H. L. Mencken Interview

my name is Donald curtly and my association with HL Mencken goes back to my connection with the Baltimore Sun which began in 1920 what you're about to hear is to the best of my knowledge the only recording of his voice ever made except for a few transcripts of radio broadcasts which were not preserved on June 30th 1948 at the request of the Library of Congress I persuaded mr. Menken to come to Washington for this interview he was a somewhat reluctant witness having a deep distrust of microphones and he agreed to come only after I had baited the hook with the statement that his voice was to be saved for posterity because we wanted this to be a natural record we did no rehearsing he didn't know what questions would he be asked and I made them up as we went along so you're actually eavesdropping on an informal conversation following natural lines and hearing mr. Menken speak just as his friends and associates heard him day after day he will notice that his voice seems a little tired and that there are some signs of the recurrence of his annual affliction hay fever he had reported a political convention for the son and had not quite recovered from the fatigue during the recording I mentioned the fact jokingly that what we were putting on tape might be heard by people a thousand years hence at the time mr. Menken seemed to pay no attention to this but on the way home he was thoughtful for a few moments and then he said do you really think that people will be listening to this a thousand years from now I said well Henry I hope so for my sake as well as yours the recording was made in a small room at the library on a warm day in June and I now gladly turn over the microphone to mr. Menken who was sitting opposite me chewing his favorite cigar with some belligerence and looking somewhat like a literary lion at bay well we're on the air Henry air we're not on the air are on the platter let's call it hot air that's right I'm a little confused there for that ride over from Baltimore did you ever say such a hideous Boulevard in your life I suppose her Boulevard just is terrible but I've never seen any no no it's it's it's a disgrace to humanity without question why well because it represents the American lust for the hideous the easy the delight in ugliness for its own sake it's very appropriately it leads to the capital of the United States I remember you are using that phrase quite often when you wrote for the Eaton for the sunpapers the American libido for the ugly yeah that was a favorite topic yeah the idea and that was this that such horrible exhibitions are not due to mere ignorant and innocence there is a pasty delight in the ugly it you can leave if you go down the street and Ballmer in those endless rows or two-story houses on the summer nights you can look in them they're usually illuminated more or less and you noticed you go sometimes four to three blocks without seeing a single object it's not hideous not a single thing not even a picture on the wall or a carpet or a rug then all of a sudden you'll see an even new Menace neighborhoods a house very tastefully decorated such as your house at 1524 Holland the old mine is not one with areas of a colored woman had lived in the alley behind me who in a little four-room house did a swell job decorating I don't know who she was and or what camera she's finally disappeared but she had this little house beautifully decorated with simple means cheap but good color scheme was good arrangement of things was good now what that signifies I don't know I have miss I decided he were born in one of those two-story row houses weren't you yeah I was born relaxing the street Baltimore near Fremont and you still live in one of those two-story houses no it's really well I it was three storey the one I was born into I my father bought the house I'm present at present living in in 1883 it's a mark of great success in all Amorian when he's born in a two-story house and works up to live in the three-story yes yeah that is but I had unfortunately didn't come up from that log cabin my misfortune was that my father was relatively well-off it's been a curse to me on life nobody will believe me on that ground they seemed it seems to be the idea in America that no man is worth listening to unless he's had some experience in sweatshops no all right what are your earliest recollections of baldon work as a boy well I've written a book describing them my first recollection is of the Oriole pride in Ballmer in 1883 I've been told by psychologists and other such frauds that you couldn't possibly recognize recollect anything earlier I was three years old it's precisely but I remember it I recall it very distinctly and it wasn't told to me warmer I knew as a boy was extraordinarily hot in summer and filthy was full of flies mosquitoes all kinds of epidemics were running simultaneously but the people liked it who would was cheap houses were comfortable although we slept on the mosquito nets and I looked I call it with great affection I realized its limitations there were no sewers and water supply was bad typhoid raged all summer smallpox all winter malaria at all times of the year I had malaria but I skipped typhoid and smallpox oh I don't know I think I escaped smallpox by a vaccination the family doctor all dr. Wylie vaccinated me when I was about 2 years old and the scar was so enormous that it still big as a half-dollar on my arm and no vaccination that I've ever had census