Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce
(June 24, 1842 – 1914?) was an American
editorialist, journalist, short
story writer, fabulist and satirist. Today, he is best known for his
short story, "
An
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and his satirical dictionary,
The Devil's
Dictionary.
The sardonic view of human nature that informed his work — along
with his vehemence as a
critic — earned him
the
nickname "Bitter Bierce". Despite his
reputation as a searing critic, however, Bierce was known to
encourage younger writers, including poet
George Sterling and fiction writer
W. C. Morrow. Bierce employed a distinctive style of
writing, especially in his stories. This style often includes a
cold open, dark imagery, vague references
to time, limited descriptions, the theme of war, and impossible
events
In 1913,
Bierce traveled to Mexico
to gain a
firsthand perspective on that country's ongoing revolution. While traveling with
rebel troops, the elderly writer disappeared without a trace.
Early life and military career
Ambrose Bierce.
Bierce was
born in Meigs
County
, Ohio
to Marcus
Aurelius Bierce (1799–1876) and Laura Sherwood Bierce. His
mother was a descendant of
William Bradford. His
parents were a poor but literary couple who instilled in him a deep
love for books and writing.
He grew up in Kosciusko
County
, Indiana
, attending
high school at the county seat, Warsaw
. He
was the tenth of 13 children whose father gave all of them names
beginning with the letter "A". In order of birth, the Bierce
siblings were Abigail, Amelia, Ann, Addison, Aurelius, Augustus,
Almeda, Andrew, Albert, Ambrose, Arthur, Adelia, and Aurelia. He
left home at age fifteen to become a "
printer's devil" at a small Ohio
newspaper.
At the outset of the
American Civil
War, Bierce enlisted in the
Union
Army's 9th Indiana
Infantry Regiment. In February 1862 he was commissioned
First Lieutenant, and
served on the staff of General
William Babcock Hazen as a
topographical engineer, making maps of likely
battlefields.
Bierce fought at the Battle of
Shiloh
(April 1862), a terrifying experience that became a
source for several later short stories and the memoir, "What I Saw of Shiloh".
He
continued fighting in the Western theater, at one point receiving
newspaper attention for his daring rescue, under fire, of a gravely
wounded comrade at the Battle of Rich Mountain
, West
Virginia
.
In June
1864, he sustained a serious head wound
at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain
, and spent the rest of the summer on furlough, returning to active duty in
September. He was discharged from the army in January 1865.
His
military career resumed, however, when in the summer of 1866 he
rejoined General Hazen as part of the latter's expedition to
inspect military outposts across the Great Plains
. The expedition proceeded by horseback and
wagon from Omaha
, Nebraska
, arriving toward year's end in San
Francisco
, California
.
Personal life
Bierce married Mary Ellen ("Mollie") Day on
Christmas Day, 1871. They had three children;
two sons, Day (1872–1889) and Leigh (1874–1901), and a daughter,
Helen (1875–1940). Both of Bierce's sons died before him: Day was
shot in a brawl over a woman, and Leigh died of pneumonia related
to alcoholism. Bierce separated from his wife in 1888 after
discovering compromising letters to her from an admirer, and the
couple finally divorced in 1904. Mollie Day Bierce died the
following year.
Bierce suffered from lifetime
asthma as well
as complications arising from his war wounds.
Journalism
In San Francisco, Bierce received the rank of
brevet major before resigning from the Army.
He remained in San Francisco 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, the
Overland Monthly,
The Californian and
The
Wasp. A selection of his crime reporting from
The San
Francisco News Letter was included in
The Library of America anthology
True Crime.
Bierce
lived and wrote in England
from 1872 to 1875, contributing to Fun magazine. Returning to the
United States, he again took up residence in San Francisco
. From 1879 to 1880, he travelled to Rockerville
and Deadwood
, South
Dakota
in the Dakota
Territory, to try his hand as local manager for a New York
mining company, but when the
company failed he returned to San Francisco and resumed his career
in journalism.
In 1887, he published a column called "Prattle" and became one of
the first regular columnists and editorialists to be employed on
William Randolph Hearst's
newspaper, the
San Francisco
Examiner, eventually becoming one of the most prominent
and influential among the writers and journalists of the
West Coast. He remained
associated with
Hearst Newspapers
until 1906.
