(PP. 62-65) Literature Section IV: H.L. Mencken: Biography and Background → Analysis of... "Advice to Young Men" (ACADEC '25-'26)

What was H.L. Mencken’s lifespan?

1880-1956

Who became the U.S.’s most famous, and perhaps its first, example of the jaded journalist?

H.L. Mencken

What did Ed Caudill call the jaded journalist?

The “verbally raucous cynic, deft with language, and sharp with criticism”

Who was one of the most notorious writers of the Jazz Age?

H.L. Mencken

When was writer and critic H.L. Mencken photographed anonymously?

1928

Who was Mencken beloved by?

Rebellious students and despised by religious fundamentalists and political conservatives

Who was Mencken the son of?

A well-to-do Baltimore family

What would Mencken eventually become known as?

The “Sage of Baltimore”

How did Mencken begin his career?

As an unknown reporter for the Baltimore Morning Herald

Who did Mencken move to after working at the Baltimore Morning Herald?

The Baltimore Sun

What did Mencken do at the Baltimore Sun?

Editing and contributing to magazines such as the Smart Set and the highly popular American Mercury, which at one point had a readership that exceeded storied magazines such as Harper’s and The Atlantic

What magazines did Mencken contribute to and edit?

Smart Set and American Mercury

Whose readership did American Mercury overtake?

Harper’s Magazine and The Atlantic

What was the primary source of news for most Americans in the 1920s?

Newspapers

What were newspapers seen as for most Americans in the 1920s?

Widely reliable sources of truth that would frequently call out political corruption and injustice

What setting did Menken thrive in?

Calling out political corruption and injustice in newspapers, relishing the role of truth-teller and public intellectual

What was Menken a relentless critic of?

Moral hypocrisy, censorship, and cultural puritanism

Who did Menken encourage to defend John Scopes in the Scopes Monkey Trial?

Clarence Darrow

What was Scopes prosecuted for in the Scopes Monkey Trial?

Teaching evolution in a Tennessee school

What did Mencken do, in a particularly noteworthy act of public courage?

He deliberately had himself arrested for selling a copy of his magazine The American Mercury to the Rev. J. Franklin Chase, a powerful religious figure in Boston who routinely challenged the publication and distribution of texts he deemed “obscene”

Who was Rev. J. Franklin Chase?

A powerful religious figure in Boston who routinely challenged the publication and distribution of texts he deemed “obscene”

Who won the case when Mencken deliberately had himself arrested?

Mencken

What helped ensure Mencken’s reputation as a fierce (perhaps too fierce) defender of the freedom of expression without restriction?

His refusal to bow to political pressures

What was Mencken, besides a political firebrand?

While occasionally caustic and cynical, was also deeply researched and frequently hilarious

What was Mencken an expert with?

Language: his academic study for the growth and development of American English was commercially and critically successful

What was Mencken’s academic study of the growth and development of American English called?

“The American Language: An Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States”

What made Mencken a household name?

His popular journalism

Who was Mencken as influential as to make the 1920s “roar”?

As any novelist or poet of the period

What subjects were Mencken’s cultural criticism and satirical essays about?

From the flaws in “common sense” ideas to the consequences of obediently following the status quo

What is known as the period of excess?

The Jazz Age

What do authors like Mencken demonstrate about the Jazz Age?

There were also authors producing provocative writing and thinking that could “sting [the country] to thought”

Who created “Advice to Young Men”?

H.L. Mencken

When was “Advice to Young Men” created?

1922

What is the first section of “Advice to Young Men” called?

To Him that Hath

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is the most valuable of all human possessions, next to a superior and disdainful air?

The reputation of being well to do

In “Advice to Young Men,” what neatly eases one’s way through life, especially in democratic countries?

The reputation of being well to do

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is in 99% of all democrats?

an irresistible impulse to crook the knee to wealth, to defer humbly to the power that goes with it, to see all sorts of high merits in the man who has it, or is said to have it

In “Advice to Young Men,” what does envy go with?

