The Last Days of Ambrose Bierce: Revisiting the Mystery

Ambrose Bierce, 1892.. (Public domain)

This past week I read again "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" by Ambrose Bierce. The story is about a hanging that takes place during the Civil War. I remember reading it in English class at some point in high school, and it made an impression on me. I probably read it again in the 1980s when I was on a short story binge, aiming to produce stories of my own.

This past week I read it one more time, savoring the detail and the manner in which Bierce tells the story. The surprise ending would be no surprise, even after forty or fifty years, but the story remains a good read because Bierce is a keen storyteller.

Yesterday I happened upon an article called "The Mysterious Disappearance of Ambrose Bierce" and it brought to mind Carlos Fuentes' The Old Gringo, a novel about the last days of Ambrose Bierce. Fuentes is a powerful Mexican author in the same league as Nobel Prize winner Gabriel García Márquez and Jorge Luis Borges, both of them masters of Magical Realism.

The Old Gringo is a novel that strives to shed light on the last days of Ambrose Bierce, which to this day have been shrouded in mystery. I found it a compelling read, in part because Fuentes is a superb writer and in part because of having spent a year in Mexico myself. The book is important because it provides a deeper understanding of Mexico's somewhat troubled history and the roots of the revolution of 1910-1920.

Bierce was a famously jaundiced and influential satirist, critic, short story writer, editor and journalist. A contemporary of Mark Twain, his incisive wit influenced writers like H.L. Mencken and Kurt Vonnegut.

Fuentes uses this tale not only to share what possibly happened to Ambrose Bierce, but also to show what happened to Mexico a century ago. The best way to understand Mexico before the Revolution is to think of the Plantation lifestyle in our United States. In Mexico, the people weren't "owned" the way plantation owners owned slaves, but the peasants and workers might as well have been. They had no rights, and the wealthy hacienda owners took advantage of the power they had over the peasants.

Gregory Peck and Jimmy Smits in Old Gringo

Hollywood went on to make a film based on Fuentes' book titled Old Gringo, starring Gregory Peck as the aging Ambrose Bierce and Jane Fonda as a naive young American woman who has gone to Mexico to teach English to a rich hacienda family. When she arrives the wealthy family has been run off by revolutionaries. The film, detailing their experiences in the midst of this civil war, got poor reviews from the critics and viewers alike, though it somehow connected with me due to my having read the book and lived there at one time. For whatever reason, I overlooked its shortcomings.

Bierce was a curmudgeon and an aging one at that when he slipped south of the border to flirt with his final destiny. The themes of the Fuentes book are dimly reflected in the film, but having the book inside you helps you better understand the significance of the story, what "the revolution" was really all about. It was a collision course: Bierce and the Revolution. But Bierce seems more akin to the Mexican tragic spirit than our American happy-go-lucky silliness and superficial fake depth.

In "The Mysterious Disappearance of Ambrose Bierce"author Chris Opfer presents alternative endings to the famous scribe's life. His demise in Mexico is but one story. Other possibilities put forth include death by his own hand in Texas or at the Grand Canyon. You can read Opfer's speculations here.

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I would be remiss not to include some quotes from one of Ambrose Bierce's most famous works, The Devil's Dictionary. The first half of the dictionary was published in 1906 as The Cynic's Word Book. Upon completion the A to Z volume was published in 1911 as The Devil's Dictionary.

Here are a handful of entries to give you the flavor of this work.

Abnormal, adj. Not conforming to standards in matters of thought and conduct. To be independent is to be abnormal, to be abnormal is to be detested.

Accord, n. Harmony.

Accordion, n. An instrument in harmony with the sentiments of an assassin.

Alone, adj. In bad company.

Bore, n. A person who talks when you wish him to listen.

Egotist, n. A person of low taste, more interested in himself than in me.

Ocean, n. A body of water occupying about two-thirds of a world made for man — who has no gills.

Once, adj. Enough.

Twice, adv. Once too often.

Year, n. A period of three hundred and sixty-five disappointments.


Related Links
The Old Gringo
The Assassination of Ambrose Bierce: A Love Story
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge