The Impossible H. L. Mencken
H. L. Mencken, Marion Elizabeth Rogers (editor)
707 pages, including notes and index
published in 1991

This is a big collection of Mencken essays, mostly written in between the two world wars. It is neither a collection to dip into one essay at a time nor is it possible to read in one sitting. Even if you start of thinking you'll only read one or two essays, you soon keep reading until you've gorged yourself upon Mencken's writing, after which you need some recouperation time. The collection is well put together, with few dull essays. The introduction to the collection, by Gore Vidal is also very readable, neither too scholary nor too popular.

Mencken was a journalist and editor, who, as this book attests, wrote a great many articles and editorals of lasting value, even if the things he reported on were long ago relegated to history books. As a writer he was neither blindly partisan nor given to the sort of mealymouthed "objective" reporting too many journalists are doing today. If he disliked someone he was sure to tell you, but he based his dislike on the facts as he saw them. At the same time he was not afraid to give credit even to those who he disliked or whose politics he detested.

The collection is ordered by subject, rather than chronologically. For the most part this worked for me, though at times it all became too much. There are only so many articles about Democratic conferences one can read. As said, few of the essays here are dull and even the least promising subjects become interesting under Mencken's pen. It's only the occasional article about Baltimore that I disliked. In general his articles are still surprisingly readable, even those about causes long since abandoned or forgotten

This should be compulsory reading for anybody who'd like to write about politics, blogger and journalist alike. Mencken shows how you can write well about politics, objectively without being mealymouthed. While he always showed his likes and dislikes in his essays, I never got the feeling he let his feelings get in the way of his reporting. Personally, I'd rather read someone like Mencken, who wears his biases on his sleeves than any of the current generation of socalled "objective" journalist, who hide theirs in seemingly "balanced" articles.