Dave Wood

Ambrose Bierce was born on this day in 1842 in Meigs County, Ohio. No one is certain when he ran off to die in Mexico, but when the world found out, contemporary novelist Jack London would comment: “Bierce would bury his best friend with a sigh of relief and express with satisfaction that he was done with him.”

Nevertheless, he made friends with and collaborated with Mark Twain, Bret Harte and Stephen Crane and formed a formidable trio of literary journalists that struck fear into the hearts of aspiring writers who sought favorable reviews in the journals of their time. A Bierce sample: “The covers of this book are too far apart.”

Today his cynical wit is best known for his “Devil’s Dictionary,” a collection of definitions:

ADVICE: noun, The smallest current coin.

BORE: noun, A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

EDIBLE: adjective, Good to eat, wholesome to digest, as arm to a toad, toad to a snake, snake to a pig, pig to a man, and a man to a worm.

HABIT: A shackle for the free.

LAWSUIT: noun, a machine which you go into as a pig and come out a sausage.

MARRIAGE: noun, a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves making in all, two.

PREJUDICE: noun, a vagrant opinion without visible means of support.

SAINT: noun, a dead sinner revised and edited.

Pretty witty, stuff, yes?

But Bierce’s “Epigrams” take a nastier turn:

“Woman would be more charming if one could fall into her arms without falling into her hands.”

“You are not permitted to kill a woman who has wronged you, but nothing forbids to reflect that she is growing older every minute. Thus you are avenged 1,440 times a day.”

My biography of Meigs County’s most famous naysayer tells me he was divorced from his wife, daughter of a wealthy miner after which he disappeared in Mexico. And that’s about it. That whetted my curiosity and I consulted my rather vast collection of literary history and came up empty-handed. 

What’s the deal? How could scholars ignore this journalist of great repute? So I consulted my five books about filmography, dimly remembering seeing a movie in which Bierce played a major role. No mention.

Exasperated, I turned to my new source for information provided to me by fellow TV nut and nephew who permitted me to use his TV app You Tube. I shouted “You Tube” to my TV screen and You Tube appeared. Then I asked You Tube if it had any information on Ambrose Bierce.

To my surprise the app provided a bushel and a peck of information about the writer that my scholarly sources ignored. Dozens of photos of the writer from youth to old age, recorded interviews with Bierce by fellow journalists from his era, plus readings of his Civil War short stories, including his most famous, “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.”

And how about that movie I watched years ago about Bierce’s mysterious adventure in Mexico.  You Tube had a review of the movie, “The Old Gringo” plus its cast: Gregory Peck as Bierce, Jane Fonda as his spinster schoolmarm tourist, Jimmy Smits as his rival for Fonda, and Pedro Armendariz as Pancho Villa. How’s that for detail that famous critics like Roger Ebert in his multitudinous volumes filmographies have ignored?

So now I had found the name of the movie. I returned to my trusty TV and shouted, “The Old Gringo” and it miraculously appeared on my screen. I enjoyed it all over again!

MORAL TO MY STORY: If perchance you’re 90 years old and sense that your memory is failing, get yourself a generous nephew or subscribe to You Tube. It saves all that troublesome searching on the internet!