NON-FICTION

Mencken & Nathan

Mencken's Book,* like the first five volumes of its series, lives up to its title. Author Mencken's style is that of a capable blacksmith. His hammer is large and noisy but it usually descends squarely on his anvil. So gritty are the workman's hands, so sweaty is his face that it is easy not to realize that for the most part he is engaged upon no more important a task than flattening pennies.

In this opus his sledge descends first upon "Journalism in America": "Most of the evils that continue to beset American journalism today, in truth, are not due to the rascality of owners nor even to the Kiwanian bombast of business managers, but simply and solely to the stupidity of working newspaper men. The majority of them in almost every American city are still ignoramuses and proud of it."

The material of ensuing chapters can be deduced from their titles: "God Help the South," "Dives into Quackery," "The Pedagogy of Sex," "Appendix from Moronia." In all of them, accurate as they may be, important as they may seem, one has the picture of steaming, sweating Author Mencken, his face red from beer and the light of destructive enthusiasm, beating out penny absurdities to the amazement of an audience composed almost entirely of what he refers to as "booboisie."

Nathan's Book* contains less extravagant, less ponderous chastisements of current idiocies. He flings confetti that has the effect of a sneezing powder, at "The New Morality", ("Back in the boll-weevil belt, there are, of course, married men who sleep with the family Bible in their undershirts"), "The American Emotion," ("The observer of the emotional reactions of the American people is brought to the lamentable conclusion that the stimuli which produce those reactions most magnificently show a constantly increasing cheapness and standardization"), "The Motherland," "American Criticism," "The Muse in Our Midst." Unlike Mr. Mencken, Author Nathan seldom sweats or bares his teeth; he dances, like a graceful, surly, clever clown through a loud Mardi Gras of vulgarity.

The Significance of the writings of Authors Mencken & Nathan has increased steadily since they formed their literary vaudeville team. Readers of the American Mercury, of which Mr. Mencken is editor, Mr. Nathan, dramatic reviewer, have smirked at the pair with the nervously good-natured tolerance that a stupid child affects when he sees "Billy is a fool" written upon the school wall. Intelligent critics realize the formula upon which these angry, mocking mimes base their performance. The grotesqueries which they flay are often genuine; but most intelligent people find more important things to think about than such grotesqueries. The admirers of the team of Mencken & Nathan are generally to be found among the mushroom intelligentsia at whom their weapons are pointed; but the admiration is so open-mouthed and so self-conscious that the implied self-criticism is forgotten. Two highly articulate, intelligent, bellicose writers cannot help being in a measure valuable. But it would be difficult to prove that Messrs. Mencken & Nathan, in their tremendous excitement, have done very much more than amuse the few and increase the already overwhelming conceit of the many.

Mencken is a stocky Dutchman whose appearance suggests the beer-drinking of which he is notoriously fond. He is a polite man socially although certain vulgarisms which he permits himself in private have led to a contrary impression. His writing career began in his native town, on the Baltimore Sun, to the editorial staff of which he now belongs. With Mr. Nathan he rose to repute as one of the editors of the Smart Set, and to fame as the editor of the American Mercury which the two started in 1923. Two years ago he toured, in eccentric fashion, part of the U. S.

Nathan, on the other hand, is a man of 45 with a young, sad face, the face of an esthete. His attention has generally been focused on the theatre which he now reviews and ridicules in the pages of three separate publications. He has also published The American Credo, a sort of joke book full of the nonsensical notions which U. S. citizens supposedly accept as fact. Some of these notions are merrily apposite; most are mere fictions invented by Author Nathan who sometimes (as above) seems capable of falling into his own babbit-snares. Most of his other numerous opera have dealt with the theatre. Born in Fort Wayne, Ind., he lives in Manhattan.

Heine

THAT MAN HEINE--Lewis Browne--Macmillan ($3). Heinrich Heine, probably Germany's greatest lyric poet, was born in the ghetto of Dusseldorf on the Rhine. Tortured at school by little boys who aped the cruelties of their elders, he would sit in his uncle's library for long afternoons, the cry of the dark streets a far tumult, while the words that he read stirred a music in his mind. He grew up vain, erratic and melancholy, visited by visions of a strange beauty with which he informed his gay or bitter verses. As he waited for the death that teased him like an urchin, remembering all the treacheries of his heart and the triumphs of his mind, he said: "God will forgive me--that is His business!" Admired by many while he lived, he was never so sympathetically, hence so completely, comprehended then as he is now by Biographer Browne, who, with the able research assistance of Elsa Weihl, has written a book, more arrowy in its understanding than his famed This Believing World.

*PREJUDICES (Sixth Series) -- H. L. Mencken-- Knopf ($2.50)

*LAND OF THE PILGRIM'S PRIDE--George Jean Nathan--Knopf ($2.50).