Bob Tedder • If you don’t have “read a dictionary” on your bucket list I will suggest you add the task and spend some time with Ambrose Bierce’s “The Devil’s Dictionary.” Before examining the review copy – a 2002 University of Georgia Press expanded edition titled “The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary” – first consider the impossibility of reviewing a book which, after all, is just a list of words. Before commenting on the contents, then, let us pause and consider if the author has any idiosyncrasies conducive to redefining common English words.
In that Bierce’s “Devil’s Dictionary” interprets words in an often surreal and always pithy manner, two items of prefatory materials will suffice to demonstrate the author’s authority.
First, take pause and remember where you have previously heard the name Ambrose Bierce. Chances are somewhere along your educational pathway you were assigned to read or ignore – depending on your academic goals – a frequently anthologized short story “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” You may reread it here or watch its “Twilight Zone” incarnation here. The story and the video speak to a special talent in observing and narrating the unusual. As Rod Serling noted at the end of the episode: “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge: In two forms, as it was dreamed … and as it was lived and died. This is the stuff of fantasy, the thread of imagination … the ingredients of the ‘Twilight Zone.’” It is this very quality which lends itself to many of Bierce’s “Twilight Zone” definitions and the extension of said imagination to the unusual aspects of his disappearance.
Without belaboring the point, a quote from the man’s last written words, a letter to his niece dated Dec. 26, 1913, illustrates his iconoclastic style: “Goodbye. If you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that’s a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a gringo in Mexico – ah, that is euthanasia.” The next day he sought out the army of Pancho Villa and disappeared somewhere in Mexico. He was 71 at the time. The ensuing kerfuffle spawned a slew of contending conspiracy theorists over the years and may be further explored here. All that being said, one might rightly ask, Where is the book review and why should I bother?
The review is simple. You cannot read any of Bierce’s definitions without smiles or perhaps the guilty acknowledgments of harboring similar thoughts. All are trenchant and to the often wayward point. In this particular volume, ignore all the academic addendums and enjoy the heart of Bierce’s orginal dictionary. Several teasers will suffice for this review’s body.
- Bacon: The mummy of a pig embalmed in brine.
- Weather: The climate of an hour. A permanent topic of conversation among persons whom it does not interest, but who inherited the tendency to chatter about it from naked arboreal ancestors whom it keenly concerned.
- Bait: a preparation that renders the hook more palatable.
Add the task “read a dictionary” to your bucket list along with “a daily cup of coffee” and “support local business.” All three now available at 104 N. Main St., Mt. Gilead, N.C., 27306.