Heresy ...

... Prejudices.

I have been reading these volumes. I may make a pitch to review them. And I would never deny that, at his best, Mencken is spectacular. But the dirty little secret is that, like most of us mere mortals, he was less often at his best than his admirers seem willing to admit. Read one after another, the essays in these volumes reveal a writer who, as often as not, relied on style rather than substance to carry him through to deadline.