[Mencken was one of the most influential figures in American literature from the First World War until the early years of the Great Depression. His strongly individualistic, irreverent outlook on life and his vigorous, invective-charged writing style helped establish the iconoclastic spiritc of the Jazz Age and significantly shaped the direction of American literature. Mencken was an early and emphatic supporter of Suckow's writing, and in the following laudatory review, he praises her ability to create credible characters.]

In Miss Suckow's stories situation is usually of small significance: the salient thing is the anatomizing of character. Who among us can manage that business with greater penetration and understanding, with a finer feeling for the tragedy of everyday, with a more moving evocation of simple poetry? Who, indeed, at home or abroad, has ever published a better first book of short stories than [Iowa Interiors]? Of its sixteen stories, not one is bad—and among the best there are at least five masterpieces. I mean by a masterpiece a story that could not imaginably be improved—one in which the people are overwhelmingly real, and not a word can be spared. All of these people are simple Iowa peasants. In other hands they would slide inevitably into stock types, ludicrous and artificial. But Miss Suckow differentiates them sharply, and into every one she breathes something of the eternal tragedy of man. Her talent is not unlike that of Sherwood Anderson, but her mind is more orderly than his: she gropes and guesses less, and is hence more convincing. There are moments when he far surpasses her, but her average, it seems to me, is at least as high as his. She is unquestionably the most remarkable woman now writing short stories in the Republic; all the rest, put beside her, seem hollow and transparent.