The pliant neck, but it is somehow purged of all menace

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is the inferior man afraid to do?

Evil to the man with money in 8 banks; he is even afraid to think evil of him—that is, in any patent and offensive way

In “Advice to Young Men,” what does the man in 8 banks rant incessantly against?

Capital as an abstraction

In “Advice to Young Men,” what do you treat any law that the man with money in 8 banks favors?

As if it were criminal

In “Advice to Young Men,” in the presence of what is the man with money in 8 banks singularly fawning?

The concreate capitalist

In “Advice to Young Men,” what does the man with money in 8 banks yearn with?

A great yearning for a chance to tap the capitalist’s purse, and he knows very well, deep down in his heart, that he is too craven and stupid to do it by force of arms

In “Advice to Young Men,” what does the man with money in 8 banks turn to?

Politeness, and tries to cajole

In “Advice to Young Men,” what does the man with money in 8 banks give out news of?

One has just made a killing in the stock market, or robbed some confiding widow of her dower, or swindled the government in some patriotic enterprise

In “Advice to Young Men,” what will the man with money in 8 banks at once discover?

That one’s shabbiness is a charming eccentricity, and one’s judgment of wines worth hearing, and one’s politics worthy of attention and respect

In “Advice to Young Men,” who never gets a fair chance, no one wants to listen to, no one gives a damn what he thinks or knows or feels, and has any active desire for his good opinion?

The man who is thought to be poor

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is thought of the man who is thought to be poor?

He never gets a fair chance, no one wants to listen to, no one gives a damn what he thinks or knows or feels, and has any active desire for his good opinion

In “Advice to Young Men,” when did Mencken discover the principle of turning to politeness and trying to cajole?

Early in life

In “Advice to Young Men,” what has Mencken gotten a great deal out of men (and women) by?

Having the name of being a well-heeled fellow than I have ever got by being decent to them, or by dazzling them with my sagacity, or by hard industry, or by a personal beauty that is singular and ineffable

What is the 2nd section of “Advice to Young Men” called?

The Venerable Examined

In “Advice to Young Men,” what does Mencken distrust as he grows older?

The familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is Mencken’s honest belief?

He’s no wiser to-day than he was five or ten years ago; in fact, he suspects that he’s appreciable less wise

In “Advice to Young Men,” how can women prevail over Mencken to-day?

By devices that would have made him hoof them out of his studio when he was 35

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is Mencken easier to mark for?

Male swindlers

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is Mencken going to be doing at 50?

Joining clubs and buying Mexican mine stock

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is the truth about every man?

Every man goes up-hill in sagacity to a certain point, and then begins sliding down again

In “Advice to Young Men,” what are all the old fellows that Mencken knows like?

More or less balmy

In “Advice to Young Men,” who should old fellows be much wiser than?

Younger men, if only because of their greater experience, but actually they seem to take on folly faster than they take on wisdom

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is a man of 35 or 38 described as?

Almost woman-proof

In “Advice to Young Men,” for a woman to marry a 35 or 38 year old man is what?

A herculean feat

In “Advice to Young Men,” by the time a 35 or 38 year old turns 50, what is he quite as easy as?

A Yale sophomore

In “Advice to Young Men,” what would it certainly be difficult to imagine?

Any committee of relatively young men, of 30 or 35, showing the unbroken childishness, ignorance and lack of humor of the Supreme Court of the U.S.

In “Advice to Young Men,” what should the average age of the learned justices must be well beyond?

60

In “Advice to Young Men,” what are all the learned justices supposed to be?

Of finished and mellowed sagacity

In “Advice to Young Men,” what do the knowledge the learned justices' have of the most ordinary principles of justice often turn out to be?

Extremely meager, and when they spread themselves grandly upon a great case their reasoning powers are usually found to be precisely equal to those of a respectable Pullman conductor

What is the 3rd section of “Advice to Young Men” called?

