Second Mencken Chrestomathy

by H. L. Mencken

  As practised by such learned and diligent but essentially ignorant and unimaginative men, criticism is little more than a branch of homiletics. They judge a work of art, not by its clarity and sincerity, not by the force and charm of its ideas, not by the professional virtuosity of the artist, not by his originality and artistic courage, but simply and solely by what they conceive to be his correctness. If he devotes himself to advocating the transient platitudes, political, economic and aesthetic, in a sonorous manner, then he is worthy of respect. But if he lets fall the slightest hint that he is in doubt about any of them, or worse still, that he is indifferent to them, then he is a scoundrel, and hence, by their theory, a bad artist.

  Against such idiotic notions American criticism makes but feeble headway. We are, in fact, a nation of evangelists; every third American devotes himself to improving and lifting up his fellow-citizens, usually by force; the messianic delusion is our national disease, Even the vicious are still in favor of crying vice down. “Here is a novel,” says the artist. “Why didn’t you write a tract?” roars the critic—and down the chute go novel and novelist. “This girl is pretty,” says the painter. “But she has left off her brassière,” comes the protest—and off goes the poor dauber’s head. Genuine criticism is as impossible to such inordinately narrow and cocksure men as music is to a man who is tone-deaf. The critic, to interpret his artist, even to understand his artist, must be able to get into the mind of his artist; he must feel and comprehend the vast pressure of the creative passion; as Spingarn says, “aesthetic judgment and artistic creation are instinct with the same vital life.” This is why most of the best criticism of modern times has been written by men who have had within them, not only the reflective and analytical faculty of critics, but also the gusto of artists—Goethe, Carlyle, Lessing, Schlegel, Sainte-Beuve, and, to drop a story or two, Hazlitt, Georg Brandes and James Huneker. Huneker, tackling “Also sprach Zarathustra,” revealed its content in illuminating flashes. But tackled by Paul Elmer More, it became no more than a dull students exercise, ill-naturedly corrected.…

  Such is the theory of Spingarn—now, alas, an angel in Heaven. It demands that the critic be a man of intelligence, of toleration, of wide information, of genuine hospitality to ideas. Unfortunately, the learned brother had been a professor in his day, and, professor-like, he began to take in too much territory. Having laid and hatched, so to speak, his somewhat stale but still highly nourishing egg, he began to argue fatuously that the resultant flamingo was the whole mustering of the critical Aves. The fact is, of course, that criticism, as humanly practised, must needs fall a good deal short of this intuitive re-creation of beauty, and what is more, it must go a good deal further. For one thing, it must be interpretation in terms that are not only exact but are also comprehensible to the reader, else it will leave the original mystery as dark as before—and once interpretation comes in, paraphrase and transliteration come in. What is recondite must be made plainer; the transcendental, to some extent at least, must be done into common modes of thinking. Well, what are morality, hexameters, movements, historical principles, psychological maxims, the dramatic unities—what are all these save common modes of thinking, short cuts, rubber-stamps, words of one syllable? Moreover, beauty as we know it in this world is by no means the apparition in vacuo that Spingarn seemed to see. It has its social, its political, even its moral implications. The finale of Beethoven’s C Minor Symphony is not only colossal as music; it is also colossal as revolt; it says something against something. Yet more, the springs of beauty are not within itself alone, nor even in genius alone, but often in things without. Brahms wrote his Deutsches-Requiem, not only because he was a great artist, but also because he was a good German. And in Nietzsche there are times when the divine afflatus takes a back seat, and the spirochaetae have the floor.

  Spingarn himself appeared to harbor some sense of this limitation on his doctrine. He gave warning that “the poet’s intention must be judged at the moment of the creative act”—which opened the door wide enough for many an ancient to creep in. But limited or not, he at least cleared off a lot of moldy rubbish, and got further toward the truth than any of his former colleagues of the birch. They wasted themselves upon theories that only concealed the poet’s achievement the more, the more diligently they were applied; he, at all events, grounded himself upon the sound notion that there should be free speech in art, and no protective tariffs, and no a priori assumptions, and no testing of ideas by mere words. The safe ground probably lies between the two camps, but nearer Spingarn. The critic who really illuminates starts off much as he started off, but with a more careful regard for the prejudices and imbecilities of the world. I think the best feasible practise is to be found in certain chapters of Huneker, a critic of vastly more solid influence and of infinitely more value to the arts than any prating pedagogue has ever been disposed to grant. In his case, as in that of Poe, a sensitive and intelligent artist recreated the work of other artists, but there also came to the ceremony a man of the world, and the things he had to say were apposite and instructive too. To denounce moralizing out of hand is to pronounce a moral judgment. To dispute the categories is to set up a new anti-categorical category. And to admire the work of Shakespeare is to be interested in his social aspirations, his shot-gun marriage and his frequent concessions to the bombastic frenzy of his actors, and to have some curiosity about Mr. W.H. The really competent critic must be an empiricist. He must conduct his exploration with whatever means lie within the bounds of his personal limitation. He must produce his effects with whatever tools will work. If pills fail, he gets out his saw. If the saw won’t cut, he seizes a club.…