taken as they say I've been told that that's no proof of anything but nevertheless there is the fact what school did you go to I went to school kept by low german named friedrich map known to americans his nap the school was down in holiday street well the War Memorial is now and it was a private school I went there till I was 12 years old and I went transferred the Polytechnic that's a high school yeah I never got beyond the fall effect our graduate is the Polytechnic very early I was only 15 and never went to school since thank God most men had escaped college have a over a grasp it pursues him but I must confess I am much too vain to have any sexual grunts I don't think of that what I was doing when the boys of my generation were in college listening to idiot lectures and chairing football games and doing all the foolish and silly and useless things college boys do I was a young reporter on the street and I believe hold 18 I believe at a young newspaper reporter in a big city at that time leather life it has never been matched on earth for romance and interests well the general belief is that you were a born reporter and I believe it's an interesting story as to how you got your first job now the story's not interesting I simply applied for it and got it I never was a good reporter you see all whether there are legends the law all are that you were offered to work for nothing in one out and came back with some big feature story no I never got a scoop in my life they were the things that were esteemed in those days they never seemed to me to have any sense most scoops were bad stories and they were always exaggerated and playing up in an idiot manner no I wasn't I wasn't a good reporter accepted one sense that I worked I was willing to work I never shut the job with what papers did you work I started with the Baltimore Herald and that was into my experience as a reporter because I became a Sunday at there very early at 23 and the city had to write afterwards well neighbor Sam Hurley and hence I did very little reporting after the age of 25 in later years I went back to reporting was a kind of volunteer but I did only things that were chosen by myself when did you begin your association with the sunpapers 19 about 1970 I should say that's when the Herald blew up I was an managing under the Herald and the thing blew up under me and I hear young reporters talking about the hazards of her life I've been sold out in a river three times in my and every time to my advantage well now did you have a definite goal in view at the time you were working at the newspaper man no I was so busy I didn't have time to do anything I wrote short stories and when I was 20 I wrote a short story that attracted the attention of Valerie Sedgwick later elder of the Atlantic Monthly and sattvic took an interest in me and in fact offered me a job on a magazine he was done editing in New York called Frank Blessed his popular monthly I refused it but Cedric and I became friends and have been friends ever since insofar as anybody discovered me it was our research week I had a a very Solomon light there but we remain on very good terms now at a certain point you established a beachhead in New York in what you might call literary circles and began commuting back and forth how did you do that how did that come about well in nineteen eight I think it was I was offered job of writing a monthly literary article for the old smart set that was one of many offers that I was getting in those days I was getting fairly well-known among the magazines and they suggested things for me to do I took it because it didn't involve going to New York I disliked New York and still do and didn't want to go there didn't want to live there and I wrote that article for six years and then the smart set blew up when war came on in 1914 and oh through a complicated series of events are not interesting George Mason and I acquired control of the editorial department of it he had been doing a little shorter than while I had article in theaters and Miranda magazine as joint editors for ten years and it was very valuable to us we had a something that is a dream of every young writer we had a magazine that we controlled and which printed everything we wrote without any interference by anybody else that was an enormously valuable thing most of the stuff that I printed in me and the smarts EDNOS days and some of it attracted attention could not have gotten to any other known magazine at that time well in the end we both got tired of it I did especially and Smart's had had a bad title which we couldn't change was short of money and I wasn't any future and it we had suck out of it everything we wanted so we decided to start another magazine we started the American mercury which was an enormous Lee different magazine the smart set was the most dreadful piece of printing in New York and the american mercury was the finest risa printing that has ever been done in a american magazine and well we lasted 10 years there and I decided to quit no because I've had a feeling all my life at 10 years is long enough for any job that after that it gets more routine eyes and man really is tired of it I'd better clear out if you can now when you were associated with the smart set and the american mercury is a great surge of vitality was taking place all through the literary world america as the new writers were being discovered some of them now famous and you had a great deal to do with that you and