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Ambrose Bierce

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Ambrose Bierce
Ambrose Bierce, ca. 1866
Ambrose Bierce, ca. 1866
OccupationJournalist, Writer
GenreSatire
Literary movementRealism
Notable works"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge", The Devil's Dictionary

Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (June 24, 1842[1] – 1914?) was an American editorialist, journalist, short-story writer 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. He is known for his distinctive style of writing, which his stories often share. This includes a cold open, use of dark imagery, vague references to time, limited description, war-themed pieces and use of 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. Portrait by J.H.E. Partington.

Bierce was born in Meigs County, Ohio to Marcus Aurelius Bierce (1799–1876) and Laura Sherwood Bierce.[1] 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.[1] He grew up in Kosciusko County, Indiana, attending high school at the county seat of 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.[1]

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[citation needed], 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[2]) and Leigh (1874–1901[2]), and a daughter, Helen (1875–1940). Both of Bierce's sons died before him: Day was shot in a brawl over a woman,[2] and Leigh died of pneumonia related to alcoholism.[2] Bierce separated from his wife in 1888 after discovering compromising letters to her from an admirer, and the couple finally divorced in 1904.[2] Mollie Day Bierce died the following year.

Bierce suffered from lifetime asthma[2][3] as well as complications arising from his war wounds.[citation needed]

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.

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,[1] 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

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".

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.

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[citation needed], a close friend, dated December 26, 1913,[4][5] he vanished without a trace, becoming one of the most famous disappearances in American literary history. In that letter, sent from Chihuahua[6], Bierce wrote:

"Good-bye — if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a gringo in Mexico—ah, that is euthanasia!"[3]

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. The date of his death is generally cited as "1914?".

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 1962 film was also used for 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.

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.[7]

American composer Rodney Waschka II composed an opera, Saint Ambrose, based on Bierce's life.[8]

He is briefly mentioned in the first volume of Joel Rosenberg's Guardians of the Flame series

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.

Ambrose Bierce, his works and his disappearance are mentioned often throughout the 2007 sci-fi/fantasy novel The Unreals by Donald Jeffries. Bierce even appears briefly as a character.

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-eater corpses of the battlefield onto paper."[1]

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."[1]

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.[1]

Bibliography

Books

Short stories

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h Floyd, E. Randall (1999). The Good, the Bad, and the Mad: Some Weird People in American History. New York: Barnes & Noble Publishing, Inc. p. 18. ISBN 978-0-7607-6600-2.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Floyd, p. 19
  3. ^ a b Floyd, p. 20
  4. ^ Starrett, Vincent. Ambrose Bierce. W.M. Hill, 1920. p. 39
  5. ^ Bierce, Amrose; Joshi, S.T.; Shultz, David E. A Much Misunderstood Man: Selected Letters of Ambrose Bierce. Ohio State University Press, 2003. pp 244+.
  6. ^ Floyd, p. 19-20
  7. ^ Fuentes, Carlos, Gringo Viejo (Planeta, 2004) ISBN 9686941673
  8. ^ Waschka II, Rodney. Capstone Records, Saint Ambrose
  • Bleiler, Everett (1948). The Checklist of Fantastic Literature. Chicago: Shasta Publishers. pp. 32, 147.
  • 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.

Research resources

External links

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