IN DEFENCE OF MENCKEN

Waikato Independent, Volume XXXVII, Issue 3272, 27 February 1937, Page 4

IN DEFENCE OF MENCKEN

(To. the Editor).: Sir, While I fully appreciate, and sympathise with; the point of view of the writer of the letter published last week in your papery commenting very strongly on spme quotations from ,H. L. Menckep in your new feature, "Worth Remembering,"' I feel that there is a lot'to*be said in Mencken's favour. &vJis It has been said of him that his main stock-in-trade is shocking Americans and incidentally the rest of the reading world: Shock tactics have proved effective in other spheres, so why not in literature? Self-satisfied complacency needs a shock occasionally, and by his very exaggeration's, Mencken drives home points which otherwise would pass most of us unnoticed.

Mencken writes, more often thaflL-, not, with his tongue in his cheek. This is particularly the case in "In Defence of Women," which you quoted—so much so tha]:' h'e leaves the feminine reader the please ant impression of haying scored off the male in most ahd leaves that cynical feeiiAg "that all he has said and thought' opposite sex has than justified! ;' J .. The other day, for the : first timeli I saw a picture of Henry Louis Mencken. With liis bland, 1 -smiling face, and well-cut coat; tightly buttoned round a well-nourished figure, he might be mistaken for an American Senator, or ah oil magnate in search of a valuable concession. This then is "America's hardest satirist and critic," who has "knocked hard at every point of View but his own scepticism," as an English journal said of him recently. While I am not defending his anti-religious views, I do feel that at least one of the quotations you reproduced is worth remembering, and that is his definition of ; lying—. "Swathing the bitter facts oi&fe in the bandages of soft illusion." There are two different kinds of lies, white and black. The deliberate lie, possibly not etenyviencken would countenance; but if a lew more kindly white lies were told to avoid hurting other people's* • feelings, the world might be a happier place. Yours, etc., : ■■•'"' '.-Mercury. .