Nathan well we did our share of it we we were always especially alert for young authors we discovered remember a great many who never amounted to a dam they disappeared in their time I should say for ten authors it we hoped along not one survives today but among the survivors are some very good men for instance well I wouldn't like to mention individuals for reasons plain enough I might forget one who ought to be in the list you know some of them yes and I must say they I was always credited with more part in that than I really served after all you can't discover of an author who is not good in himself the most most so-called Discoverer does is to recognize the fact the man is good the man was good anteriorly and nothing that the editor does helped him I'm thoroughly convinced Evander's don't help authors either a man is good or he's bad and if he's good he'll bust through in one way or another he's bad no conceivable help or helping but that reason I don't believe in teaching writing he remember the Battle of the century the great price fight in worlds 30 acres between the Dempsey and Carpentier pass I covered it I covered it to the farmer son in New York world I there was a very curious episode that fight there were a lot of professional sports reporters there they were all you know unanimously in favor of Carpentaria for sentimental reasons Dempsey it appeared had not been a war hero car penny I had and while it was playing to a child who looked at him that car penny I couldn't conceivably beat Dempsey why these reporters some were who were some of whom were very good constantly sought during the fight for evidences of car penny a making some Russian on Dempsey and in the 8th round Carpentier happened to hit Dempsey who staggered a bit as a man will when he's caught off his balance and these stories the next day some of them all word of the effect that Carpentier had nearly knocked out Dempsey well I was innocent and ignorant not being a sporting reporter and I didn't mention any such episode I mentioned the fact that he'd been hit him but reported that he hadn't made any impression on him whatever this developed into a controversy and some of the sporting professionals insisted that Pepsi had been staggered and after the controversy went on for a week or two it occurred somebody to go to see cop and EA and Dempsey and Dempsey swooped I was that he hadn't felt the thing at all and Capades reply was it so far as he knows he hadn't made any impression on done see what surah that is a wonderful proof of which are many that people believe what they want to believe now the feeling against MT at that type was very bitter and some of the sporting experts shared it and another thing that I derive is a model from the whole episode is this that so-called experts are just ordinary men at bottom and that you can't trust him their judgement in an emotional situation in the more you trusted in body ethics well Dempsey went on as you know to live down his reputation as a draft dodger and became one of the most popular men in sports well I think we should say that injustice to Dempsey oh well that's pretty decent and there was nothing wrong with that see he was barely managed he was bradley manning's I don't I know I didn't hold anything against it monogrammed he wasn't a war hero I wasn't myself but we don't want dense II misjudge a thousand years from now and somebody plays back this record well naturally not I think done see later on kept us alone in New York which I often went into which had good food and the best mint juleps ever served in New York old Edgar Lee masters and I used to go in there and always drink a couple of those mint juleps he charged a dollar for him 15 years ago and they were well worth it I don't think you'd better go on record as a mint julep drinker I didn't beer your domain I don't drink much beer that's a legend it's I know but I mean aren't you uh haven't you always been a connoisseur of beer and a champion of beer as a dress sizing bears are cheap excellent drink I mean you were always making us thirsty during Prohibition by by mentioning the better brand of European beer with which you were acquainted okay that distinctly I'm not sure they want to and I went abroad drank the wine of the country and if I was in Germany or Denmark I drank beer if I was in Italy I certainly wouldn't drink beer or Spain or even France all all the German beers were always from sale in France that was an exaggeration my beer drinking I'm actually on Bibble acai drink every known alcohol drink what was it word I'm bibulous it's a very fine word I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all and alcohol was learnt early in life how to handle alcohol never had any trouble with it these rules are simple as mud first never drink if you've got any work to do never if I've got a job of work to do 10 o'clock at night I wouldn't take a drink up to that time secondly never drink alone that's the way to become a drunkard and thirdly even if you haven't got any work to do never drink while the sun is shining wait until it's dark about that time you're near enough to bed to recover quickly I think the danger of alcohol is largely it largely consists of this if a man starts to drink too early in the day or when he's got anything puts a strain on him to do as the alcohol goes out or even while it's still in he notices a letting down no man can work as well with alcohol and he notices a letting down and he's tempted to drink