Biography of an Iconoclast

Though Edgar Kemler's title would imply that his new book is a biography of H. L. Mencken, it is more accurately described in a notation on the dust jacket: "An Informal History of the Man and His Era." A genuine biography of the 'Sage of Baltimore' would be a good idea (and a part of one can be found in Mencken's autobiographical books: "Happy Days," "Newspaper Days," and "Heathen Days") but what Mr. Kemler was written is only a chronicle of the era in which his protagonist made his biggest splash in the backwaters of American culture.

The reporting is purely external, being drawn mostly from Mencken's hundreds of bound volumes of press-clippings and his published writings. I, as one, would like to know why a man so intelligent and civilized as Mencken would aggressively support the Germans in the early part of both World Wars; would call Bernard Shaw, his model for iconoclasm, "a great windbag full of platitudes"; would accept the starvation-deaths during the Depression as "salutary." All of these things reveal a side of Mencken's character which could certainly bear exploring, and are certainly more interesting than such revelations as "between drinking sessions he slumbered like an innocent." I would also like to know how anyone, even Mencken, could "read novels at the rate of 200 pages an hour."

H. L. Mencken's life-long devotion to hurling billingsgate at the 'Puritan boobs' won him many a loyal follower, particularly among the intellectually self-sciousness of America . . . realizing the grossness of its manners and its mind, and been dismally primitive. To Edmund Wilson, Mencken was, "the civilized consciousness of America . . . realzing the grossness of its manners and its mind, crying out in horror and chagrin . . ." His battles with the censors, one of which caused him to invade Boston and which also caused Felix Caragianes, the Square newsdealer, to be arrested for selling Mencken's "Mercury," are no less admirable today than yesterday. Mr. Kemler's recounting of the Boston incident and the Scopes "Monkey Trial" (he contends that "perhaps" Scopes was influenced by Mencken's writing) makes lively reading.

In his first sentence, Mr. Kemler sees Mencken as a "Rabelais, Swift, or Shaw--who has somehow abused his gifts." Mr. Kemler fails to make his case for this comparison. His book is a humdrum piece of writing, devoid of wit and the dramatic flair necessary for a biography.