession, sins, competence, immortality, everyday journalism, the process of being a writer, teaching and teachers, morality, manners, personal habits, different nationalities, poetry, the five-day week, authority, Puritanism.

Gambling, civil rights, work, God, inferior people, equality, values, labor unions, Russia, free speech, democracy, intellectuals, dogma, justice, education, the common man, Eastern philosophy, the insignificance of most human beings, Appalachia, China, India, physicians and their patients, philosophy, capital punishment, boredom, reading, innovation, true science, art, the right or privilege to vote, Darwin and Huxley, the bearers of bad news, skepticism and intelligence, sex, clergymen, leisure, literature, second-and third-rate men, unhappiness, Englishmen and Americans, contempt, rebels, the United States, blacks, liberty, quackery, medical specialists, true believers, college students, American trades.

Anglophiles, professors, history, Christian ideals, small boys, scientific treatises, the average man, desire for death, reformers, irrationality, the nonexistence of altruism, duty, belief in the afterlife, democracy, the Confederacy, English teachers, professional periodicals, liberty vs. security, leaders of groups, youth and savagery, critics, the human race, women, school administrators, educational fads, common sense, intelligence, literature, progress, credulity, social organizations like the Rotarians, politicians, revolutions, cynicism, misfits and incompetents, the New Deal, nuns, political corruption, science, English traits, man and machine, plain English.

Stupidity, creation, poverty, GK Chesterton, ambiguity, Prohibition, idealism, the thinking process, the economy, totalitarianism, Communism, prophets, the solitary condition of life, superior people, the evanescence of applause for public figures, faith, life insurance salesmen, different cultures, generals, vanity, Santa Claus, businessmen, humor, bishops, etc.