some more which removes that feeling of being let down and the result is he gets on a wheel and he drinks too much I am fond of drinking a reasonable amount my doctor tells me that in his judgment he's one the best doctors in America alcohol dough man over 60 is not only harmless but a positive benefit he said it has an effect on the heart muscle that it seems to be very salubrious and that the man who drinks a moderate amount at least according to my program is not only not harm but benefited which is good news to me as you know I myself evolved or degenerated into a dramatic critic I think was when that's what I was going to ask you aren't you a drama critic at one time that's true I was romantic critic for oh seven or eight years what's more I was a good one because I once proved to my old colleague George nation who looked on me as a mere amateur and I dug up some of my old criticisms and showed I was saying things ten years before that all the rest of the boys were saying then for instance I was not fooled by the frauds of that era of his ear of nineteen five to ten say country was full of all cause of kinds of terrible plays were being produced and taken seriously blazed by Augustus Thomas and Charles Cline I always treated him as trash there were stars at that time who were looked on with reverence by the public I always treated him as fresh one the one of the great heroes at the time and I tackled once was Richard Mansfield he was a kind of demigod no says-- and I told the truth about him when he played in a play called Don Juan by Schiller he was playing an eighteen year old boy and he was a man in the fifties and he looked it there was a foul and terrible performance well it got under Mansfield's skin and he wrote me some letters and protesting and divided me to come to see him which I never did in those days I made it a rule never to meet a nutter if I can help it a very good rule yeah it was a good rule I had nothing to do with stage people I naturally knew some of them some of them I was very fond of but I did not frequent theatre society and never in my life did I go to a theater party given by a manager to celebrate the opening of a new play and I assume that they still give such parties do they oh no no more the theater is too poured well the movie people give the party where their ghastly most of the theater parties to come back to something and I intended to ask what do you think of the of the newspaper guild as an influence in journalism I think it's been generally I think the idea the newspaper guild is good but the influence of the guild has been bad almost unqualifiedly bad for the reason that it got in the hands the wrong man beginning was the first of my favorite poem as I said some time ago I've been sold down the river three times in my life papers sold or busted under me it happened at every every time having been born lucky it was a good thing for me but I saw a new intimately many men for whom it was a dreadfully tragic thing and I always believed that the men on a newspaper or any group of men ought to have some machinery for compensating their individual impotence I lived through the time when a old-time ice wagon driver city editor might come down in the morning with a hangover and fire a man simply because he was in bad humour that is not fair I've seen it done I was a city under and fired men but I never did it for that reason but I probably did it for reasons that were just as irrational I didn't like the man I believed if a man works for any institution or industry for given time for a reasonable time so that he settled down into his job he requires the kind of best nurse in his job and it ought to be impossible the fire and water away and without compensation all I'll I'm in favor of I think that the man as a whole as a group can always bargain with the administration better than men alone I'm in favor of that but when the guild began developed it turned out very quickly that the guild was a conspiracy of the more incompetent and useless men on newspapers not only against the boss but also against the good men that like any other labor union it began to be dominated by the selling players and it it hence made its fight along lines that were to me silly for instance it's fight to greatly exaggerate and increase the wages of artists boys and of all of the third-rate people that hang around the edges of a newspaper staff when I negotiated with the guild as you may remember I tried hard to separate the actual newspaper men from all these exhilarates I don't care I think the auxiliaries ought to be represented but they ought not dominate the guild the newspaper men ought to be able to speak for themselves I never as a negotiator for the son objected to any reasonable demand made by the men I don't know whether you remember that negotiation I knew I was always in favor two men the actual good man wanted including some things that were expensive to the paper or seem to me a little bit irrational but nevertheless I think a man is entitled to be a little irrational about himself but when they began taking in girls who take one adds telephone operators and all such people I washed my hands of it I don't believe that's a newspaper guild anymore it's just to be a gang of four straight employees with the newspaper men as unwilling perfumers I think be killed it would be very well advised if it's left off all of those axillary and went back to being a newspaper guild is it then be dignified