  Perhaps, after all, the chief burden that lies upon Spingarn’s theory is to be found in its label. He called it “creative,” which suggested, unhappily, the “constructive” of the Rotarians. It said what he wanted to say, but it said a good deal more. In this emergency, I propose getting rid of his misleading label by pasting another over it. That is, I propose the substitution of “catalytic” for “creative,” despite the fact that “catalytic” is an unfamiliar word, and suggests the dog-Latin of the seminaries. I borrow it from chemistry, and its meaning is really quite simple. A catalyzer, in chemistry, is a substance that helps two other substances to react. For example, consider the case of ordinary cane sugar and water. Dissolve the sugar in the water and nothing happens. But add a few drops of acid and the sugar changes into glucose and fructose. Meanwhile, the acid itself is unchanged. All it does is to stir up the reaction between the water and the sugar. The process is called catalysis. The acid is a catalyzer.

  Well, this is almost exactly the function of a genuine critic of the arts. It is his business to provoke the reaction between the work of art and the spectator. The spectator, untutored, stands unmoved; he sees the work of art, but it fails to make any intelligible impression on him; if he were spontaneously sensitive to it, there would be no need for criticism. But now comes the critic with his catalysis. He makes the work of art live for the spectator; he makes the spectator live for the work of art. Out of the process comes understanding, appreciation, intelligent enjoyment—in brief, a close approximation to the effect that the artist tried to produce. That is the intent of criticism and that is also its function.

  A Novel a Day

  From the Smart Set, Sept., 1912, pp. 151–52. Fredric Weldin Splint, then the editor of the Smart Set, offered me the job of literary reviewer in 1908. Splint’s proposal was that I should fill eight pages of his space every month, and should have $50 for my pains, with the review books thrown in as my perquisite. I did not look this gift horse in the mouth, but fell to gratefully and with great energy, and so began a connection with that magazine which ran on until the end of 1923

  For four years I have averaged a novel a day. On many a rainy Sunday I have read two or three, and in one week, incommunicado and on my back, I actually got through twenty-four. But that, of course, was extraordinary, unparalleled, a unique collocati
on of bravura and bravado. I do not say I’ll ever do it again. With one such exploit in a lifetime the average man must rest content. It is not given to mortals to work incessantly upon such high gears, to rise so stupendously above the common level of achievement. I look back upon the deed with undisguised pride, and even with a touch of wonder. It ranks me with astounding and inordinate fellows—Hobson the osculator, Holmes the homicide, Home-run Kelly, Butcher Weyler and Brigham Young the matrimoniac.

  Say I’m weary, say I’m sad;

  Say that health and wealth have missed me;

  Say I’m growing old, but add—

  —that I once read twenty-four novels in a week—not, perhaps, from cover to cover, skipping not a word, cutting every page—but still diligently and even thoroughly, and to the end that the ensuing reviews, composed on my discharge from hospital, were pretty fair and comprehensive, as reviews go in this vale of crime, and so pleased half of the publishers and almost one of the novelists.

