
Time Machine: H.L. Mencken's 1925 Review of 'The Great Gatsby' - samclemens
http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/books/ct-prj-great-gatsby-f-scott-fitzgerald-hl-mencken-20141010-story.html#page=1
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fmariluis
A fine piece of writing: "The thing that chiefly interests the basic
Fitzgerald is still the florid show of modern American life — and especially
the devil's dance that goes on at the top. He is unconcerned about the
sweatings and sufferings of the nether herd; what engrosses him is the high
carnival of those who have too much money to spend, and too much time for the
spending of it. Their idiotic pursuit of sensation, their almost incredible
stupidity and triviality, their glittering swinishness — these are the things
that go into his notebook."

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pmoriarty
Also see Mark Twain's _" Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offences"_[1], reviewing
some of the works of James Fenimore Cooper (of _" The Last of the Mohicans"_
fame).

A sample:

    
    
      In his little box of stage properties he kept six or eight cunning
      devices, tricks, artifices for his savages and woodsmen to deceive
      and circumvent each other with, and he was never so happy as when he
      was working these innocent things and seeing them go. A favorite one
      was to make a moccasined person tread in the tracks of the
      moccasined enemy, and thus hide his own trail. Cooper wore out
      barrels and barrels of moccasins in working that trick. Another
      stage-property that he pulled out of his box pretty frequently was
      his broken twig. He prized his broken twig above all the rest of his
      effects, and worked it the hardest. It is a restful chapter in any
      book of his when somebody doesn’t step on a dry twig and alarm all
      the reds and whites for two hundred yards around. Every time a
      Cooper person is in peril, and absolute silence is worth four
      dollars a minute, he is sure to step on a dry twig. There may be a
      hundred handier things to step on, but that wouldn’t satisfy
      Cooper. Cooper requires him to turn out and find a dry twig; and if
      he can’t do it, go and borrow one. In fact, the Leather Stocking
      Series ought to have been called the Broken Twig Series.
    

[1] -
[http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3172/3172-h/3172-h.htm](http://www.gutenberg.org/files/3172/3172-h/3172-h.htm)

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dsr_
Mencken describes Fitzgerald's increasing skill as a writer as a rare thing.

I would argue that among really good writers, it's not rare at all. The usual
course is for an author to keep learning for years, figure out what works well
for them, and perhaps lose a little ground towards the end of their lives due
to failing health or lack of care.

Similarly, good technologists build a workshop full of techniques that
experience has given them, do their highest quality work in middle to late
middle age, and then retreat from active building to teach, critique or
advise.

~~~
thieving_magpie
>Mencken describes Fitzgerald's increasing skill as a writer as a rare thing.

It's not rare among really good writers, Mencken is saying a really good
writer is what is rare.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
With "a really good writer" being defined _not_ as one who produces one good
book.

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nxrabl
"The trouble with H.L. Mencken is that he believes he is H.L. Mencken. There
is no cure for a delusion of that magnitude."

... is a quote I distinctly remember reading many years ago, and which I
cannot find a single reference to anywhere on the internet. Guess I'm just
crazy?

~~~
GavinMcG
If that's the extent of your craziness, you're doing pretty well:

[http://www.newstatesman.com/science-
tech/internet/2016/12/mo...](http://www.newstatesman.com/science-
tech/internet/2016/12/movie-doesn-t-exist-and-redditors-who-think-it-does)

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cafard
I'd be curious to know how this was transcribed: it has "Totentons" evidently
for "Totentanz". I seem to reread the book every _n_ years, and often as not
change my mind from the previous reading.

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mci
> it has "Totentons" evidently for "Totentanz".

Same goes for "fidelis ad urnum", which should read "urnam".

~~~
B1FF_PSUVM
And probably gaudy in "gandy villas and bawdy house parties".

~~~
washadjeffmad
I imagine if not originally dictated, his draft was hand written and submitted
directly for typesetting.

While possibly Mencken's errors, a linotype operator botching a slug or an
editor misreading a partially open 'a' wouldn't be the severe error it is
today in the age of autocorrect and instantaneous type production.

When you post a comment, there's just a screen between you and all of the
internet and its information. Mencken might have had weeks or months and a
dozen people's hands between his review and its printing. Not to mention
reprintings, revisions, and the eventual OCR close to a century later.

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empath75
I don't think I'd describe Gatsby as a 'glorified anecdote'. It's fairly
tightly plotted, as much as any hollywood blockbuster. But the writing does
far outshine the story. It's absolutely beautiful, if perhaps a bit mawkish.

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jszymborski
For those with adblockers:
[https://archive.fo/eazBq](https://archive.fo/eazBq)

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newswriter99
It's surprising how much Gatsby has in common with Dandy characters like
Dorian Gray. Never noticed until Mencken's review.

~~~
Grazester
Two books I loved when I read them in my early to mid twenties. I fell in love
with their main characters and the decadence.

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abakker
If you've not read his piece on Chiropractic, it is worth it.
[https://www.chirobase.org/12Hx/mencken.html](https://www.chirobase.org/12Hx/mencken.html)

~~~
abecedarius
Most of that piece is contemptuous rhetoric, like "the simple sentimentality
of a somewhat sclerotic fat woman" from the OP but without the more
interesting analysis. It takes the worth of doctors of his time for granted,
mentioning tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy: at least the former was much
overprescribed then, I don't know about the latter. A chiropractor won't offer
to remove any organs you're not sure of the use of. (I've never seen one
myself.)

I do like older manipulative writing for being more obvious to us, because
we're not quite the target anymore. A kind of vaccine.

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UncleSlacky
The recent Family Guy spoof nailed its weaknesses pretty well, I thought.

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sparkzilla
++spoiler alert++

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kapitza
> To find a parallel for the grossness and debauchery that now reign in New
> York one must go back to the Constantinople of Basil I.

H.L., honey, you have _no idea_...

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B1FF_PSUVM
Between Mencken's day and today, there was a book titled Hollywood Babylon,
with the expectable content.

We're probably into solid Paleolithic territory by now ...

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rando444
Regardless of the subject matter and opinions expressed, I think any reviewer
who decides to give away all of the plot details within the first few
sentences of a review should not be given much (if any) merit.

~~~
sanderjd
That's an interesting perspective. I guess there's a philosophical question:
what is the point of reviews? If it is to help determine whether to read or
see something, then I guess I agree with you that this sort of thing largely
defeats the purpose. But if it is instead to have a sort of "conversation"
with the reviewer about their thoughts on something you've already read or
seen, then this sort of recap is less problematic.

I think I use reviews for both purposes. Using movies as an example, I'll
check rottentomatoes before-the-fact to see whether there is at least a vague
consensus that the movie I'm about to pay to see isn't going to be a total
waste of my time. But then after I've seen it, I'll sometimes also go read
what a smaller set of reviewers who I enjoy had to say about it, and compare
and contrast their thoughts with my own. Both things have value to me, but in
very different ways.

~~~
bjterry
It's unfortunate that there aren't separate widely-used terms for
recommendation style reviews and critical breakdown style reviews, because it
makes it hard to find the latter when I want it. For an example, Jamahl
Epsicokhan has written reviews of all the episodes of Star Trek on his site
Jammer's Reviews. They break down both the plot and give criticism of the
entire work, including parts that would be spoilers. Sometimes you can find
these kind of articles under the term "rewatch" though.

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zwieback
The last three paragraphs are interesting if you think of Trump as a
descendant of Gatsby's NY.