the bosses would lose three-fourths of their arguments against it and the higher administration on newspapers would be more friendly remember to hire men on newspapers are nearly all men who have been active newspaper men there are very few it happened I don't know anybody on the sunpapers in any executive position who hasn't been through the mill you know I don't a man it hadn't been through the mill adieu would be a rather useless man he'd never be chosen for his job on grounds of merit be some extraneous thing but a newspaper girl began making demands particularly on the weaker papers they seem to delight in the fact that they had when they got hold of a weak proprietor who simply was helpless they had strikes they tried to ruin the man and in the end they did ruin the good men him and it's a curious thing that all of the proprietors who were most friendly to him but to start with a man that they picked on for a special persecution for example Davey Stern Philadelphia and that fellow in in st. Petersburg Florida who I don't know I don't know him at all but he reached a point where he could not operate his paper under the demands being made and he had two choices one was to fold his paper sell it somebody or sell it somebody and the other choice was to fight him he decided to fight him he threw out all guilds and unions although he was in sincere friend of unionism he found there were a lot of old printers down in Florida who didn't having having tried for a while being retired they didn't like it they wanted to get back in the oxen get a little ink on him and he soon had a composing room staff he found there were many newspaper men who didn't like the guild but who did like working in Florida some of them came to see me when I was down there last winter and they went down he pays him fairly reasonable wedgies and he's got his whole plant run by non-union people and he's doing very well and the many other proprietors around the country are following suit and I believe that some big city will make the break soon and then you will see chaos the unions will lose all I have gained by long years of work particularly the type crafts community which was a very high toned Union as you remember run by men of intelligence has lately got in the hands of extreme radicals main animating idea seems to be that the boss is a scoundrel regardless of what he whether he is or not that's a kind of a formal assumption that they make and they're going to make it until some day the boss gets tired of it and throws them all out and keeps them out there are papers but this minute did have no Union organization whatever one is one of the most prosperous papers in America the Philadelphia bulletin nobody in the bulletin has to join the union they have no prejudice against the Union man he can belong to Union Ollie please he can work in the paper they pay good wages always a little about the Union scale and he's up now all a little bub I think your union skills and some some crafts are getting so preposterous that they'll come a time soon when newspaper providers will separate refused to Pam I was going to say that during the smart set and american mercury phase you were also quite active in the sun to that column the freelance that appeared every Monday part of that phase I started the freelance column in 1911 and gave it up in 1915 four years it overlapped him smart sent phase during those years I was either literary critic of the smart set or editor all the time what that column I gave up for various reasons one thing it was a burden I had too many other enterprises and doing a daily column was a very severe burden and I began to get tired of it well he went back to their column after a lapse of years no under another title no after the First World War when the kind of stuff that I was writing could be printed again I went back to the Sun to write a weekly article that's what I'm in it that must have been in Monday article yeah must have been in nineteen eighteen and nineteen and I kept that up to oh I kept it up fifteen or sixteen years at least and it had a tremendous impact on the life of Baltimore as you know I doubt it well I can speak from personal experience I may have had on you personally but on the town my opinion isn't it hardly made a ripple while I was working as a reporter at the time and I know that hardly a day went by a week went by when the a bushel letters didn't come in as a result that money column letters usually call you all kinds of names and well violently with everything you said which was partly the oddity to the column the volume of mail that comes in to a magazine or a newspaper or radio station there's no index of anything except that you happen to attract a lot of idiots because most people would write letters to newspapers or fools they're intelligent people seldom do it they do it sometimes but not often I used to in my days running a column I welcomed the letters that came in and in fact edited them I was in charge at the letter column and always left anybody that announced me violently get in because it was I believe that people like to read abuse and I didn't care what they said to me I was much too vain to care what such idiots believed about me in fact I'd have been ashamed if they praised me and so letters praising me very seldom got in that column well with uncharacteristic modesty I think you're under playing the influence of those Monday pcs on Baltimore I came into the picture myself in 1920 as