Return from prodigals
William Allen White
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
HENRY L. MENCKEN has returned from Europe to this nation of “third raters and boobs” and upon the whole he is glad to get home. He declares that even if we are a lousy lot, he “likes the show” we put up. And it really is a great show — the greatest show on earth.
What a gorgeous and exciting panorama flies across the pages of an American newspaper every day in the year. Here one faces all the “beasts of Ephesus,” the impassioned booster, the crazy lover, the paranoiac trader, the seer of visions, the shallow patted babbler, the bandits that would shame Ali Baba’s 40 thieves, magicians that make music come out of the air, and genii that direct power in machines a hundred miles distant. Fools caper across the pages of the papers and wise men hide in lonesome corners; dreams come true and well laid plans run wild. The dramatis personae throws into the cast of the mad drama, heroes, villains, clowns, gentlemen, ladies, servants, oafs, trolls, little knaves and big ones, angels and devils, the mob, its victim and its conqueror.
No wonder Mencken is glad to come back from the lamentable comedy of Europe and take his seat before the pageant of American life. He snorts and grunts more or less at it. He affects to despise most of its aspects, and some of its phases are dispiriting, but it is the greatest show under God’s mundane heaven, because the thing is alive. It means something because it has vitality. No one knows what it means. But it is significant of something — though Heaven only knows what. But, say, man, how it holds us! Those who have to pass out between the acts must give a wistful and lingering look back, no matter what phantasmagoria may flare before their eyes in the offing of eternity.
And one of the most engaging figures on the American scene is this same Mencken who comes back to the spectacle with interest renewed after looking at the debacle of Europe. With a pig’s eyes that never look up, with a pig’s snout that loves muck, with a pig’s brain that knows only the sty, and a pig’s squeal that cries only when he is hurt, he sometimes opens his pig’s mouth, fanged and ugly, and lets out the voice of God — railing at the whitewash that covers the manure about his habitat. In all our American letters we have produced no more capable Caliban than Henry L. Mencken. And so long as he is a part of the American show, it will be worth the price.
Here’s a welcome home to the porker who has been living among the prodigals!