  But what I started out to do was not to boast about my Gargantuan appetite for prose fiction—an appetite so insatiable that in the intervals between best-sellers it sends me back to “Huckleberry Finn” and “Germinal” and “Kim” and “Vanity Fair”—but to apologize to the dear publishers for occasionally overlooking a single novel, or even a whole flock of novels. I try to have a glance at every one they send me, and to go through at least thirty every thirty days, but after all I have only two hands, and thus it sometimes happens, when nine or ten come bouncing in together, that I muff three or four of them. And again it sometimes happens that I am utterly unable, with the best intentions in the world, to read far enough into a given volume to find out what it is about. And yet again it sometimes happens that, having found out, I am unable to describe the contents without violating the laws against the use of profane and indecent language. And finally it sometimes happens—more often, indeed, than merely sometimes—that my toilsome surmounting of all these difficulties is rendered null and vain by assassins in the Smart Set office, who reduce me from eight pages to six without warning, or pi a couple of galleys of my arduous type, or send their devil to me with orders to let novels alone for a month and give them something sapient and racy about the latest published dramas or the new treatises on psychotherapy. All this by way of explanation and apology, not only to the Barabbases who publish, but also to those kind readers who protest in courteous terms when I happen to neglect their favorites among the Indiana genii. The whole thing, I must admit, is rather a muddle. I do not review upon any systematic, symmetrical plan, with its roots in logic and the jus gentium, but haphazard and without a conscience, and so it may occur that a fourth-rate novel gets a page, or even two pages, while a work of high merit goes inequitably to my ash-barrel and is hauled away in the night, unwept, unhonored and unsung, along with my archaic lingerie and my vacant beer bottles.

  Meditation at Vespers

  From the Baltimore Evening Sun, Dec. 12, 1927

  After long years of active and sometimes gaudy controversy, literary, political, ethical, legal and theological, I find myself, at the brim of senility, cherishing the following thoughts: (a) that I can’t recall ever attacking an adversary who was not free to make a reply, and in tones as blistering as he liked, and (b) that I can’t recall ever calling for quarter, or indulging in any maneuvers to get it. Such are the banal satisfactions that must content a rat-catcher in his declining years. Like all other satisfactions, they are probably largely delusory—in fine, Freudian phenomena. That is to say, I suspect that an impartial inquiry would show that I have hit below the belt more than once, and ducked more than once. Do I forget it grandly, and flap my wings? Then it is for the same reason that a Sunday-school superintendent forgets stealing 15 cents from his blind grandmother back in 1895.

  But if I thus have to lie a little, if only unconsciously, to make my record clear, I can at least say with complete honesty that the uproars I have been engaged in from time to time have been very agreeable, and left me without any rancor. Speaking generally, I am of a sombre disposition and get very little happiness out of life, though I am often merry; but what little I have got has come mainly out of some form of combat. Why this should be so I don’t know. Maybe it indicates that I am only half civilized. But if so, then Huxley was also only half civilized, and Voltaire before him, and St. Paul before Voltaire. Is controversy of any use? Obviously, it is the only device so far invented that actually spreads the enlightenment. Exposition, persuasion, homiletics, exegesis—these devices are all plainly inferior, for you must first get your crowd. How difficult that is every preacher knows. But a combat brings the crowd instanter, and if that combat is furious enough and over an issue of any importance at all, the crowd will stay to the end.

  True enough, what it gets out of the immediate uproar is often only folly. It is, save in extreme circumstances, in favor of whoever takes and holds the offensive. The chief desideratum in practical controversy, indeed, is to do that, and the second is to make your opponent angry: the moment he begins to fume he is lost. But though the immediate victory may thus go simply to the better gladiator, I believe it is safe to say that he often ruins his cause, if it is intrinsically a bad one, by winning. The Prohibitionists scored a glorious triumph in 1920. They not only got their law; they also converted at least four-fifths of all the morons in America. But they began to go downhill from that moment. The history of controversy, in truth, is a long history of winners losing and losers winning. There is more to the thing than the concrete battle. Ideas are shot into the air, and some of them keep on flying. The first ecclesiastical rush in the ’60s apparently overwhelmed Huxley—but it also gave him his chance. Voltaire had to flee from France in 1726, but he scattered seeds as he fled, and they are still sprouting and making fruit.

  * New York, 1917. Spingarn was born in 1875 and died in 1939. Educated at Columbia and bearing its Ph.D., he rose to be professor of comparative literature there. He was a man of large means and was one of the backers of the publishing firm of Harcourt, Brace & Co. He devoted most of his energies, in his later years, to succoring the colored folk from the Confederate Kultur.

  † Brownell printed his chief work, Standards, in 1917. He was born in 1851 and died in 1929. He was literary adviser to Charles Scribner’s Sons for thirty-nine years.

  ‡ I think this was in his The Advance of the English Novel; New York, 1917, which I reviewed in the Smart Set in June of that year. Phelps was born in 1865 and died in 1943. After taking his Ph.D. at Yale, he spent a year at Harvard, and then returned to his alma mater for the rest of his life. Despite his Calvinist principles, he was a charming fellow, and in his later years I saw a good deal of him and liked him very much.

