Americana

Here’s a bit of a weekend treat; an excerpt from a long and slightly rambling radio interview with HL Mencken, the only time in fact he sat before a microphone. The whole thing’s been cut up into eight parts, which you can track in turn through the link here. Most of the stuff he talks about will be familiar to people who have read a lot of his journalism, and especially the “Days” autobiographical memoir. The interview seems to have been conducted a few months before his stroke in 1948, and the physical effort he’s having to make with some of the questions is quite apparent.