Books in Brief: Ambrose Bierce: Skepticism, Selected Journalism from 1898 to 1901

Ambrose Bierce: Skepticism, Selected Journalism from 1898 to 1901, edited by Lawrence I. Berkove (Delmas, 295 pp., $8). Every few years Ambrose Bierce is rediscovered by some editor or publisher, and a biography appears, or a collection of fables or Civil War stories, or a reprint of The Deed’s Dictionary. Bierce is continually rediscovered not so much because he speaks to the times, but rather because of his style, his mordant wit, his eerie voice. While easily and often overrated, Bierce was original and influential. Although he spent much of his life as a journalist, his newspaper work is rarely seen and has often been hard to come by. This new collection contains seventy columns Bierce wrote for Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner and New York Journal, on a variety of topics but usually with one theme: war, which the author had studied in detail in 1861-65. There is commentary on the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, the Filipino Insurrection, the Boxer Rebellion, expansionism, freedom of speech, socialism, and politics, but Bierce returns again and again, almost sentimentally, to the Civil War. His ideas are, in the main, sound, his perceptions hardheaded in a time of jingoism. Above all, Bierce made no excuses. “It is untrue that I write for the public, and I don’t happen to care whether you understand or not; those for whom I write understand and there are enough of them to make it worthwhile to write for them. Can’t you skip me?—do you fear you’ll not get your money’s worth unless you read everything in the paper?” he writes to one correspondent. He addresses another reader: “If you freaks can’t understand what you read why don’t you read what you can understand?” This volume, however, while competently edited, is something of a disappointment. Edmund Wilson was right: Bierce can become tiresome, and he was not meant to be read in bulk. Yet this may be partially the fault of the editor, who has chosen to show Bierce as a historical commentator, rather than a master of invective and abuse.

JM

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Joe Mysak

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Ambrose Bierce: Skepticism, Selected Journalism from 1898 to 1901, edited by Lawrence I. Berkove (Delmas, 295 pp., $8). Every few years Ambrose Bierce is rediscovered by some editor or publisher, and a biography appears, or a collection of fables or Civil War stories, or a reprint of The Deed’s Dictionary. Bierce is continually rediscovered not so much because he speaks to the times, but rather because of his style, his mordant wit, his eerie voice. While easily and often overrated, Bierce was original and influential. Although he spent much of his life as a journalist, his newspaper work is rarely seen and has often been hard to come by. This new collection contains seventy columns Bierce wrote for Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner and New York Journal, on a variety of topics but usually with one theme: war, which the author had studied in detail in 1861-65. There is commentary on the Spanish-American War, the Boer War, the Filipino Insurrection, the Boxer Rebellion, expansionism, freedom of speech, socialism, and politics, but Bierce returns again and again, almost sentimentally, to the Civil War. His ideas are, in the main, sound, his perceptions hardheaded in a time of jingoism. Above all, Bierce made no excuses. “It is untrue that I write for the public, and I don’t happen to care whether you understand or not; those for whom I write understand and there are enough of them to make it worthwhile to write for them. Can’t you skip me?—do you fear you’ll not get your money’s worth unless you read everything in the paper?” he writes to one correspondent. He addresses another reader: “If you freaks can’t understand what you read why don’t you read what you can understand?” This volume, however, while competently edited, is something of a disappointment. Edmund Wilson was right: Bierce can become tiresome, and he was not meant to be read in bulk. Yet this may be partially the fault of the editor, who has chosen to show Bierce as a historical commentator, rather than a master of invective and abuse.