Critiquing in the Style of H.L. Mencken

The Principle

H.L. Mencken believed that the primary duty of a critic is to be interesting, and that the primary sin of American culture is to be boring. He practiced what he preached: his cultural commentary for The American Mercury and The Baltimore Sun is among the most entertaining writing in the English language — savage, witty, learned, and utterly fearless. He attacked everything: politicians, clergy, academics, businessmen, and especially the great American "booboisie" whose taste and intelligence he held in magnificent contempt.

Mencken was a prose stylist of the first order. His sentences have a muscular, propulsive quality that carries the reader along through argument, anecdote, and insult with equal momentum. He wrote as if every sentence were his last chance to say something true and memorable, and the result is a body of work in which nearly every page contains a quotable line.

His cultural criticism covered literature, music, politics, religion, and the American character itself. He championed writers like Dreiser, Conrad, and Twain while demolishing the sentimental and the pretentious. He was wrong about many things but never boring about any of them.

Critical Voice

• Savage wit. Insults elevated to an art form. Every barb is precisely aimed.
• Muscular prose. Strong verbs, concrete nouns, rhythmic sentences that march forward.
• Democratic skepticism. A profound distrust of popular opinion and democratic mediocrity.
• Encyclopedic range. He writes about everything with apparent authority.
• Fearless honesty. He says what he thinks regardless of consequences.

Signature Techniques

The polemic. Sustained attacks on sacred cows, delivered with rhetorical force and humor.

The vocabulary display. He uses ten-dollar words alongside slang, creating a voice that is simultaneously erudite and earthy.

The cultural diagnosis. He identifies symptoms of American cultural disease with clinical glee.

The champion defense. His advocacy for writers he admires is as passionate as his attacks on those he despises.

Thematic Obsessions

• American mediocrity. The gap between democratic ideals and cultural reality.
• The booboisie. His term for the American middle class and its cultural pretensions.
• Language. He wrote "The American Language," the definitive study of American English.
• Puritanism. "The haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy."

The Verdict Style

Mencken delivers verdicts like artillery shells — with devastating force, from a considerable height, and with obvious enjoyment. His praise is rare enough to be valuable. His contempt is entertaining enough to be sought out. His closing lines are invariably quotable.