Critical Essay | Critical Review by H. L. Mencken

Critical Review by H. L. Mencken

SOURCE: "Pongo Americanus," in The American Mercury, Vol. XXIX, No. 114, June, 1933, pp. 254-55.

In the following review of Lose with A Smile, Mencken argues that critics ignore Lardner because of his attack on idealism and sentimentality.

Writing in this place in July, 1924, I permitted myself to predict that it would be a long while before the professors of literature would become aware of Ring Lardner—indeed, I ventured to say that they would probably not discover him and begin to titter over him until years after he had got to the electric chair. That prophecy has now gathered a considerable age, as such things go, and is become mellow and even mossy. Lardner goes on publishing his incomparable studies of the low-down American, and the professors continue to look straight through him, just as they looked through Mark Twain in 1900 and Walt Whitman in 1875. A few...
(read more)