Ambrose Bierce

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (b. June 24, 1842, Meigs County, Ohio - d. Dec. 1913 or early 1914, presumably in Mexico) was an American satirist, litterateur and critic, short story writer, editor and journalist. His dark, sardonic views gave him the nickname Bitter Bierce. His clear style and lack of sentimentality have kept him popular when many of his contemporaries have become obscure.

Early life and military career

Born in a rural area of southeastern Ohio, he resided during his adolescence in the town of Elkhart, Indiana. At the outset of the American Civil War, Bierce enlisted in the Ninth Regiment, Indiana Volunteers, as part of the Union Army. In Feb. 1862, he was commissioned as a 1st lieutenant and served on the staff of Gen. William Babcock Hazen as a topographical engineer, making maps of likely battlefields. He fought bravely in several of the war's most important battles, at one point receiving newspaper attention for his daring rescue under fire of a gravely wounded comrade at the battle of Girard Hill, West Virginia. In June, 1864, he received a serious wound at the battle of Kennesaw Mountain and spent the rest of the summer on furlough, but returned to active duty in September, and was ultimately discharged from the army in Jan. 1865.

His military career, however, resumed when, in the summer of 1866, he rejoined Gen. Hazen as part of the latter's expedition to inspect military outposts across the Western plains. The expedition proceeded by horseback and wagon from Omaha, Nebraska, arriving in San Francisco near the end of the year.

Journalism

In San Francisco, Bierce resigned from the Army and received the rank of brevet Major. He remained there for many years, eventually becoming famous as a contributor and/or editor for a number of local newspapers and periodicals, including The San Francisco News Letter, The Argonaut, and The Wasp. Bierce lived and wrote in England from 1872 to 1875, and went to Rockerville and Deadwood in the Dakota Territory to try his hand at mining in 1879-1880, after which he returned to San Francisco. In 1887, he became one of the first regular columnists and editorialists to be employed on William Randolph Hearst's newspaper, the San Francisco Examiner. In Dec. 1899, he moved to Washington, DC, but continued his association with the Hearst newspapers until 1906.

The McKinley accusation

Bierce's career suffered following the assassination of President William McKinley when Hearst's political opponents turned a satirical poem Bierce had written in 1900 into a cause celèbre. Bierce meant his poem, written on the occasion of the assassination of Governor-elect William Goebel of Kentucky, to express a national mood of dismay and fear, but after McKinley was shot in 1901 it seemed to foreshadow the crime:

The bullet that pierced Goebel’s breast

Can not be found in all the West;

Good reason, it is speeding here

To stretch McKinley on his bier.

Hearst was accused by other papers of calling for McKinley's assassination. Despite a national uproar that ended his ambitions for the presidency (and even his membership in the Bohemian Club), Hearst neither revealed Bierce as the author of the poem, nor fired him.

Literary works

His short stories are considered among the best of the 19th century. He wrote realistically of the terrible things he had seen in the war in such stories as "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and "Chickamauga".

Bierce was reckoned a master of "pure" English by his contemporaries, and virtually everything that came from his pen was notable for its judicious wording and economy of style. He wrote skillfully in a variety of literary genres, and in addition to his celebrated ghost and war stories he published several volumes of poetry and verse. His Fantastic Fables anticipated the ironic style of grotesquerie that turned into a genre in the 20th century.

One of Bierce's most famous works is his much-quoted book, The Devil's Dictionary, originally a newspaper serialization which was first published in book form in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book. It offers an interesting reinterpretation of the English language in which cant and political double-talk are neatly lampooned.

Bierce's twelve-volume Collected Works were published in 1912.

Disappearance

In October 1913, the septuagenarian Bierce departed Washington on a tour to revisit his old Civil War battlefields. By December, he had proceeded on through Louisiana and Texas, crossing by way of El Paso into Mexico, which was then in the throes of Mexican Revolution. In Ciudad Juárez, he joined the army of Pancho Villa as an observer, in which role he participated in the battle of Tierra Blanca. He is known to have accompanied Villa's army as far as the city of Chihuahua. After a last letter to a friend, sent from that city on December 26, 1913, he vanished without a trace, becoming one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history. Subsequent investigations to ascertain his fate were fruitless and, despite many decades of speculation, his disappearance remains a mystery.

Bierce in popular culture

H.P. Lovecraft borrowed several terms and fictional locations from Bierce.

Mexican novelist Carlos Fuentes wrote Gringo Viejo (The Old Gringo), a fictionalized account of Bierce's disappearance that was later made into a movie with Gregory Peck in the title role.

Bierce appears as a character in the 2000 movie From Dusk Till Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter (set in 1913, a prequel to the original From Dusk Till Dawn). While traveling to join up with Villa, Bierce is first attacked by bandits, and then trapped in a bar filled with vampires bent on killing all the humans inside. This clearly fictional adventure also portrayed Bierce as an alcoholic. In that movie Ambrose Bierce was played by |Wikiquote has a collection of E-texts of The Devil's Dictionary and other writings of Ambrose Bierce are available from Project Gutenberg .

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