Volume 50, Number 1 · January 16, 2003
Thus Spake Henry
By Russell Baker
The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken
by Terry Teachout
HarperCollins, 410 pp., $29.95
BOOKS DRAWN ON FOR THIS REVIEW
The Diary of H.L. Mencken
edited by Charles A. Fecher
Knopf, 476 pp. (out of print)
My Life as Author and Editor
by H.L. Mencken, edited and with an introduction by Jonathan Yardley
Vintage, 449 pp., $25.00 (paper)
Disturber of the Peace: The Life of H.L. Mencken
by William Manchester
University of Massachusetts Press, 348 pp., $19.95 (paper)
Mencken: A Life
by Fred Hobson
Johns Hopkins University Press, 672 pp., $21.95 (paper)
In Defense of Marion: The Love of Marion Bloom and H.L. Mencken
edited by Edward A. Martin
University of Georgia Press, 397 pp. (out of print)
The Vintage Mencken
edited by Alistair Cooke
Vintage, 240 pp., $13.00 (paper)
The Impossible H.L. Mencken: A Selection of His Best Newspaper Stories
edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers
Anchor, 707 pp. (out of print)
Mencken and Sara: A Life in Letters: The Private Correspondence of H.L. Mencken and Sara Haardt
edited by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers
McGraw-Hill, 551 pp. (out of print)
Before The Baltimore Sun turned into a branch of The Chicago Tribune and the Baltimore Orioles turned into a bush league ball team, Baltimoreans were a proud race of hometown chauvinists with many gods to adore. Among them were the enlightened capitalists Enoch Pratt and Johns Hopkins, Johnny Unitas, who was to professional football quarterbacking what Einstein was to the atomic bomb, the great civil rights champion and Supreme Court justice Thurgood Marshall, and Edgar Allan Poe. Typically, for Baltimoreans are still highly civilized as American urban people go nowadays, their football team is named the Ravens in homage to Poe's famous poem. Though Baltimore's rights to Poe are far from indisputable, as a former student at the Edgar Allan Poe Junior High School situated beside his grave in the middle of town, I am myself physical evidence of the insistence with which the city asserts its claim.
Review, 4457 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |