Mencken: A Biography. - book reviews

National Review, May 16, 1994 by John C. Chalberg

HE WAS hypochondriacal, mostly misanthropic, occasionally blissful, congenitally pessimistic, a congenial elitist, and a frequent tippler. All right, but was H. L. Mencken really a racist, a misogynist, an anti-Semite, and a homophobe? According to his latest biographer, Fred Hobson, the answers are no, no, possibly, and definitely.

Mr. Hobson is neither a member of the PC police nor out to rescue Mencken from their clutches. H. L. Mencken did--and does--have his enemies, but Fred Hobson is not among them. This is a biography of rather than a brief for--or against--a man who was quite able to take care of himself. In fact, it is Mr. Hobson's contention that Mencken, the scourge of the "booboisie," was not above fretting over such bourgeois concerns as the state of his posthumous reputation. And a bourgeois gentleman he was. A man of "honor" (rather than morality), Mencken paid his bills, met his family obligations, and remained loyal to those friends who he thought deserved his loyalty. If there is a revelation in these pages, it is that in his daily life Mencken was a sort of closet Rotarian.