Writing Boots

A sentence that appeared in the e-mail basket of a construction-manager friend:

"Tim should they send the panels as I say why not and do not know why this was being held up, as Roger wanted to know the condition they were delivered to site in and what they looked like being we had received a final invoice and now we know where things are at."

A young woman talking into her cell phone: "I just wish somebody would tell us the truth about everything."

When someone calls me a curmudgeon, I always laugh because the only thing it tells me is that the person has never read H.L. Mencken, whose writing I can only read in small doses because it makes me too bombastic, and bombastic isn't really my thing. (You're safe, Crescenzo.)

I recently listened to a 1948 interview with Mencken (in eight parts, on YouTube; see part one below).

Complemented by his interviewer about how much mail his Baltimore Sun column generated, Mencken said:

“The volume of mail that comes into a magazine or a newspaper or a radio station is no index of anything, except that you happen to attract a lot of idiots. Because most people who write letters to newspapers are fools. Intelligent people seldom do it. They do it sometimes, but not often.”

Mencken wonders aloud how modern reporters are spending their copious free time. For one thing, the interviewer posits, they play golf. Mencken retorts:

“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 about. I remember printers in my time—I knew a great many intimately—… and I was very fond of them and they were fine fellows, but golf-playing—it would seem as incredible as to hear of a printer going to a dance. Printers spent their leisure, mainly, in saloons."

Mencken, on editors:

“I’m thoroughly convinced that editors don’t help authors. Either a man is good, or he’s bad. And if he’s good, he’ll bust through in one way or another. If he’s bad, no conceivable help will help him.”

Now I ask you: Would I ever say a thing like that?