I normally don’t have much to do with Jessica Wright. I understand she’s got a column in the Sunday edition of the Canberra Times where they try and be relevant to younger readers. Today that column made it online.
It’s a little whinge about locking the gates of Weston Park and the impact that will have on unplanned pregnancies. Or, in her words: “It is a modern lover’s lane, kissy corner, if you will, and has seen many a romance start within its confines”.
As memory serves, from the days of my own back seat adventures, many parks were locked in the early 90’s and it had less to do with wowserism than vandalism and used rubbers left lying around places children are meant to play.
But this bit really crawled up my nose:
“The entertaining American writer H.L.Mencken once defined puritanism as the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy.”
Jessica has adjudged the great titan of 20th century American literature, the mighty champion of free thought and contrarianism, and determined that, at his irreducible core, he can best be described as an “entertaining American”.
H.L. Mencken’s wikipedia entry describes him thusly:
Henry Louis Mencken (September 12, 1880 – January 29, 1956), better known as H. L. Mencken, was a twentieth-century journalist, satirist, social critic, cynic, and freethinker, known as the “Sage of Baltimore” and the “American Nietzsche”. He is often regarded as one of the most influential American writers of the early 20th century.
Here endeth the rant.