a young and somewhat starry-eyed reporter and at that time and for the next five years I mingled with the staff with the underlings and I know that you were regarded as a sort of a sort of a demigod sort of a person up high up on Olympus who was I was in contact with all the literary greats it was discovering novelists who could who could have a novel published by a letter recommendation and so forth I think you're describing oh what an unusual situation it might be almost described as pathological we'll never with you I share that concern the trouble with you is you are an idealist and you took that thing much too seriously it's certainly much more seriously than I did well many of the young men i D listed that time yeah there were more of them they were younger to begin with now you're an old man just as I am and I meet molar and our idealism was out although I must say for myself that I never was an arduous I I know it doesn't exist today among the younger members of the staff now there's no such thing that's a kind of spirit that we had a kind of of ambition equalities seems that puzzles me about the modern young newspaperman is what does he do in his leisure he has much more leisure than didn't my time yours I worked all the time he works five days a week what does he do well one day he plays poker or plays golf and the other day his wife drags him off to the movies or he stays home and minds of children while his wife goes out and plays bridge well all those things would have been considered not only degrading but impossible psychologically my time in 1920 most of us were bachelors and as we would say now wolves playing around very irresponsible all of us shooting for the stars and falling short generally today the majority of reporters I think you'll find are married and have small children and responsibilities yes that's probably true but the idea of a newspaper reporter with any self-respect playing golf is to me almost inconceivable I hear that even printers now play God God Almighty that's dreadful to think of ivory I remember producing my time I knew a great many intimately I always had to do with makeup on the papers and hence I knew the printers and I was very fond of them and they were fine fellows but God playing would you do it justice seemed as incredible as to hear of a printer going to a dance printers spent our leisure mele in saloons and in summer on the shores down the rivers below Ballmer they were an intelligent man the Goodwin's I learned a great deal more about newspaper business from printers and I will learn some editors radio more but now one of would you hear of a printer going out or dressing himself up and playing golf the thing is really obscene it's it's it's truffled think of it well the New Deal certainly had its effect in newspaper offices yeah there was a when you were a young reporter when I was a reporter there was a great deal of freedom and camaraderie and cutting the low pay with it and so forth and long hours I remember working from one o'clock in the afternoon till 11:00 at night sometimes straight through the day to kill I did that every day now we have a 14-yard week and so forth and it has changed a whole characteristic for better or worse you could no more have a 40-hour week for a good newspaper reported and you could have the 40-hour week for an archbishop it's just not possible a good reporter he simply refuses to let a story go and when he's got his teeth into it and he wants to wants assignments I do I remember when I went down the office in the morning it certainly the thing that interested me wasn't whether I'd get a lot of time off and go home early but whether I'd get some good assignments if I got the good assignments I didn't care how long I work I worked many a time all night when the Baltimore fire happened in February 19 4 I was a young city editor they dug me out of bed about eleven o'clock in the morning said the big fire started downtown I went downtown I never got my clothes off or slept until Wednesday morning at 4 o'clock that's some Sunday to Windsor I suppose that's is almost a record for continuous work I had grant you that there were moments when I drowsed at my desk but I never stretched out to sleep until Wednesday morning and fire from looking on that is oppressive or keeping an account of overtime I delighted with the opportunity I was young I was ambitious and I liked the job I get the impression from the modern reporter that he doesn't really like his work he wishes he were a druggist hmm or he wishes he had a good job but amethyst well no I wouldn't say that the reporter would literary ambitions is one that I always respected but most of the reporters are I encounter these days haven't even got literary ambitions they never write anything outside the office many a good reporter that we both knew his turn press agent well in my time a press agent was looked on as a law firm creature nobody paid any attention to him and there was a rule on the Sun for many years that if a man ever became a press agent he never could come back to the Sun now he's a public relations cancel and these doesn't make 17,000 a year yeah he's just as bad as he was before the thing that discusses me about press Agentry is a simple one I have seen so many good men become press it into one town or other and there's a subtle corruption of their minds that they never get over they simply can't recover from that horror they're engaged in if they're good journalists