A Book of Burlesques
Comic Assaults on American Morals, Politics, Literary Fashion, and Provincial PruderyBy H. L. Mencken
Length2h 57m
About this audiobook
Published in 1916, A Book of Burlesques gathers H. L. Mencken's irreverent sketches, satirical portraits, and comic essays into a sustained assault on the platitudes of American cultural life. Its targets include literary pretension, middle-class respectability, popular taste, and the pieties of reform, all rendered through exaggeration, parody, caricature, and deliberately abrasive wit. Mencken's style is energetic and epigrammatic, combining journalistic directness with the rhetoric of the polemicist and the structural freedom of the burlesque. The volume belongs to the early twentieth-century tradition of American satire, while also anticipating the sharper cultural criticism associated with modernism and the Jazz Age. Henry Louis Mencken (1880–1956) was a Baltimore journalist, editor, critic, and one of the most influential—and controversial—American prose stylists of his generation. His work for the Smart Set and the American Mercury developed his reputation as a "sage" who opposed sentimental nationalism, intellectual conformity, and the commercialization of culture. A Book of Burlesques reflects both his autodidactic breadth and his conviction that ridicule could expose social hypocrisy more effectively than solemn argument. Readers interested in American literary history, satire, journalism, and the formation of modern cultural criticism will find this collection especially rewarding. It is best approached not as detached social science but as a brilliant, provocative performance: excessive by design, historically revealing, and still memorable for its linguistic force.
Audiobook details
GenreHumor
Length2 hrs 57 mins
Narrated byListen with 1,000+ voices
FormateBook with Audio
Publish dateNov 27, 2023
LanguageEnglish
Table of contents
1Prejudices, Second Series (Annotated)
2III.—THE WEDDING III.—The Wedding. A Stage Direction
3IV.—THE VISIONARY IV.—The Visionary
4V.—THE ARTIST V.—The Artist. A Drama Without Words
5VI.—SEEING THE WORLD VI.—Seeing The World
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6VII.—FROM THE MEMOIRS OF THE DEVIL VII.—From the Memoirs of the Devil
7I.—For Americanos
8II.—For Hypochondriacs
9III.—For Music Lovers
10IV.—For Hangmen
11V.—For Magazine Editors
12IX.—ASEPSIS IX.—Asepsis. A Deduction in Scherzo Form
13I.—The Rewards of Science
14II.—The Incomparable Physician
15III.—Neighbours
16IV.—From the Chart
17V.—The Interior Hierarchy
18CLASS II
19CLASS III
20CLASS IV
21CLASS V
22CLASS VI
23XI.—THE JAZZ WEBSTER XI. The Jazz Webster
24XII.—THE OLD SUBJECT XII.—The Old Subject
25I.—Men
26II.—Women
27III.—Babies
281. Scene Infernal.
292. The Eternal Democrat.
303. The School of Honor.
314. Proposed Plot For a Modern Novel.
325. Victory.
33XV.—VERS LIBRE XV.—Vers Libre
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