A dental practitioner , wroteAmbrose Bierce , was “ a prestidigitator who , assign metallic element into your mouth , pulls coins out of your pocket . ” Politeness , “ the most satisfactory lip service . ” A yr , a “ period of three hundred and sixty - five disappointments . ”
Circa the former twentieth hundred , when famous and cut wittiness likeMark TwainandDorothy Parkerdelighted readers and dinner party guests with wordplay , fellow author Bierce took snark to a new level . His nickname , “ Bitter Bierce , ” was well - earn : He used lyric as a cudgel , eviscerating targets . They even take on new substance in his rakish workThe Devil ’s Dictionary , which offered substitute definition ; he pervert them to horrific essence in a routine of inadequate story .
Bierce was also aCivil Warveteran , and in 1913 , the 71 - twelvemonth - sometime decided to once again run toward conflict , this meter as an observer and possibly a player of the Revolutionary War in Mexico . No one would ever again read his vitriolic coverage because he never pass . His death remains shroud in mystery . If it was murder , it ’s totally potential Bierce ’s fabled gall was the motive .
War and Wit
accept in Ohio andraised inIndiana , Biercetook uparms for the Union Army in 1861 , when he was nearly 19 . For four long time , he was mired in fighting , much of it visceral and fated to everlastingly haunt his imagination . In one clash , the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain , an estimated4000 soldierswere killed .
Hispersonal lifewas every bit tumultuous . Bierce had three kid , and both of his sons died untested — one , Raymond , by suicide and the other , Leigh , ofpneumoniarelated to inebriation . His wife left him . Those tragedies , couple with his wartime experience , direct some to trust his misanthropic nature was inevitable .
The violence inform his late study , which often rivet on war . In perhaps his most famous story , “ An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge , ” a Confederate civilian is saved from hanging and come back his folk . It appears redemption has arrived , but only if a reader forgets this is an Ambrose Bierce tale . At the terminal , it ’s revealed the man is merely conjuring up a well-chosen termination in the seconds before his cervix snap .
The 1891 tarradiddle has been conform multiple times , include as a French short film that finally wind up onThe Twilight Zoneand as an installment ofAlfred Hitchcock Presents — the only time a single story was used as source stuff for both shows . But those were decades later . In his fourth dimension , Bierce had only meek achiever with his fiction , once claiming he had pull in as small as $ 100 for it over a lifespan . He was better known as a paper newsperson and ironist . ( The Devil ’s Dictionarywas culled from some of his columns . )
But his wit , often so pernicious , could turn whip . Writingof the stateside arrival of London authorOscar Wildein 1882 , Bierce hiss :
“ That sovereign of insufferables , Oscar Wilde , has ensue with his luxury of twadle and his penury of sense . He has mounted his hind legs and burn out crass vapidities through the bowel of his cervix , to the capital edification of circumjacent fools and foolesses . The unspeakable dumbass has nothing to say and say it with a liberal embellishment of bad manner of speaking , aggrandise it with reasonless vulgarity of position , motion and attire . There never was an impostor so mean , a numskull so stupid , a crank so variously and objectionably daft . He make me threadbare . ”
While working atThe San Francisco Examinerin February 1900 , Biercewrotean incendiarypoemabout PresidentWilliam McKinleythat seemed ill - time . In September 1901 , McKinley was shot and kill ; some trust the perpetrator was instigate by Bierce , though that was n’t probable . Even so , it reinforced his visibility as a contemptuous scribe .
By 1910 , Bierce was retired from his newspaper screeds . But a life of leisure time did n’t appear to accommodate him .
Declarations and Disappearance
It ’s not entirely clear what actuate Bierce todepartfor Mexico on hogback in December 1913 . It ’s possible he was intrigue by the gyration championed byFrancisco “ Pancho ” Villaagainst the Mexican governing and president Porfirio Díaz ; Bierce may have wanted to document it as a diarist . It ’s also possible Bierce was look for some excitement before the end of his liveliness and that heintendedto struggle alongside Villa . ( Either one was a rummy selection , as he spoke no Spanish . ) In either causa , his agreement dry out up . By fall 1914 , no one had heard from him in month . Indeed , no one would ever discover from him again .
Despiteinquiriesfrom the Secret Service and Pinkerton secret detective , there was no creditable account of his departure . Some consider he break in Ojinaga , where a battle was raging , because Bierce had written to his secretaire that he was headed there . Two hoi polloi later articulate they had heard that an elderlygringo(“foreigner ” ) had been killed during the fighting . One soldier shown a pic of Bierce believed he had indeed been a casualty .
Another interpretation has Bierce wounded at Ojinaga and catch up in an exodus across the margin into the United States . lose among refugees , he expire and was speedily forgotten .
Still another story had it that Bierce made the fatal mistake of asking directions of Federales in Sierra Mojada . He was quickly shot . This account , by diary keeper Edward Reilly , was bolster by Reilly asking a local who claimed to have put up Bierce for some proof . The man showed him letters leave behind by the visitor which were turn to to Ambrose Bierce .
Then , in 1991 , one other lead turned up . publishing house James Robertson was work on on a aggregation of Bierce write up when he stumble upon a little - seen biography of Bierce by Adolphe Danziger DeCastro . Accordingto DeCastro , who firstcirculatedthe story in 1927 , he interview Pancho Villa and pointedly asked him about Bierce .
“ I roll in the hay him , ” Villa say . “ He has passed . ” Villa had little positive to say , adding that he treated Bierce ’s “ brag with contempt … an American who drinks too much tequila soon loses himself . ”
In this news report , Bierce ’s biting remarks were direct at Villa ’s world as well as Villa himself , a rather gooselike conclusion . One is left to intimate that perhaps Villa grew so pained at Bierce ’s insult that he had the man shot . It was something Bierce himself regarded as a hunky-dory way to go out , once describing a firing team as “ a jolly good way to take off this life . ” It ’s potential “ Bitter Bierce ” was stuck in his shipway until the bitter end .
