Inspiring Older Readers
Thinking about Ambrose Bierce and Dipping into The Devil’s Dictionary
I am a man and therefore I like lists. The other day I was working my way through a list of the one hundred greatest works of American literature and sitting there amongst the ones you might expect – Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Faulkner, Poe, Whitman – was the name of Ambrose Bierce and his delicious Devil’s Dictionary. I have to say I was genuinely surprised to see it because, wonderful as it is, it’s always struck me as an acquired taste.
Bierce was born in 1842 and built himself an enviable reputation as a novelist, poet, short story writer and journalist and he is regularly name-checked by a host of Twentieth century writers. His mystique received a substantial boost when he went to Chihuahua in Mexico to witness the Revolution in 1914 and disappeared never to be seen again (although several articles – like this one in the Paris Review - have been published that attempt to unscramble the story of his adventure and death).
I have to own up and say that I’ve never read any of Bierce’s fiction which US literary critics in particular seem to hold in high regard. But I think it’s fair to say that his fiction has not been widely read in the UK and I’ve tended to assume that it was sub-Poe or Hawthorne gothic stuff that would probably find its way into anthologies. But I’ve equally always been drawn to a cynic and a sharp-tongued one is irresistible and the more I’ve read about his life the more I’ve warmed to him as a natural contrarian.
It seems that from the very outset Bierce had a penchant for waspish social criticism – he started working for The San Francisco Examiner in 1887 when he published his column called "The Prattle," which was so controversial and outspoken that it involved the newspaper in several controversies that its powerful owner Randolph Hearst had to smooth over.
The Devil's Dictionary appears to have been something of a personal project rather than the result of a specific intension to produce a book. He began the work in a weekly paper in 1881 and it was continued on and off over long intervals until 1906. At that point a large part of it was published in covers with the title The Cynic's Word Book, a title that was created for it by the publisher rather than by Bierce himself. The book itself takes the form of a series of dictionary definitions but the form is simply cover for a host of scathing contemporary social critiques and commentaries.
The original newspaper entries proved to be popular with readers and other journalists who were quick to jump on Bierce’s capacity for a well turned barb and make use of them for themselves. The fact that many of the ‘definitions’ entered popular parlance before the final version of The Devil’s Dictionary was compiled and published might lead you to think that he’d simply picked up and plagiarised phrases that were already in common usage – but the truth is quite the other way around.
Bierce clearly owes a debt of gratitude to Samuel Johnson's pioneering dictionary of 1755 which also casts a critical eye over how words and action often contradict each other. But by bringing the concept up-to-date in the context of the USA in the early 20th century, he lays the ground for later American cynics like Dorothy Parker and H.L.Mencken and I don’t think it’s too fanciful to say that in British terms he’s a forerunner of magazines like Private Eye or even Viz at its very best.
If, like me, you have a fundamentally jaundiced eye for all things social and political you should keep a copy of The Devil’s Dictionary close to hand.
Terry Potter
February 2018
(What follows is a selection of Bierce’s dictionary entries as selected by the website Interesting Literature: A Library of Literary Interestingness)
Admiration, n. Our polite recognition of another’s resemblance to ourselves.
Barometer, n. An ingenious instrument which indicates what kind of weather we are having.
Clairvoyant, n. A person, commonly a woman, who has the power of seeing that which is invisible to her patron – namely, that he is a blockhead.
Comfort, n. A state of mind produced by contemplation of a neighbour’s uneasiness.
Consult, v. To seek another’s approval of a course already decided on.
Coward, n. One who in a perilous emergency thinks with his legs.
Dentist, n. A prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls coins out of your pocket.
Education, n. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.
Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.
Famous, adj. Conspicuously miserable.
Future, n. That period of time in which our affairs prosper, our friends are true and our happiness is assured.
History, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
Lawyer, n. One skilled in circumvention of the law.
Lecturer, n. One with his hand in your pocket, his tongue in your ear and his faith in your patience.
Misfortune, n. The kind of fortune that never misses.
Neighbor, n. One whom we are commanded to love as ourselves, and who does all he knows how to make us disobedient.
November, n. The eleventh twelfth of a weariness.
Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills.
Once, adj. Enough.
Pray, v. To ask that the laws of the universe be annulled in behalf of a single petitioner confessedly unworthy.
Quotation, n. The act of repeating erroneously the words of another. The words erroneously repeated.
Revelation, n. A famous book in which St. John the Divine concealed all that he knew. The revealing is done by the commentators, who know nothing.
Saint, n. A dead sinner revised and edited.
Self-evident, adj. Evident to one’s self and to nobody else.
Year, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.