Voice from the Past

Since Henry Louis Mencken died at 75 nine months ago (TIME, Feb. 6), his prowess as editor, critic and scholar has inspired many a praiseful chorus. Last week Mencken's own voice floated out of the past to re-create his sparkle as a conversationalist and his flinty views on a range of targets--including his own craft. The Library of Congress issued two long-playing records ($7.50) of an interview made for its files by Mencken and the Baltimore Sun's Donald H. Kirkley Sr. Taped in June 1948, only five months before a stroke ended his career, the interview is the only record that remains of the Baltimore sage's raspy drawl, filtered as usual through a cold cigar.

Mencken reminisces fondly over "a life that has never been matched on earth for romance": his lot as a young Baltimore newsman at the turn of the century, hungering for assignments, often working all night, happily going three days without sleep to cover the Baltimore fire of 1904. "You could no more have a 40-hour week for a good newspaper reporter," says Mencken, "than you could for an archbishop." Those were the days "when an oldtime ice-wagon-driver city editor might come down in the morning with a hangover and fire a man simply because he was in bad humor." It was also an era when a pressagent was regarded as "a loathsome creature," suffering "a subtle corruption of the mind."

The Mencken voice hardens at latter-day journalists, and he wonders querulously what the modern young reporter does with all his leisure: "I get the impression from the modern reporter that he doesn't really like his work. He wishes he were a druggist. The idea of a newspaper reporter with any self-respect playing golf is to me almost inconceivable. I hear that even printers now play golf. God Almighty, that's dreadful to think of." Other Mencken shafts:

P:"The volume of mail that comes in to a magazine or a newspaper is no index of anything except that you happen to attract a lot of idiots, because most people that write letters to newspapers are fools."

P:"I never got a scoop in my life. They never seemed to me to have any sense. Most scoops were bad stories. And they were always exaggerated and played up in an idiot manner."

P: "I learned a great deal more about the newspaper business from printers than I ever learned from editors."

P:"I am omnbibulous. I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all. I learned early in life how to handle alcohol and never had any trouble with it. The rules are simple as mud. First, never drink if you have any work to do. Never. Secondly, never drink alone. That's the way to become a drunkard. Thirdly, even if you haven't got any work to do, never drink while the sun is shining. Wait until it's dark."

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