some Ammar remember the worst men didn't become presidents but often the best and all they know deep dark arts if the thing is not a dignified trade and they rationalize our necessities in one way or other but they don't rationalize them enough to get rid of and here are some very large and interesting newspaper stories in your day when you were acting independently and choosing your own assignments I remember friends at the Scopes trial wow that was a lot of fun oh it was a lot of fun but then I was with an overtone of tragedy don't you think yes it was it was a dreadful thing to think of presumably civilized people falling into such a slough and it was a dreadful thing to look at a man like Brian a man with his opportunities in the world to see what he had come to intellectually in his old age it was a tragedy in a way but I should add at once it wasn't the tragedy to me I wasn't suffering anything I was enjoying it I enjoyed it tremendously who would not enjoy that remarks that famous for Monica Brian you remember what sigh he said that man is not a mammal well I see nothing remarkable about that because that is the that is the belief of a very large section of the American people if there are actually Christians they can't believe in man's and my mom and personally I believe it is but I had no particular horror of the man who believes it is he seems to meet a amiably comic character just like a man who believes that if you put a horsehair in a bottle of water it'll turn into a snake or the man who believes that Friday is an unlucky day I should add at once that I am one of those who do believe at Friday's no naka de and like like nearly all diagnostics I'm very superstitious and I would no more undertake any work of importance on Friday the 13th and not jump off a house you are still an agnostic all very faithfully that I was born in diagnostic my father was one his father ahead of him so agnosticism is nothing new to me I'll point out a one of the strange car Larry's not is this a man who is an agnostic by inheritance so that he doesn't remember any time and he wasn't has almost no hatred for the religious get on very well with all kinds of ecclesiastics and all kinds of pious people because I don't to have any evil conscience in the matter I'm not a renegade no feeling of sin now feeling the sin whatever I'd assume that they've got a right to believe anything they please being an extreme libertarian and believing in free speech and every other kind of freedom up to the last limits of the Endora bow I think there is a limit beyond which free speech can't go but it's a limit it's very seldom mentioned it's the point where free speech begins to collide with the right to privacy I don't think are any other conditions increase speech I've got a right to say and believe anything out please but I haven't got a right to press it on anybody else for example take for instance a Catholic Church which I am on good terms with personally but have no belief in whatsoever I've got a right to print my dissent from its doctrines to utter them I have exercised that right for many years but I had no right to go on the cathedral steps on Sunday morning when the Catholics are coming out of high mass and make a speech denouncing them I don't think there is any such right nobody's got a right to be a nuisance to his neighbors or to his neighbor's feelings to hurt her feelings Wantley if they come to him and say what do you think of this mask we've just finished I think he has a right to answer but he has no right to press his opinions on them well of course you'll notice the killer thing about the United States where there is very little free speech free speeches of very limited right in this country as I have learned to buy better experience more than once yet it is the country where the right to press opinions on reluctant errors is carried to a development that is unheard of on earth the whole country's full of propagandists who are bothering everybody all the time I get in the mail every morning tremendous piles of propaganda or one kind or other and I can easily imagine a man who would resent that would think it's a nuisance and he ought to have some there ought to be some way to save him from annoyance personally I don't care because when I get propaganda in and and with it there is one of those reply played postal cards or envelopes I always send it back empty without any writing on it I have to pay three four cents to get it back and it's my way of saying not for you who between may be unpleasant people and having to hear stuff that maybe don't want to hear when you go to a concert you've got to take what the professor offers I go I go up to the bustle in Pennsylvania every spring to the Bach wire to hear them sing box B minor mass that doesn't annoy me so much because it's a little bits a pleasant trip in beautiful spring weather usually and whatever they give on the first day which usually octan Palace on the second day I'm sure of hearing something that I've chosen myself and if I want his box b-minor mass I believe everybody loves music wants to hear it at least once a year it's one of the great masterpieces of the world and it's done very well and the surrounding atmosphere is excellent they don't the Tao the bathroom pays no attention to the to the proceedings whatever they don't bother you they don't put up any hotdog stands or try to sell you flags and their hotels do not increase their prices and it's happily free of