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Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company
A lively and compelling portrait of one of the most acerbic and distinctive voices in American literature, Ambrose Alone in Bad Company is a clear-eyed but sympathetic account of a complex individual at odds with his country, his family, his times, and himself.
The only American writer of any stature to fight in and survive the Civil War, Bierce discovered in the conflict a bitter confirmation of his darkest assumptions about man and his nature. Profoundly disillusioned, Bierce spent the next fifty years struggling to disabuse his fellow Americans of their own cherished ideals--be they romantic, religious, or political. His groundbreaking short stories of the 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. And the heartless, hilarious aphorisms in his caustic lexicon The Devil's Dictionary have entered, often uncredited, our national consciousness.
In this insightful, critically acclaimed biography, the first comprehensive study in almost fifty years, Roy Morris, Jr., accounts for both the influential art that Ambrose Bierce made from a harsh and unforgiving vision--and the high price he had to pay for it in loneliness, rancor, and spiritual isolation.
The only American writer of any stature to fight in and survive the Civil War, Bierce discovered in the conflict a bitter confirmation of his darkest assumptions about man and his nature. Profoundly disillusioned, Bierce spent the next fifty years struggling to disabuse his fellow Americans of their own cherished ideals--be they romantic, religious, or political. His groundbreaking short stories of the 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. And the heartless, hilarious aphorisms in his caustic lexicon The Devil's Dictionary have entered, often uncredited, our national consciousness.
In this insightful, critically acclaimed biography, the first comprehensive study in almost fifty years, Roy Morris, Jr., accounts for both the influential art that Ambrose Bierce made from a harsh and unforgiving vision--and the high price he had to pay for it in loneliness, rancor, and spiritual isolation.
- GenresBiographyNonfiction
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 23, 1996
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
April 13, 2024
Conventional wisdom and history books have it that Ambrose Bierce died in Mexico during the Revolution. But Morris, in this in-depth biography, offers a fairly plausible alternative. (Sorry, not giving the store away as part of the review; you're going to have to get your hands on this book.)
Much of the rest of the speculation in which Morris engages is psychological. He first analyses Bierce's childhood and parents, then takes note of his Civil War head wound, and wonders just how much the two of these things combined to contribute to the Ambrose Bierce we know today.
That said, while not denying either childhood or adult causes of personality development -- or personality change -- I give more credence to genetic causes, i.e., the ideas of evolutionary psychology, properly applied.
(Note to commenter: I reject much of ev psych myself; but, per Massimo Pigluicci, who has discussed this in length, hence my "properly applied," the evolutionary basis of tendencies in human psychological development is on solid ground. So, too, is the heritability of individual tendencies. See here for a discussion on how this relates to different philosophical schools of ethical ontology.)
I find it likely that Bierce was pretty much born with tendencies toward the character he later exhibited. His upbringing and his war wound may have intensified it, but I think he came by much of his cynicism naturally. Life events probably added the dollop of churlishness to it.
I teeter on a rating and end up at 4 stars. If I were to fine tune, it would probably be about 3 2/3 stars. The psycho-speculation is interesting, but in addition to being incomplete, if not somewhat wrong, too much of a focus on it means less focus on historical biography or on literary analysis.
Much of the rest of the speculation in which Morris engages is psychological. He first analyses Bierce's childhood and parents, then takes note of his Civil War head wound, and wonders just how much the two of these things combined to contribute to the Ambrose Bierce we know today.
That said, while not denying either childhood or adult causes of personality development -- or personality change -- I give more credence to genetic causes, i.e., the ideas of evolutionary psychology, properly applied.
(Note to commenter: I reject much of ev psych myself; but, per Massimo Pigluicci, who has discussed this in length, hence my "properly applied," the evolutionary basis of tendencies in human psychological development is on solid ground. So, too, is the heritability of individual tendencies. See here for a discussion on how this relates to different philosophical schools of ethical ontology.)
I find it likely that Bierce was pretty much born with tendencies toward the character he later exhibited. His upbringing and his war wound may have intensified it, but I think he came by much of his cynicism naturally. Life events probably added the dollop of churlishness to it.
I teeter on a rating and end up at 4 stars. If I were to fine tune, it would probably be about 3 2/3 stars. The psycho-speculation is interesting, but in addition to being incomplete, if not somewhat wrong, too much of a focus on it means less focus on historical biography or on literary analysis.
August 2, 2007
Someone writing a modern version of "The Devil's Dictionary" might pen the following entry: "Loner: Ambrose Bierce." The overarching theme here is that Bierce was from beginning to end a man who was so deeply alienated from others, and at the same time so clear-sighted and unsentimental, that it set him apart in a way that few other writers matched. The details of Bierce's life are compelling -- his dreadful childhood, horrendous experiences during the Civil War, and career as a iconoclastic journalist. Equally sensational was his mysterious death in Mexico -- he simply disappeared, and no one has ever been able to figure out what actually happened to him. Bierce emerges as an under-appreciated figure, especially as the author uses Bierce's own words to go beyond the usual portrait of mere curmudgeon.
