You may already know who Ambrose Bierce is -- contemporary of Mark Twain -- American "humorist" -- but with the most dark and biting, bitter humor around. (So bitter, in fact, that in his later life, he was known as "Bitter Bierce." He's famous for some short stories, including the inimitable "Incident at Owl Creek Bridge," which occasionally salvages an otherwise-deadly literature anthology for high school and college students, and also the Devil's Dictionary, which is truly just one of a kind, from which come many of the best "definitions" I've ever seen, about the out and out hypocrisy of language and typically revisionist history, written by the victors. In fact, though they were rivals, the sentiments behind Mark Twain's famous "War Prayer" -- "Oh, dearest God in the heavens, smite down the other side, mainly because they're not US" (I'm paraphrasing) -- fit right in with Bierce. While literature types make much of Bierce's cynicism -- he's been relegated to the "humor" side of the aisle, in theory, because of it -- the reality is, he was a soldier who saw many battles, and saw some truly horrible things, in the course of his serving in the Civil War. Things that jump right out of the pages of his writing, and underscore realities from Vietnam -- like the impetus behind fragging -- and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan -- including what must have been a "traumatic brain injury" or "TBI" -- when he was shot in the head with a musket in one of the battles in which he participated.
If you fast-forward to the 1980s, Bierce's eventual disappearance in Mexico -- he had gone there to fight -- is chronicled in the fictional movie treatment, "Old Gringo," starring the eclectic cast of (erm) Jane Fonda, Jimmy Smits, and Gregory Peck, as Bierce (he's the "Old Gringo" of the title.) (The movie was based on a novel by Carlos Fuentes, called The Old Gringo.) Ironically, Bierce's decision to go to Mexico and fight in yet another war seems quite reminiscent of combat veterans today, who agitate on the home front for the battle-fueled adrenaline they can't help missing when they're back. If you haven't taken the opportunity to acquaint yourself with Bierce's dark humor and realistic depictions of war (as a combatant), do yourself that favor. And in the meantime, I'll leave you with one of the funnier quotes I've seen in a while, courtesy of the one and only Ambrose Bierce -- "War is God's way of teaching Americans geography."
Editor's Note: Thanks to Chris Lombardi for reminding me this week of the singular, terrible beauty of Bierce, and encouraging me to read his devastating battle account -- "What I Saw of Shiloh" -- which concludes with the highly memorable line about the life that he "should have thrown away, at Shiloh." Yikes. He gets it.
