Heathen Days

By H.L. Mencken

In the third volume of his autobiography, H. L. Mencken looks back on his life and declares it "very busy and excessively pleasant." He imparts the impressive education he received from Hoggie Unglebower, the best dog trainer in Christendom, and the survival techniques he employed at Baltimore Polytechnic, where he learned to protect his fingers from power tools and his character from the influence of algebra.

Mencken also describes the club boxing matches he attended, watching as the combatants in this gentleman's sport genteelly broke both bones and the law. And he recounts his voyage across the Atlantic that he, unlike Columbus, paid for himself. In Naples, he admired the garbage that seemed to have accumulated since Roman times. In Tunis, he searched for the ruins of Carthage. In the Holy Land, he looked for the ruins of Gomorrah, the Hollywood of antiquity, in hopes of finding evidence that the city's unparalleled reputation for wickedness was simply exaggerated.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Mar 20, 2013
• ISBN: 9780307830883

H.L. Mencken

H. L. Mencken was an American journalist, essayist, satirist, cultural critic, and scholar of American English. He commented widely on the social scene, literature, music, prominent politicians, and contemporary movements. Mencken is best known for The American Language, a multivolume study of how the English language is spoken in the United States.

Reviews for Heathen Days

[dinadansfriend · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

H. L. Mencken was a stylist, a cynic, and a keen student of the American culture of the 1920's and -30's. While not a perfect person, (mildly anti-semitic) his contributions to the linguistic study of American English were considerable. These are his memories of his childhood and teen age years in a Mid-Atlantic city.