April 22, 2021
Roy Morris, Jr. writes with extreme skill and grace. I really enjoyed his writing style when he was telling a story. However, he sprinkles in really dense and long descriptions with irrelevant background information that really start to drag down the book. I endured the density of his prose for several chapters, because his story-telling is superb. He finally won the battle though; as his descriptions got longer and irrelevant background facts became more plentiful -- they crowded out the story and turned this book into a stale boring textbook. I couldn't finish it. It really was excellent writing, but he just killed my interest by writing 15 pages of fluff for every one page of forward momentum. I still give him 4 stars, because I recognize his top-notch writing.
April 24, 2022
I found the story of Ambrose Bierce quite by accident one day. I decided to do some reading about him. This book was interesting to me, especially his Civil War and Western days. The author tends to be a bit too wordy, and times and the book drags on. I felt I would never finish. I have not had much time to read so I would pick it up and do a few pages at a time. I am glad that I read it and hope to find some of Bierce's stories to read.
April 13, 2008
Good stuff, esp. the Civil War years (“What I saw at Shiloh” etc.) and some devastating quips from his columns. He gets the prize for nastiest book review of all time (“The covers are too far apart”) and bonus points for calling Oscar Wilde a “gowky he-hen.”
March 7, 2018
Excellent Bierce bio. No wasted space or speculation. Appreciated detailed Civil War chapters. Highly recommended.
October 15, 2025
“Ambrose Bierce,” a biographical study by Roy Morris, Jr., is a portrait of the little remembered journalist and author known for his cynical and vitriolic prose. Aside from his “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" most of Bierce’s fiction has been forgotten; likewise, the passage of time has not been kind to his jaundiced eye view of gilded age San Francisco. That said, Morris does much to demonstrate Bierce’s influence on the war fiction of Crane, Dos Passos and Hemingway as well as the journalistic stance of H. L. Mencken.
Morris’s narrative briskly disposes of Bierce's ancestry and youth, then addresses the horrific and formative years spent fighting on the Union side during the Civil War. Lt. Bierce, “a brave and gallant soldier” fought under Grant, Sherman and Hazen at Shiloh, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge and a dozen other killing fields. At Kennesaw Mountain, Bierce was shot in the head, effectively ending his active-duty service.
After Appomattox, Bierce acted as a US Treasury agent in Alabama and as a cartographer on the Hazen expedition on the Platte and Powder rivers. Bierce soon found himself in San Francisco where he then turned to journalism.
His marriage to Mary Ellen Day, was unhappy and did little to improve his view of the institution, and his journalistic screeds reflected equal parts bitterness and PTSD. His targets ranged from the money-grabbing ``railrogues,'' California’s Big Four, to politicians, ministers, fellow writers- particularly sentimental poets, and obtuse voters.
Morris is at his best when he discusses Bierce's stories, including his most famous, ``An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,'' a work not fully appreciated by most critics and one that remained relatively obscure until its 1963 dramatization on Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone.”
Morris's biography is constrained by Bierce’s penchant for posturing, his dyspeptic reactions to nearly everything, and his assiduous efforts to remain enigmatic. Before he vanished into Mexico in 1913, Bierce stated,” he had ``never amounted to much.'' Nevertheless, Morris depicts a man ``who fought valiantly, exposed kitsch and hyperbole with relish, and wrote well with honest humility. Altogether, not a bad legacy.
Morris’s narrative briskly disposes of Bierce's ancestry and youth, then addresses the horrific and formative years spent fighting on the Union side during the Civil War. Lt. Bierce, “a brave and gallant soldier” fought under Grant, Sherman and Hazen at Shiloh, Chickamauga, Missionary Ridge and a dozen other killing fields. At Kennesaw Mountain, Bierce was shot in the head, effectively ending his active-duty service.
After Appomattox, Bierce acted as a US Treasury agent in Alabama and as a cartographer on the Hazen expedition on the Platte and Powder rivers. Bierce soon found himself in San Francisco where he then turned to journalism.
His marriage to Mary Ellen Day, was unhappy and did little to improve his view of the institution, and his journalistic screeds reflected equal parts bitterness and PTSD. His targets ranged from the money-grabbing ``railrogues,'' California’s Big Four, to politicians, ministers, fellow writers- particularly sentimental poets, and obtuse voters.
Morris is at his best when he discusses Bierce's stories, including his most famous, ``An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,'' a work not fully appreciated by most critics and one that remained relatively obscure until its 1963 dramatization on Rod Serling’s “Twilight Zone.”
Morris's biography is constrained by Bierce’s penchant for posturing, his dyspeptic reactions to nearly everything, and his assiduous efforts to remain enigmatic. Before he vanished into Mexico in 1913, Bierce stated,” he had ``never amounted to much.'' Nevertheless, Morris depicts a man ``who fought valiantly, exposed kitsch and hyperbole with relish, and wrote well with honest humility. Altogether, not a bad legacy.
June 28, 2020
I enjoyed parts of this. I didn't read the whole thing, if I'm honest. Sadly the subject far eclipses the biographer.
September 1, 2016
Interesting biography about a very cynical man, but very creative too. His Civil War experiences gave him a fascination with death.
We may never know what happened to him at the end. He probably did not end up in Mexico, according to the author.
We may never know what happened to him at the end. He probably did not end up in Mexico, according to the author.
September 4, 2016
For such an interesting subject this book seemed to move rather slowly.
October 27, 2016
If you're fluent in sarcastic cynicism, you'll love Ambrose Bierce!
September 4, 2008
Great bio--he does a great job of capturing Bitter Bierce's wit and anger.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews