Perspective

A Mencken Chrestomathy is Mencken's personal compilation of those works of his he considered his best. He organized them into thirty chapters and there are hundreds of pieces to review. His discussions and writings range over many topics, including women, Southerners, quacks and science. However, several strong aspects of his perspective come through across all of his discussions.

Mencken first and foremost has an agnostic and elitist outlook on life. He thinks that we cannot know whether God exists and that anyone who thinks that God has created the world for human enjoyment is clearly a fool or a zealot. As such, he is hostile to religion, particularly fundamentalist, southern religions such as Baptism and Methodism. He thinks that morality is largely an illusion, consisting of practices of praise and blame that largely manipulate some into serving others, usually great and honorable men to serve the mob.

Mencken...