Ambrose Bierce
Subtitle: Alone in Bad Company
Edition: 1st ed edition
Publisher: Crown
Published: January 23, 1996
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 306
ISBN-13: 9780517596463
Subjects: Biography/Autobiography; United States; Biography; 19th Century American Novel And Short Story; Biography / Autobiography; Literary; Journalists; Bierce, Ambrose; Non-Classifiable; 19th century; 1842-1914?; American authors; Authors, American; Bierce, Ambrose,
First sentence: In the early spring of 1882, all San Francisco was abuzz over the rarefied presence of London's reigning literary lion, Oscar Wilde, in town for a series of public lectures on the future of art in the philistine world.
Description: When 71-year-old Ambrose Bierce disappeared into revolution-torn Mexico in 1913, he probably had more enemies than any man alive. This was only fair; he had labored long and hard to make himself hateful, and in the end he succeeded all too well. The targets of his printed abuse ranged from the mightiest and most rapacious robber baron to the meekest and least offensive would-be poet, although Bierce reserved his sharpest barbs for "that immortal ass, the average man." Bierce himself was anything but average. As the only American writer of any stature to fight in and survive the Civil War, his groundbreaking short stories of that war, including his most famous work, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," have had a lasting influence on every subsequent American author dealing with war, from Stephen Crane and John Dos Passos to Ernest Hemingway and Norman Mailer.

Profoundly disillusioned by his wartime experiences, Bierce spent the next fifty years struggling to disillusion his fellow Americans of their own cherished ideals - be they romantic, religious, or political. Frequently criticized for the intensity of his personal invective, Bierce once advised his detractors to "continue selling shoes, selling pancakes, or selling themselves. As for me I sell abuse." In this perceptive, insightful biography, Roy Morris, Jr., accounts for both the influential art that Ambrose Bierce made from such a harsh and unforgiving vision - and the high price he had to pay for it in loneliness, rancor, and spiritual isolation.