Mencken Day 2009-09-12 (aka “Der Tag”
Mencken Memorial Lecture:
“Dr Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown University and author of A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan, will deliver the Mencken Memorial Lecture.”Mencken Society:
“Gabrielle Dean, CLIR Postdoctoral Fellow, Rare Books and Manuscripts Department, The Sheridan Libraries, Johns Hopkins University, “Reviewing the Parade: Mencken and Magazines in the George Thompson Collection.”
“Chuck Chalberg, Normandale Community College, Bloomington, Minnesota: “Mencken and Tough Times: Cold Comfort from the Sage of Baltimore.” A one-man, Hal-Holbrook-as-Mark-Twain style presentation of HLM on the Great Depression.”
F. Scott Fitzgerald Society to Meet In Baltimore
The 10th International Conference of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Society will be held as the Radisson Plaza Lord Baltimore in Baltimore, MD from 2009-09-30 through 2009-10-03.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940) spent time in Baltimore intermittently from 1932 to 1937. Mr Mencken was an esteemed friend and advisor to whom Fitzgerald wrote that “I’d rather have you like a book of mine than anyone in America.” (Letter to HLM, 1925-05-04). To an interviewer’s question that he describe Mr Mencken, Fitzgerald replied “[H]e’s like a good natured beer-drinking German whom you would imagine liking to sit around in his stocking feet.” (Matthew Joseph Bruccoli and Judith Baughman Eds. Conversations with F. Scott Fitzgerald (University Press of Missisippi, 2003) p. 14).
The Saturday Night Club on The Marc Steiner Show
The May 27, 2009 Marc Steiner Show, which airs from 5:00 PM to 7:00 PM on WEAA 88.9 FM, will feature more on The Saturday Night Club.
The Disinterring of the Saturday Night Club
The May 2009 issue of Baltimore’s Urbanite magazine features an article, “Waltzing With Henry”, on David Donovan of the Enoch Pratt Free Library. Mr Donovan is disinterring the artifacts of the Saturday Night Club, “fifty-four boxes of sheet music, printed scores, and manuscripts” which have been been stored and ignored since 1951.
I’ll note three errors in the piece:
The club’s device is a “Heraldic Shield” not a “Herald Shield”.
The Germania Maennerchor (founded October 10, 1856) was not a “troupe.” A “Maennerchor”, literally a “men’s chorus”, was both a social and a singing society.
Mencken’s interview with Donald Kirkley, recorded June 30, 1948, was audio-only and was not filmed.
In Memoriam: Robert J. Thieblot, 1933-2009
Robert Jean Thieblot, 76, Mencken Society Member, former president of the Friends of the H. L. Mencken House, attorney, author and architectual preservationist died of cancer at his home on Park Avenue, in Bolton Hill, on Thursday, April 16.
Mr Thieblot was born in Teaneck, New Jersey, in 1933, and raised in Hagerstown, MD. His father, Armand J. Thieblot, an aircraft designer, was born in Paris, France and came to the United States in 1928 where, in 1951, he founded the Thieblot Aircraft Co. in Bethesda. Robert Thieblot received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University in 1955 and was graduated from Harvard Law School in 1960. He specialized in corporate, business, creditors’ rights and commercial law.
He is survived by his wife of 50 years, Suzanna Cohoes Thieblot, his daughter, Aline Thieblot Walker of Glen Burnie, and his brother, Armand Jean Thieblot of Baltimore.
A memorial service will be held Thursday, May 14, 2009, at 5 p.m. in Room 504 of the Clarence M. Mitchell, Jr. Courthouse, 111 North Calvert St (Fayette and Calvert streets) and will be followed by a reception held in the Library’s Main Reading Room. Please enter the courthouse by way of the Lexington Street entrance between Calvert and St Paul Streets.
Those planning to attend please RSVP to 410-727-0280 or email J W Bennett.
Stevens Mencken Collection at Bryan College
A Christian Liberal Arts institution of higher education is not where one would expect to find a substatial collection of Mencken’s works. Even more unlikely, it would seem, would be to find this collection in a college named after William Jennings Bryan (1860-1925), a man detested by Mr Mencken. Yet, Bryan College (Dayton, TN), founded in 1930, has over 436 items of Menckeniana, including 153 issues of American Mercury which date from from January 1924 to April 1933. Dr and Mrs Harold Ray Stevens have, in a series of gifts, given the College this excellent collection of Mencken’s works.
Ray Stevens, a Conradian scholar who was Professor of English Emeritus at McDaniel College (formerly Western Maryland College) from 1966-1997, served as president of the Mencken Society from 1999 to 2002. In 2010, Cambridge University Press, as part of its 28 volume critical edition of the works of Joseph Conrad, will publish the volume of essays on Conrad for which Ray has had primary responsibility. Ray is a member of both the American and UK Conradian Societies.
Those whose knowledge of Bryan begins and ends with Mencken’s “In Memoriam: W. J. B.,” but who would like to know more, may start with Robert W. Cherny, A Righteous Cause: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (University of Oklahoma Press, 1994) at 225 pages and which appears to be a good, short and sympathetic introduction to Bryan. A longer work is Michael Kazin, A Godly Hero: The Life of William Jennings Bryan (Anchor, 2007).
Mr Mencken, 1932 and 2009
“The psychic effect of the depression, it seems to me, is generally a good one … More
Mr Mencken, YouTube and MySpace
On a lark, I typed “Mencken” in YouTube’s search box, not expecting anything to show up. To my surprise … More
New Edition of Notes On Democracy
Dissident Books of New York have released Notes on Democracy: A New Edition with an introduction and notes by Marion Elizabeth Rodgers and an afterword by Anthony Lewis.
Lawrence M. Ludlow reviews the book at the website Strike the Root.
John Strom, Thrice Doctor
By James Drayham [H. L. Mencken]
[Smart Set 71(1):122 (1923-05)]
John Strom, thrice doctor, wrote 10,000 pages or so, to prove the value of an intellectual life. Not content with writing, he also lectured. One day he grew more enthusiastic than usual. He almost shouted: “The body begins to rot at thirty. The intellect is a perennial flower!”
A piece of plaster fell with a thunderclap upon the bald pate of John Strom, thrice doctor.
John Strom was thirty-nine years old that day. He continued to live for thirty-two years more. Of the ten languages he knew fluently the only word he remembered was “Boo!” which he liked to repeat, as he used to repeat his lectures. Of the ten thousand pages or so that he had written he made cornucopias, which he balanced on his head, exclaiming: Boo! Boo! Boo!”
The truth about “Ventures Into Verse”
It is common knowledge that Mr Mencken considered his first published work, a collection of his poetry, to be so bad that he bought all the copies he could and destroyed them.
Common knowledge is wrong. … More