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MENCKEN, HENRY LOUIS. Prejudices: second series. *$2.50 (4c) Knopf 814
20–20969
In the present volume the author continues his tirade on American letters, generalizing on his theme in the first essay, ‘The national letters.’ In spite of the prophetic optimism of such men as Emerson and Whitman and, to some extent, even the pessimistic Poe, we have so far achieved nothing but a respectable mediocrity which he attributes to the absence of a cultural background, and of a civilized aristocracy. The other essays of the book are: Roosevelt: an autopsy; The Sahara of the Bozart; The divine afflatus; Scientific examination of a popular virtue; Exeunt omnes; The allied arts; The cult of hope; The dry millennium; Appendix on a tender theme. There is an index.
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“As for his second series of prejudices, they are even as his first; his prejudices have not changed; nor his manner of hurling them at the fat heads of us Philistines. Some of his missiles are true dynamite, some—in my humble opinion—are duds; but not one of them is discharged at random.” L. W. Dodd
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“Nothing is sacred in his hands, and by the same token is he interesting and unreliable. His style is as vigorous and bold as his ideas. It is a little hard to keep up with Mencken, but at any rate you will not be bored if you try.”
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