Mencken's Early Newspaper Experience

A T THE PEAK OF HIS CAREER in the I920's, H. L. Mencken ref garded himself not primarily as a literary critic but as a journalist and a critic of ideas-not as a middleman retailing the ideas of others but as an artist whose chief aim was to express himself. In explaining the motives behind his writing, he remarked, There is in every living creature an obscure but to active functioning. . . . I became a writer . . . , and shall remain one until the end of the chapter, just as a cow goes on giving milk all her life, even though what appears to be her self-interest urges her to give gin.' The purpose of this paper is to trace that powerful impulse as it developed through Mencken's youthful career as a newspaper reporter and editor and to show how, largely through self-education, he began to perfect a style capable of expressing vividly the whole range of the ideas and attitudes which later gained fame as his prejudices

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