Railroad Refinancing Bill
The
Union Pacific and
Central Pacific railroad
companies had received massive loans from the U.S. government to
build the
First
Transcontinental Railroad—on gentle terms, but
Collis P. Huntington persuaded a friendly member
of
Congress to introduce a
bill excusing the companies from repaying the money, amounting to
$130 million (nearly $3 billion in 2007 money).
In
January 1896 Hearst dispatched Bierce to Washington,
D.C.
to foil this attempt. The essence of the
plot was secrecy; the railroads' advocates hoped to get the bill
through Congress without any public notice or hearings. When the
angered Huntington confronted Bierce on the steps of the Capitol
and told Bierce to name his price, Bierce's answer ended up in
newspapers nationwide: "My price is one hundred thirty million
dollars. If, when you are ready to pay, I happen to be out of town,
you may hand it over to my friend, the Treasurer of the United
States". Bierce's coverage and diatribes on the subject aroused
such public wrath that the bill was defeated. Bierce returned to
California in November.
McKinley accusation
Because of his penchant for biting social criticism and satire,
Bierce's long newspaper career was often steeped in controversy. On
several occasions his columns stirred up a storm of hostile
reaction which created difficulties for Hearst. One of the most
notable of these incidents occurred following the
assassination of
President William McKinley when Hearst's opponents
turned a poem Bierce had written about the
assassination of Governor Goebel in 1900 into
a
cause
célèbre.
Bierce
meant his poem, written on the occasion of the assassination of
Governor 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 thereby accused by rival newspapers—and by then
Secretary of State Elihu Root—of having called 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
Bierce in 1892
Bierce was considered 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 in a variety of
literary genres.
His short stories are held among the best of the 19th century,
providing a popular following based on his roots.He wrote
realistically of the terrible things he had seen in the
war in such stories as "
An Occurrence at Owl Creek
Bridge", "
Killed at Resaca",
and"
Chickamauga".
In addition to his ghost and war stories, he also 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 an occasional newspaper item which
was first published in book form in 1906 as
The Cynic's Word
Book. It consists of satirical definitions of English words
which lampoon
cant and political
double-talk.
Under the entry "
leonine", meaning a
single line of
poetry with an internal
rhyming scheme, he included an apocryphal couplet written by the
fictitious Bella Peeler Silcox (
Ella
Wheeler Wilcox) in which an internal rhyme is achieved in both
lines only by mispronouncing the rhyming words:
- The electric light invades the
dunnest deep of Hades.
- Cries Pluto, 'twixt his snores: "O tempora! O
mores!"
Bierce's twelve-volume
Collected Works were published in
1909, the seventh volume of which consists solely of
The
Devil's Dictionary, the title Bierce himself preferred to
The Cynic's Word Book.
Disappearance
In
October 1913 Bierce, then in his seventies, departed Washington,
D.C., for a tour of 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 in the throes of revolution. In Ciudad
Juárez
he joined Pancho
Villa's army as an observer, and in that role he witnessed the
Battle of Tierra
Blanca.
Bierce is
known to have accompanied Villa's army as far as the city of
Chihuahua
. After a last letter to Blanche Partington,
a close friend, dated December 26, 1913, he vanished without a
trace, becoming one of the most famous disappearances in American
literary history.
Several
writers have speculated that he headed north to the Grand Canyon
, found a remote spot there and shot himself ,
though no evidence exists to support this view. All
investigations into his fate have proved fruitless, and despite an
abundance of theories his end remains shrouded in mystery.
Legacy and influence
At least three films have been made of Bierce's story
An
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. A silent film version,
The Bridge was made in 1929. A French version
called
La Rivière du Hibou, directed by
Robert Enrico, was released in 1962. This
black-and-white film faithfully recounts the original narrative
using voice-over. Another version, directed by
Brian James
Egen, was released in
2005.
The French version was aired in 1964 as an episode of the
television series The Twilight Zone:
An
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge. A copy of
An
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge appeared in the
ABC television series
Lost (
The Long Con,
airdate February 8, 2006). Prior to
The Twilight Zone, the
story had been adapted as an episode of
Alfred Hitchcock
Presents.
Another notable film adaptation was made of Bierce's story "Eyes of
the Panther." To date at least 2 versions of this story exist on
screen. One version was developed for Shelley Duvall's
Nightmare
Classics series and was released in 1990. This version runs
about 60 mins. and is widely criticized for being too loosely
adapted.