Duty

In “Advice to Young Men,” what do some of the loosest thinking in ethics has duty for?

Its theme

In “Advice to Young Men,” what do practically all writers on the subject of ethics agree on?

That the individual owes certain unescapable duties to the race

In “Advice to Young Men,” what’s an example of all writers on the subject of ethics agreeing?

The duty of engaging in productive labor, and that of marrying and begetting offspring

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is almost always argued in support of the position of engaging in productive labor?

That if all men neglected such duties the race would perish

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is the logic of the race perishing be hollow enough to be worthy of?

The college professors who are guilty of it

In “Advice to Young Men,” what does the logic of the race perishing confuse?

The conventionality, the pusillanimity, the lack of imagination of the majority of men with the duty of all men

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is there not the slightest ground for assuming, even as a matter of mere argumentation?

That all men will ever neglect these alleged duties

In “Advice to Young Men,” what will there always remain a safe majority of?

People willing to do whatever is ordained—that accepts docilely the government it is born under, obeys its laws, and supports its theory

In “Advice to Young Men,” what does the safe majority not comprised of?

Men who render the highest and most intelligent services to the race; it comprises those who render nothing save their obedience

In “Advice to Young Men,” what man is there no duties per se?

The man who differs from this inert and well-regimented mass

In “Advice to Young Men,” what are the men who have no duties spontaneously inclined to do vastly more valuable than?

What the majority is willing to do

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is there no such thing as?

Duty-in-itself; it is a mere chimera of ethical theorists

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is human progress furthered by?

Not conformity, but aberration

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is the very concept of duty is thus a function of?

Inferiority; it belongs naturally only to timorous and incompetent men

In “Advice to Young Men,” what does duty remain largely?

A self-delusion, a soothing apparition, a euphemism for necessity

In “Advice to Young Men,” what happens when a man succumbs to duty?

He merely succumbs to the habit and inclination of other men

In “Advice to Young Men,” what do the mens’ collective interests invariably pull against?

His individual interests

In “Advice to Young Men,” what can the miraculous man do?

Withstand the pull of a whole nation

What do Mencken’s brief essays form?

Part of a larger work in which Mencken uses satire to poke at some of the moral and political hypocrisies of the time period

What is satire?

A literary genre in which an author uses irony or exaggeration to highlight the absurdities or inconsistencies within a particular belief or individual

What does satire crucially do?

Takes something that is actually exists and uses that as the source of its humor and criticism

In what ways does Mencken show how ridiculous something is?

By tactically highlighting, and sometimes even amplifying, its contradictory elements

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is the form of the selection?

An advice column

What is an advice column?

A form of writing during the 1920s, to satirize some examples of “common sense” that were often sold as good advice to young men

When was H.L. Mencken photographed by Carl Van Vechten?

1932

Who photographed H.L. Mencken in 1932?

Carl Van Vechten

In “Advice to Young Men,” how does Mencken begin the satire?

By pointing out a fundamental contradiction: many people are advised to focus on cultivating virtue before cultivating wealth

In “Advice to Young Men,” in Mencken’s experience, one’s wealth is actually more valuable in social situations than what?

One’s character; or, more precisely, one’s wealth becomes one’s character

In “Advice to Young Men,” what is revealed to Mencken about how America approaches social class?

On one hand, young people are brough up to value virtuous behavior. On the other, actual experience reveals that “virtuous behavior” is a somewhat fluid concept, given how wealthy people are actually treated

In “Advice to Young Men,” what still reinforces Mencken’s point about Jazz Age morality?

Even if someone is polite to a wealthy person only because they think it will be to their advantage: ethical concerns usually “crook the knee” to financial considerations

In “Advice to Young Men,” what does Mencken ask in “The venerable Examined”?

Does age actually equal wisdom?

In “Advice to Young Men,” is Mencken sure about if age equals wisdom?

He’s not so sure

In “Advice to Young Men,” what does Mencken feel about age?

That it has compromised his decison-making