H. L. MENCKEN: A Portrait from Memory. by Charles Angoff (PDF)

Description

First edition. “a revealing picture of his personality during the ten most influential years of his life.” 240 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 8vo..

User’s Reviews

Reviews from Amazon users which were colected at the time this book was published on the website:

⭐I read this book with great interest because various Mencken biographers had cited it as something of a mean-spirited hatchet job. Actually, many of the allegations in this book, stated or implied, were in line with much of what I had already read in other biographies. I find it valuable and interesting to read biographies written by people who actually knew the subject personally. Naturally Mr. Angoff has his biases, but the book definitely adds to the complete picture of the man, Mencken.

⭐Mencken was Angoff’s boss, and together they were the entire editorial staff of The American Mercury from 1925-1933, the magazine’s heyday, so Angoff writes from personal experience, although that experience lay decades in the past by the time he produced this book, copyright 1956. Mencken died that year, in January so probably before the book was published, but he knew it was on the way and that it wouldn’t be flattering. Without saying so directly, Angoff plainly disliked Mencken, but while much of the evidence he presents is negative I don’t believe it’s been shown to be untrue, and of all people Mencken would have the least right to complain about being criticized in print. Nor did he: Mencken seems to have taken most criticism in stride.Angoff’s book is certainly not the whole story, so don’t take it as gospel. Many people saw and thought of Mencken very differently, but if you’re interested in Mencken then Angoff’s book will give you an honest assessment of him by someone who had a long and close professional association with him.

⭐Love books by and about Mencken. This one is below average.

⭐H.L. Mencken rescued Charles Angoff from literary obscurity and was rewarded (after his death) with this mean-spirited hatchet job. Even the dust jacket photograph of Mencken is a hatchet job: Angoff selected probably the most unflattering photo of HLM possible to grace the cover of his screed. The “portrait from memory” (just HOW reliable that memory is is debatable) Angoff paints of HLM is of a foul-mouthed, crude, racist, anti-Semitic bullyboy; strangely, of all of Mencken’s many friends and acquaintances, only Angoff saw this side of HLM. This leads one to wonder whether HLM suddenly changed character when he was alone with Angoff and only with Angoff, or whether Angoff’s “memory” is, shall we put it kindly, “fertile.” This book may be classified under the heading of “Officeboy’s Revenge.”

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