Introduction
H.L. Mencken, who lived from 1880 to 1956, was a virtual oracle to many people who followed his writings while he was alive, and many of his words remain valid today. The great Baltimore newspaper man, lexicographer and iconoclast was best known as editor of The American Mercury, a position he held for about ten years. According to The New York Times, from Mencken "flowed a great stream of literally millions of words of reporting, editorials, essays, commentary, articles and books, all of it bearing the unmistakable stamp of individuality possessed by a master craftsman who was also a man of honor, of intellectual curiosity, of humanity and of superb wit."
Mencken was at his best when attacking American provincialism and our popular delusions and absurdities. He was regarded as something of a major prophet by thousands of young men in colleges. Somewhat surprisingly, one of his best books was In Defense of Women. Published in 1918, it remains highly readable today, and ought to be more popular than it is.
"That it should still be necessary, at this late date in the history of the human race, to argue that women are gifted with an acute and valuable form of intelligence is surely an eloquent proof of the defective observation, incurable superstitiousness and general dunderheadness of man," Mencken wrote. "One finds very few professed feminists approaching the thing as obvious; nearly all of them think it necessary to bring up a vast mass of gratuitous evidence to establish what should be an axiom. Even W. L. George, one of the most sapient of them, wastes a whole book upon the demonstration, and then, with an absurd air of uttering something new, gives it the humorless title of 'The Intelligence of Women.' As well devote a laborious volume to the lasciviousness of Puritans or the imbecilities of Congressmen.
"Women, in point of fact, are not only intelligent: they have almost a monopoly on certain of the subtler and more utile forms of intelligence. The thing itself, indeed, might be reasonably described as a special feminine character; there is in it, in more than one of its manifestations, a femaleness as palpable as the femaleness of cruelty, masochism or rouge. Men are strong. Men are brave in physical combat. Men have sentiment. Men are romantic, and love what they conceive to be virtue and beauty. Men incline to faith, hope and charity. Men know how to sweat and endure. Men are amiable and fond. But in so far as they show the true fundamentals of intelligence -in so far as they reveal a capacity for discovering the kernel of eternal verity in the husk of delusion and hallucination, and a passion for bringing it forth- to that extent, at least, they are feminine, and still nourished by the milk of their mothers. 'Human creatures,' says George, borrowing from Weininger, 'are never entirely male or entirely female; there are no men, there are no women, but only sexual majorities.' Find me an obviously intelligent man, a man free from sentimentality and illusion, a man hard to deceive, a man of the first class, and I'll show you a man with a wide streak of woman in him."
The question is debatable, and it could be argued that Mencken was making purely semantic distinctions. No scientist has ever demonstrated any significant difference between the basic brain structures of man and woman, for instance. Whatever differences one claims to discover are probably based more on training and circumstances than on inherited traits. Until actual facts prove otherwise, the novelist can probably contribute as much understanding as the scientist.
In this new Dansk novel, writer Dan Bradley makes, we think, a very valuable contribution. Starting with a situation that is far from being entirely new of starting, he tells a story that is full of new insights and perceptions. Evelyn, The Kidnapped Bride of the title, is a woman with considerable built-in resistance to sex. She is taken as hostage by a man who seems completely brutal and almost animalistic. But the male is the case definitely has a streak of what Mencken would call "feminine" intelligence, and Evelyn has a strong element of male strength in her own character. The result is constantly surprising as the story takes many unexpected twists and turns, and we guarantee that the final outcome is close to unpredictable.
This is a novel about real, living, vibrant people. Inescapably, they play out their masculine and feminine roles. Inescapably, too, they discover a great deal about each other-and about their own inner selves. The story is always entertaining, but it is also basically enlightening. We are proud to add it to the growing list of Dansk Blue Books which we are sure will survive as enduring classics.
-The Publishers