6.3.2021 – deal with any subject

deal with any subject
remain both readable and
irresponsible

Part of the Mencken Project.

In 1911, HL Mencken was offered a column in by the owner/publisher of the Baltimore Sun, Charles H. Grasty.

Grasty told him Mencken to write ANYTHING he liked and to deal with ANY SUBJECT just so long as the column was irresponsible and readable.

Do such job offers exist any more?

One commenter writes: “On May 8, 1911, H. L. Mencken began a column in the Baltimore Evening Sun entitled “The World in Review.” The next day he retitled it “The Free Lance”—and continued writing the column six days a week for the next four and a half years. This enormous body of work, totaling about 1200 columns and amounting to 1.5 million words, is an incredibly rich storehouse of Mencken’s opinions on a wide array of topics. In some columns he addresses serious issues: the distressing prevalence of typhoid in the larger American cities, including Baltimore; the pestiferous influence of the Anti-Saloon League in promoting prohibition of alcoholic beverages; and all manner of political malfeasance both locally and nationally. But in most of his columns he displays his pungent satirical wit, lampooning poetasters, self-righteous moralists, and political and literary hacks of every description. In several columns Mencken begins outlining his views of the “American language,” the distinctive slang that Americans have adopted as a departure from formal English; Mencken later wrote a landmark treatise on the subject. Throughout these columns, H. L. Mencken displays the perspicacity and penchant for humor and satire that made him the greatest journalist of his day.”

Such is one of the reasons for the Mencken Project.

6.1.2021 – beauty and, as truth

beauty and, as truth
a projection of feeling
in terms of idea

Part of the Mencken Project.

Adapted from the line:

The only permanent values in the world are truth and beauty, and of these it is probable that truth is lasting only in so far as it is a function and manifestation of beauty—a projection of feeling in terms of idea.

From Damn! A Book of Calumny, XXXVII, On Hearing Mozart, by HL Mencken, 1918

5.31.2021 – suddenly conscious

suddenly conscious
power in numbers safely
permit viciousness

Part of the Mencken Project

Taken from the line:

Not because the stoneheads, normally virtuous, are suddenly criminally insane. Nay, but because they are suddenly conscious of the power lying in their numbers—because they suddenly realize that their natural viciousness and insanity may be safely permitted to function.

In other words, the particular swinishness of a crowd is permanently resident in the majority of its members—in all those members, that is, who are naturally ignorant and vicious—perhaps 95 per cent. All studies of mob psychology are defective in that they underestimate this viciousness.

From Damn! A Book of Calumny. XX The Crowd, by HL Mencken, 1918

5.30.2021 – Night drew attention

Night drew attention
to facets, effects that were
submerged in the day

Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

I began word-painting.

Descriptive passages came most readily: the offices were tall; the top of one tower was like a pyramid; it had ruby-red lights on its side; the sky was not black but an orangey-yellow.

But because such a factual description seemed of little help to me in pinning down why I found the scene so impressive, I attempted to analyse its beauty in more psychological terms.

The power of the scene appeared to be located in the effect of the night and of the fog on the towers.

Night drew attention to facets of the offices that were submerged in the day.

Lit by the sun, the offices could seem normal, repelling questions as effectively as their windows repelled glances.

But night upset this claim to normality, it allowed one to see inside and wonder at how strange, frightening and admirable they were.

The offices embodied order and cooperation among thousands, and at the same time regimentation and tedium.

A bureaucratic vision of seriousness was undermined, or at least questioned, by the night.

One wondered in the darkness what the flipcharts and office terminals were for: not that they were redundant, just that they might be stranger and more dubitable than daylight had allowed us to think.

Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton.

According to the website, GOOD READS, Any Baedeker will tell us where we ought to travel, but only Alain de Botton will tell us how and why.

As I said in the section on Architecture , what I find irresistible in reading Mr. de Botton is his use of language.

I get the feeling that if you made a spread sheet of all the words, adverbs and adjectives used by Mr. de Botton, you just might find that he used each word just once.

Neat trick in writing a book.

If I knew how to do that, hey, I would.

5.29.2021 – matter of making

matter of making
conscious effort to notice
understand elements

Adapted from the book, The Art of Travel (2002, Vintage Books) by Alain de Botton, and the passage:

True possession of a scene is a matter of making a conscious effort to notice elements and understand their construction.

We can see beauty well enough just by opening our eyes, but how long this beauty will survive in memory depends on how intentionally we have apprehended it.

The camera blurs the distinction between looking and noticing, between seeing and possessing; it may give us the option of true knowledge, but it may also unwittingly make the effort of acquiring that knowledge seem superfluous.