every sign of American festivity have you ever been up there I never have I wasn't alone I just haven't unfortunately it's got to be rather expensive but I've always no one hasn't yeah it's only once a year oh by the way what kind of a cigar is that that you're trying to keep lighted that's a cigar made in Baltimore that I smoke relatively rarely I mainly chew it I choose cigars while I'm working I'm one of the last remaining tobacco chewers left in America and I never chew chewing tobacco but only cigars and this is a good clean cigar made of honest American Rebecca it has a pleasant taste and it's not deleterious anyway and I've done it for years and suffered no ill effects that I could notice when I smoked I ordinarily smoke more expensive cigars but I don't smoke a great deal just one more topic and that is as you know at the present time television has become a great factor in newspaper work all over the country newspapers are setting up television stations that cost a million dollars or so and there's a revolution going on among newspaper men who are what into the new field what do you think of television I think it's a quest newspapers and I wish it could be separated from them I am sorry that the Federal Communications Commission did not prohibit ownership of radio stations by newspaper I don't think it's a good thing in the public sense for any one agency to control rival news sources they ought to be kept separate and in active rivalry that's one objection to it secondly human nature being what it is as soon as a television or any kind of radio Enterprise gets into a newspaper an enormous number of men including some of the best men become radio crooners not newspaper men they become actors actors they get stage talk and brief that's true and it shows in the newspaper instantly the way for newspapers to meet the competition of radio and television is simply to get out better newspapers they can always keep miles ahead of these other agencies which happened the machinery for doing what newspapers can do newspapers ought to print better papers they're going downhill and anytime you find a newspaper got a radio department you find a newspaper deteriorating when you think of the actual programs on television that you've seen apart from their connection with journalism I have seen very few those I have seen I must say air or terrible I had never realized that presumably sane human beings and waste their time looking at such stuff I take it if you haven't seen my Sunday night program unfortunately I haven't seen it I hear it's wonderful I've taken the plunge yeah my neck well you're you're another you're another man lost to journalism where you're a valuable man my judgment God I think you know you were trade and do it very well and this is not just an afterthought because I've said it many times a lot of the opposite well thank you I think every moment you spend on television is at the cost of the newspaper well it has its compensations when we get back to Baltimore I have a day to interview a very beautiful actress over television Diana Barrymore John Barrymore daughter that's Pleasant but since when the newspaper men not had that Felicity well when I was a young reporter of merely fifty years ago I used to interview beautiful actresses and get mashed on ah but I don't think of that sending advantage at all I believe in Gresham's all bad money drives out good and if suppose a man were running a fine restaurant which to me is one of the greatest of all human enterprises one of the most socially useful things a man it runs a good eating house is is a valuable citizen all right he's running a meeting house and he notices his hotdog stands and lunch wagons are proliferating in the neighborhood and he says by god I better look out or they will fetch me Sunday so he goes out and buys a dozen lunch wagons and open some around a road and he makes money nevertheless I don't believe it that's a good idea I don't think you newspapers should run radio stations I grant you that they may be profitable although not television well I think in spite of all what you said I think you yourself are somewhat of an idealist and on that note we will close we have to get back to Baltimore by the way what what do you have to do today what is your chore for today after we get back rest of the day again but I want to get in the office about 2:30 if I can we've got to get lunch somewhere along the way and after that I've got nothing pressing I'm working on an article I'll do that tonight it's not so hot you say you're going to close on the note of idealism you know that's to me catastrophe the last words spoken by mr. Menken the word catastrophe unfortunately proved to be prophetic with regard to himself a few months after that June day he suffered the stroke which incapacitated him as a writer as for mr. Mankins curiosity as to whether or not this recording will be listened to by posterity well the answer to that one is up to you

Channel: Tacotopia Chess

Views: 54,182

Rating: 4.9434628 out of 5

Keywords: H. L. Mencken, Henry Louis Mencken, interview, newspaper, Sage of Baltimore, audio, Nietzsche, Scopes Trial, The Baltimore Sun, Baltimore Sun, The Baltimore Sun (Newspaper), Baltimore, Mayland, Teri Gender Bender, Henry Miller, Henry Miller (Author), Teri Suárez, Bosnian Rainbows, Le Butcherettes, Le Butcherettes (Musical Group)

Id: QpGzpqU-b04

Length: 57min 44sec (3464 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 01 2013