Death and Bereavement Around the World (Death, Value and Meaning Series): Volume 3: Europe Book

"A man's womenfolk, whatever their outward signs of respect for his merit and authority, always regard him secretly as an ass, and with something akin to pity." (p. 3)

To enjoy this book you have to be in the proper state of mind, because otherwise it can take on a kind of one-note tediousness. Mencken hates everyone, and everything; people are stupid and lazy, the men even more so than the women; culture, education, and progress are humbug. There is no point to anything.

Okay, but with that out of the way, if you are willing to indulge in a bit of unsportsmanlike cynicism and just go along for the ride you can have a lot of fun. Many of the things he says are exaggerated to make a point, or to emphasize his essential curmudgeonliness, but sometimes he can penetrate the vanities of people and societies, and point out things most people (men) would not want to acknowledge, such as "If the work of the average man required half the mental agility and readiness of resource of the work of the average prostitute, the average man would be constantly on the verge of starvation." (p. 15)

Much of the humor in this book comes from the recognition of things that men suspect are true, but that they cannot say out loud without starting an unwinnable argument with their better halves.

His favorite subject is the eternal war of men and women, and especially husbands and wives. It reminded me of a line from Will Durant's Our Oriental Heritage, "The moulders of the world's myths were unsuccessful husbands, for they agreed that woman was the root of all evils." There are also some similarities between Mencken and his more genial contemporary James Thurber, in that they both agreed that in the war of the sexes men are hopelessly outmatched.
As woman gradually becomes convinced, not only of the possibility of economic independence, but also of its value, she will probably lose her present overmastering desire for marriage, and address herself to meeting men in free economic competition. That is to say, she will address herself to acquiring that practical competence, that high talent for puerile and chiefly mechanical expertness, which now sets man ahead of her in the labour market of the world. To do this she will have to sacrifice some of her present intelligence; it is impossible to imagine a genuinely intelligent human being becoming a competent trial lawyer…. (p. 159)
He is sure that monogamy etiolates men, "not by producing satiety, but by destroying appetite. It makes passion formal and uninspiring, and so gradually kills it." (p. 81)

Mencken was always alert for observations that he could abstract into general truisms about the sexes, such as "A man, speaking of his wife to other men, always praises her extravagantly. Boasting about her soothes his vanity; he likes to stir up the envy of his fellows. But when two women talk of their husbands it is mainly atrocities that they describe." (p. 129)

There is also a joke on Mencken himself, which he apparently recognized but did not appreciate. He reserved special scorn for men who marry later in life, saying that they do so in their decrepitude because they are unable to resist the wiles of females looking for a husband. However, in the introduction to my copy from the Time Reading Program, it notes that after the book was published Mencken, at age 50, married a woman 22 years younger than himself. Rather than admit he was wrong, or what must have seemed to him even worse, that he could be as foolish as any other man, he refused to allow In Defense of Women to be reprinted during his lifetime.

Some of his best lines are reserved for religion:

"The essential feminine machine is no better than the essential masculine machine; both are monuments to the maladroitness of a much over-praised Creator." (p. 36)

"If the average man is made in God's image, then a man such as Beethoven or Aristotle is plainly superior to God, and so God may be jealous of him, and eager to see his superiority perish with his bodily frame." (p. 88)

"Christianity has thus both libelled women and flattered them, but with the weight always on the side of the libel. It is therefore, at bottom, their enemy, as the religion of Christ, now wholly extinct, was their friend." (p. 135)

"Women, when literate at all, are far too intelligent to make effective ecclesiastics. Their sharp sense of reality is in endless opposition to the whole sacerdotal masquerade, and their cynical humour stands against the snorting that is inseparable from pulpit oratory." (p. 138)

Sometimes, even when he is being funny, he can be illuminating: "Even prostitution, in the long run, may become a more or less respectable profession, as it was in the great days of the Greeks. That quality will surely attach to it if ever it grows quite unnecessary; whatever is unnecessary is always respectable, for example, religion, fashionable clothing, and a knowledge of Latin grammar." (p. 153)

I have no doubt Mencken was a favorite subject of thundering denunciations by divines of all creeds.

As will be obvious, he was no fan of democracy. He felt that the average man was far too stupid to manage himself, much less a government. When he was writing this book the subject of women's right to vote was a major issue of the day. He is at his worst when he descends into caustic mockery of Suffragettes, saying they only want to get into politics because they are too ugly to catch a husband. It's hard to tell if he was just parroting the opinions of his day, or if even then this was considered boorish and demeaning.

The book first came out in 1918, and was edited and re-issued in 1922. It ends with a remarkably prescient statement about the peace treaty ending World War I. Although he was not alone in this opinion, certainly most people would not have been able to anticipate the dark future that he saw.
The present series of wars, it seems likely, will continue for twenty or thirty years, and perhaps longer. That the first clash was inconclusive was shown brilliantly by the preposterous nature of the peace finally reached - a peace so artificial and dishonest that the signing was almost equivalent to a new declaration of war. (p. 163)
The Treaty of Versailles was signed 28 June 1919. World War II started twenty years and two months later.

It is a short book, at about 170 pages, which is the right length for something like this. If any longer it would have started to drag, and as it is it repeats some of its tropes over and over. Still, Mencken was funny and had an alarming ability to extrapolate from mankind's foibles to some often troubling but always revealing truths.