Mencken, Nietzsche, and The Chosen

"Mencken, Nietzsche and the Chosen" is a wide ranging, in-depth, innovative, and at times, exuberant account of Mencken's debt to and unwilling reliance on Nietzsche. There is an amazing coherence and parallel between their disturbing, irreverent, yet incisive, creative impact upon modernity with special attention focused on critical assessments of the human condition, along with their many brilliant, unheeded solutions to problems afflicting humans since the dawn of time. My joyful interest in Mencken and his vast literary/journalistic writings originated in 1956, the year of his death. I was hooked on Mencken to the extent that I have accumulated practically all of his ten million plus, published works in book, magazine or Xerox copy forms. My most necessary addiction to F.W. Nietzsche's bombastic writings surfaced in 1982 when I wrote a 122 page book on amateur wrestling, "GENIAL GENE MILLS MEAN TO WILL POWER: A Nietzschean interpretation of Amateur Wrestling." It was a delightful gasser, using the mad German as a unique, inspirational source. I thank the Chosen for lambasting Mencken as an anti-Semite. In the process, they have alerted two, possibly three American generations to the Baltimore Bard's iconoclastic comments about this once fair republic. Robert J. Dieli