A Book of Prefaces

H.L. Mencken was the most dangerous critic in America, and A Book of Prefaces is his arsenal. Published in 1917, this slim but explosive collection contains Mencken at his finest: dismantling Joseph Conrad's fatalistic brilliance, defending Theodore Dreiser against contemptuous critics, and celebrating the protean James Huneker. But the real detonation is "Puritanism as a Literary Force," where Mencken turns his sights on American culture itself, arguing that the Puritan legacy has crippled American letters with its fear of pleasure, its suspicion of ideas, and its hunger for conformity. He famously defined puritanism as "the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy," and here he documents the damage that fear has done to literature, from Mark Twain to Henry James. The book was so scorching that even Mencken's own publisher worried about releasing it during wartime patriotism. It influenced a young Richard Wright. It enraged an entire literary establishment. A century later, it still bites.