Owen Hatteras

Major Owen Hatteras (1912–1923) is a composite personage and pseudonym created and employed by H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan for The Smart Set literary magazine and adapted by Willard Huntington Wright during his short tenure as editor. The pseudonym was used to critique American (“Puritan”) traditions and ideals, such as marriage, religion, and academe, while protecting Mencken and Nathan's own reputations. First with the “Pertinent & Impertinent” column and eventually the “Americana” column, Hatteras observed and denigrated American institutions, frivolity and sentimentalism, materialism, racism, censorship, and conservatism.

History

Owen Hatteras debuted in April 1912 and appeared regularly until Mencken and Nathan's resignation in 1923, and in April 1919, he was presented as “Major” Owen Hatteras, denoting his decorated service in World War I. During his service, he was still able to write twelve pieces for The Smart Set during the war years, despite Mencken's claim that “Hatteras was too proud to write,” mocking President Woodrow Wilson’s statement that “there is such a thing as a man being too proud to fight.”

The creation of Owen Hatteras was meant to be an experimental prelude to Mencken and Nathan's desired weekly, The Blue Review. In The Blue Review, they intended to lambast traditional American morals and ideologies, mostly using satire, but the magazine never came to fruition. The Smart Set’s publisher, John Adams Thayer, was excited by the idea, but suggested that they first try out the critical tone on their current audience. Thus, they created the “Pertinent and Impertinent” column in April 1912 pseudonymously, though their own signed writings revealed much of the same sentiment. Owen Hatteras, however, could be freely raffish and acerbic. He attacked religion, marriage, morals, manners, capitalism—staples of American life. These American tropes came to be identified by Mencken as “Puritanism,” stripped of the Calvinist implications and loaded with the dated and passé mores instilled by the early American Puritans.