Another shorter version was released in 2006 by Dir.
Michael Barton, and runs about 23 mins.
American composer
Rodney Waschka
II composed an opera,
Saint Ambrose, based on Bierce's
life.
Bierce's disappearance has also been a popular topic.
Carlos Fuentes's novel
The Old Gringo is a fictionalized
account of Bierce's disappearance which was later adapted into the
film
Old Gringo (1989), starring
Gregory Peck in the title role.
Bierce's disappearance and trip to Mexico provide the background
for the vampire horror film
From Dusk till
Dawn 3: The Hangman's Daughter (2000), in which Bierce's
character plays a central role.
The short film
Ah! Silenciosa (1999), starring
Jim Beaver as Bierce, weaves elements of
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge into a speculation on
Bierce's disappearance.
Biographer Richard O'Conner wrote that war unleashed the howling
demons lurking in the pit of Bierce's soul:
- "War was the making of Bierce as a man and a writer. [From his
grim experience, he became] truly capable of transferring the
bloody, headless bodies and boar-eaten corpses of the battlefield
onto paper."
Noted essayist
Clifton Fadiman
observed about Bierce:
- "Bierce was never a great writer. He has painful faults of
vulgarity and cheapness of imagination. But...his style, for one
thing, will preserve him; and the purity of his misanthropy, too,
will help to keep him alive."
Many scholars, including author Alan Gullett, argue that Bierce's
war tales are considered by many to be the best writing on war,
outranking his contemporary
Stephen
Crane (author of
The
Red Badge of Courage) and even
Ernest Hemingway.
Bibliography
Books
Short stories
- Beyond the Wall (1909)
- A Diagnosis of Death (1909)
- A Jug of Syrup (1909)
- Moxon's Master (1909)
- Staley Fleming's Hallucination (1909)
- The Stranger (1909)
- The Way of Ghosts (1909)
- The Affair at Coulter's Notch
- An Affair of Outposts
- The Applicant
- An Arrest
- The Baptism of Dobsho
- A Bottomless Grave
- The City of the Gone Away
- The Coup de Grace
- The Crime at Pickett's Mill
(1888)
- Curried Cow
- The Failure of Hope and Wandel
- George Thurston
- A Holy Terror
- A Horseman in the Sky
- The Hypnotist
- An Imperfect Conflagration
- The Ingenious Patriot
- John Mortonson's Funeral
- Jupiter Doke, Brigadier-General
- Killed at Resaca
- A Lady from Redhorse
- The Little Story
- The Major's Tale
- The Man Out of the Nose
- The Middle Toe of the Right Foot
- The Mocking-Bird
- The Monk and the Hangman's Daughter
- Three and One are One
- Mr Swiddler's Flip-Flap
- My Favourite Murder
- Mysterious Disappearances
- Oil of Dog
- One Kind of Officer
- One of Twins
- One Officer, One Man
- One Summer Night
- Parker Adderson, Philosopher
- Perry Chumly's Eclipse
- A Providential Intimation
- The Race at Left Bower
- A Resumed Identity
- Revenge
- A Revolt of the Gods
- Some Haunted Houses
- A Son of the Gods
- The Story of a Conscience
- The Tail of the Sphinx
- Visions of the Night
- The Widower Turmore
See also
References
- http://www.ambrosebierce.org/timeline2.html
- Floyd, p. 19
- Floyd, p. 20
- http://www.online-literature.com/bierce/
- Ambrose Bierce, mon amour
- Morris, Roy. Ambrose Bierce: alone in bad company, p.
237.
- Starrett, Vincent. Ambrose Bierce.
W.M. Hill, 1920. p. 39
- Bierce, Amrose; Joshi, S.T.; Shultz, David E. A Much
Misunderstood Man: Selected Letters of Ambrose Bierce. Ohio
State University Press, 2003. pp 244+.
- Waschka II, Rodney. Capstone Records, Saint
Ambrose
- Fuentes,
Carlos, Gringo Viejo (Planeta, 2004) ISBN
9686941673
- De Castro, Adolphe
(1929). Portrait of Ambrose Bierce (New York and London:
Century).
- McWilliams, Carey
(1929; reprinted 1967). Ambrose Bierce: A Biography,
Archon Books.
- O'Conner, Richard (1967). Ambrose Bierce: a Biography,
with illustrations, Boston, Little, Brown and Company.
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