Ambrose Bierce

From Philosopedia.org

Bierce, Ambrose (24 June 1842 - 1914?)

The last of ten children, Bierce was the son of a father who liked books but did not like long-term employment. His mother was a pious matron. At 15, Ambrose worked as a "printer's devil" for a newspaper. At 17, he was enrolled at Kentucky Military Institute, and at 19 he enlisted in the Civil War. He volunteered in the Ninth Indiana Infantry Regiment, and was promoted to brevet major for his courageous service in several bloody battles including Shiloh, Chickamauga, Stones River, Resaca, and Pickett’s Mill.

He wrote credible novels about war. In one short story, “Chickamauga,” he included grisly details, and in “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” a spy as he is being hanged dreams of his beloved wife, the dream interrupted by the snapping of his neck. Tellingly, Bierce once started a series of tales, “The Parenticide Club,” with “Having murdered my mother under circumstances of singular atrocity”’ in another, he wrote, “Early one June morning in 1872 I murdered my father - an act which made a deep impression on me at the time.”

His experiences in that bloody war resulted in his Edgar Allen Poe-like "western gothic" supernatural stories, numbering more than 90, most set in the Civil War, which he wrote in middle age. Following the war, the young man went west, sharpening his writing skills on atheistic tracts and drawing a folio of political cartoons.

Bierce was hired as a journalist for several San Francisco newspapers, writing 167 weekly, satiric "Town Crier" columns later published in book form, The Fiend's Delight (1872). Married in 1871, he and his new wife went on an extended honeymoon to England as a gift from his father-in-law. Bierce struck up friendships with the "Fleet Street Gang" and wrote for Figaro and Fun. Those columns were reprinted in book form as Cobwebs from an Empty Skull (1874). He collaborated on a bestseller attacking the waltz (The Dance of Death), and wrote 87 weekly columns for the Argonaut.

After other journalism jobs, Bierce was hired by William Randolph Hearst in 1887, and worked for him for 21 years, inaugurating a column of witty epigrams. Vintage Bierce: "Camels and Christians receive their burdens kneeling." "Treat things divine with marked respect - don't have anything to do with them." Bierce's first collection of short stories, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, appeared in 1891, followed by Can Such Things Be? (1893). His ghost story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," is still anthologized.

Ever the witty pessimist, who defined a year as “a period of 365 disappointments,” Bierce did not spend his entire life in the gloomy fashion most assumed was his lot. He edited two issues of The Lantern for the exiled Empress Eugenie, wrote for Hearst newspapers, married a socialite, settled comfortably in Marin County, and raised three children.

The Devil’s Dictionary (1911, originally in 1906 called The Cynic’s Word Book) was addressed to “enlightened souls who prefer dry wines to sweet, sense to sentiment, wit to humor, and clean English to slang.” Characteristic entries include the following:

Advice, n. The smallest current coin.

Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Christian, n. One who believes that the New Testament is a divinely inspired book admirably suited to the spiritual needs of his neighbor.

Clergyman, n. A man who undertakes the management of your spiritual affairs as a method of bettering his temporal ones.

Edible, adj. Good to eat, and wholesome to digest, as a worm to a toad, a toad to a snake, a snake to a pig, a pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

Evangelist, n. A bearer of good tidings, particularly (in a religious sense) such as assure us of our own salvation and the damnation of our neighbors.

Faith, n. Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel.

Garter, n. An elastic band intended to keep a woman from coming out of her stockings and desolating the country.

Heathen, n. A benighted creature who has the folly to worship something that he can see and feel.

Infidel, n. In New York, one who does not believe in the Christian religion; in Constantinople, one who does.

Labor, n. One of the processes by which A acquires property for B. Marriage, n. A community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two.

Martyr, n. One who moves along the path of least resistance to a desired death.

Mugwump, n. In politics one afflicted with self-respect and addicted to the vice of independence. A term of contempt.

Pray, verb. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.

Prejudice, n. A vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

Rack, n. An argumentative implement formerly much used in persuading devotees of a false faith to embrace the living truth.

Religion, n. A daughter of Hope and Fear, explaining to Ignorance the nature of the Unknowable.

Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.

Scriptures, n. The sacred books of our holy religion, as distinguished from the false and profane writings on which all other faiths are based.

A Unitarian, Bierce wrote,

• If there is a God - a proposition that the wise are neither concerned to deny nor hot to affirm - nothing is more obvious than that for some purpose known only to himself he has ordered all the arrangements of this world utterly regardless of the temporal needs of man. This earth is about the worst that a malevolent ingenuity, an unquickened apathy, or an extreme incapacity could have devised.

Among his other sardonic observations, Bierce found that “Christians and camels receive their burdens kneeling.” As for books: “The covers of this book are too far apart.” The ideal epitaph: “Here lies ‘So-and-so’ - as usual.” As for being cautious: “Don’t believe without evidence. Treat things divine with marked respect—don’t have anything to do with them. Do not trust humanity without collateral security.”

Bierce was at the height of his fame at the turn of the century, when his lobbying defeated a bill by "railroad rogues" seeking massive forgiveness of debt to the government.

Bierce's personal life was rocky, with one son dying either of suicide or during a duel, another of pneumonia in his twenties, and Bierce's marriage ending in divorce, earning him the nickname "Bitter Bierce."

In 1913, at age 70, he told friends during a visit to Texas that he was going South, and was never heard from again. Bierce reputedly fought beside Pancho Villa and died in battle, although some believe Villa killed him in a quarrel, and others maintain Bierce never went to Mexico at all. He is believed to have died in 1914. A novel speculating about Bierce's last days, The Old Gringo, was written by Carlos Fuentes in 1985, and was made into a movie starring Gregory Peck and Jane Fonda in 1989. In the movie, he dies but it is not clear where or how. Roy Morris Jr. in Ambrose Bierce, Alone in Bad Company (1996) speculates that Bierce may have killed himself while heading toward Mexico. He had once told his best friend and publisher, Walter Neale, that he intended to shoot himself at or near the Grand Canyon. Before Morris’s work, Joe Nickell in Ambrose Bierce is Missing claimed similar information. Others have said, without factual evidence, that Bierce was held captive and killed by a tribe of Brazilian Indians. What is known is that in 1913 Bierce set out to observe the Mexican revolution, to seek “the good, kind darkness,” and, mysteriously, was never again seen.

(See “The Enlightened Cynicism of Ambrose Bierce” by Glenn Odden, Free Inquiry, Fall 1996) {CE; JM; PA; RAT; David S. Reynolds, The New York Times Book Review, 18 February 1996; OCAL, OEL, TYD; U; UU}