"I'm ombibulous. I drink every known alcoholic drink and enjoy them all."
No one who has read more than a paragraph of H.L. Mencken's writing could fail to know that he was a connoisseur and champion of beer but it is amazing so many do not known he also had praise for a wide variety of libations.
And it is fitting that he coined the word which inspired this humorous "drinking biography" of the Sage of Baltimore (HLM admitted it should have been omnibibulous but this is the way he used it). For Mencken, probably the first man to take a serious interest in the American language, delighted in tracing the origin of its words and phrases and contributed many himself, including -- on the subject of drinking -- bibuli, bootician, boozehound...as well as ombibulous.
"As long as you represent me as praising alcohol I shall not complain," Mencken wrote Upton Sinclair in 1924.
A sampling of other quotes from The Ombibulous Mr. Mencken:
- "Most of the trouble from so-called overeating comes from underdrinking..."
- "I drink exactly as much as I want, and one drink more."
- "I would not have any reputable man think that I was actually sober in San Francisco."
- "No heavy eater and no good drinking man has a mean heart. That's why the fatsos of the world get the best women to hop into bed with them. There isn't a woman alive who wouldn't give up a skinny husband for a good fat lover..."
Although obviously an enthusiastic and literate advocate of the convivial glass, Mencken felt strongly that it could not be considered fuel for either intellectual or manual endeavor. The Ombibulous Mr. Mencken includes his program for handling alcohol, as recorded in a 1948 Library of Congress interview.
"The rules are simple as mud.
"First, never drink if you've got any work to do. Never. If I've got a job of work to do at 10 o'clock at night, I wouldn't take a drink up to that time. Secondly, never drink alone. That's the way to become a drunkard. And thirdly, even if you haven't got any work to do, never drink while the sun is shining. Wait until it's dark. By that time you're near enough to bed to recover quickly."
"An amusing book with a bouquet redolent with entertaining quips and anecdotes." (The Baltimore Sun)
"Any who have been interested in the polite use of alcohol, the American language, or the United States in prohibition days and after, and particularly in H. L. Mencken should give themselves the pleasure of reading this choice bit." (Library Journal).
The book is liberally illustrated with photos (one used on the cover, as well, shows Mencken downing the first legal glass of beer to celebrate the end of Prohibition in 1933), reproduced letters and a cartoon showing HLM at a 1944 beer party for servicemen.
$3.95 Hardcover, 64 pages, liberally illustrated
ISBN 0-912184-09-4
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