  § Sherman was born in 1881 and died in 1927. His effort to dispose of Dreiser during World War I, on the ground that Dreiser was of German origin, was thoroughly disingenuous and dishonorable. In 1924 he moved to New York as literary editor of the Herald Tribune and presently yielded so far to the antinomianism of the town that he became a Dreiser partisan.

  ‖ More, in his day, was extremely influential, and his eleven volumes of Shelburne Essays were accepted as gospel by all the young professors. Born in 1864, he died in 1937. He was editor of the Nation for the five years before Oswald Garrison Villard took it over, and its pages were filled with his lucubrations and those of his disciples.

  XIX. PRESENT AT THE CREATION

  A Novel of the First Rank

  From the Smart Set, Nov., 1911, pp. 153–55. A review of JENNIE GERHARDT, by Theodore Dreiser; New York, 1911. Ever since I began to find myself as a literary critic, I had been on the lookout for an author who would serve me as a sort of tank in my war upon the frauds and dolts who still reigned in American letters. What I needed was an author who was completely American in his themes and his point of view, who dealt with people and situations of wide and durable interest, who had something to say about his characters that was not too obvious, who was nevertheless simple enough to be
understood by the vulgar, and who knew how to concoct and tell an engrossing story. When the gorgeous phenomenon of Jennie Gerhardt burst upon me, I was frankly enchanted. This flaming review was the first long one to be printed, and its positive tone undoubtedly influenced a good many of those that followed. Thereafter, for five or six years, Dreiser was the stick with which I principally flogged the dullards of my country, at least in the field of beautiful letters

  IF YOU MISS reading “Jennie Gerhardt,” by Theodore Dreiser, you will miss the best American novel, all things considered, that has reached the book counters in a dozen years. On second thought, change “a dozen” into “twenty-five.” On third thought, strike out everything after “counters.” On fourth thought, strike out everything after “novel.” Why back and fill? Why evade and qualify? Hot from it, I am firmly convinced that “Jennie Gerhardt” is the best American novel I have ever read, with the lonesome but Himalayan exception of “Huckleberry Finn,” and so I may as well say it aloud and at once and have done with it. Am I forgetting “The Scarlet Letter,” “The Rise of Silas Lapham” and (to drag an exile unwillingly home) “What Maisie Knew”? I am not. Am I forgetting “McTeague” and “The Pit”? I am not. Am I forgetting the stupendous masterpieces of James Fenimore Cooper, beloved of the pedagogues, or those of James Lane Allen, Mrs. Wharton and Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, beloved of the women’s clubs and literary monthlies? No. Or “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” or “Rob o’ the Bowl” or “Gates Ajar” or “Ben Hur” or “David Harum” or “Lewis Rand” or “Richard Carvel”? No. Or “The Hungry Heart” or Mr. Dreiser’s own “Sister Carrie”? No. I have all these good and bad books in mind. I have read them and survived them and in many cases enjoyed them. And yet in the face of them, and in the face of all the high authority, constituted and self-constituted, behind them, it seems to me at this moment that “Jennie Gerhardt” stands apart from all of them, and a bit above them. It lacks the grace of this one, the humor of that one, the perfect form of some other one; but taking it as it stands, grim, gaunt, mirthless, shapeless, it remains, and by long odds, the most impressive work of art that we have yet to show in prose-fiction—a tale not unrelated, in its stark simplicity, its profound sincerity, to “Germinal” and “Anna Karenina” and “Lord Jim”—a tale assertively American in its scene and its human material, and yet so European in its method, its point of view, its almost reverential seriousness, that one can scarcely imagine an American writing it. Its personages are few in number, and their progress is along a path that seldom widens, but the effect of that progress is ever one of large movements and large masses. One senses constantly the group behind the individual, the natural law behind the human act. The result is an indefinable impression of bigness, of epic dignity. The thing is not a mere story, not a novel in the ordinary American meaning of the word, but a criticism of and interpretation of life—and that interpretation loses nothing in validity by the fact that its burden is that doctrine that life is meaningless, a tragedy without a moral, a joke without a point. What else have Moore and Conrad and Hardy been telling us these many years? What else does all the new knowledge of a century teach us? One by one the old, ready answers have been disposed of. Today the one intelligible answer to the riddle of aspiration and sacrifice is that there is no answer at all.