Ambrose Bierce: Great American Cynic

THE LIBRARY of America—that ambitious, authoritative, canon-defining publishing project that has since 1979 been issuing its handsome, uniform volumes printed on for-the-ages stock—has at last bestowed its honors on Ambrose Bierce, with a collection of his most significant writings. That this beatification has taken so long is as explicable as it is inexcusable. Bierce, after all, has always been best known for being undeservedly unknown. He himself resignedly acknowledged that his “notoriety as an obscurian may be said to be worldwide and apparently everlasting,” and Arnold Bennett confirmed: “You may wander for years through literary circles and never meet anybody who has heard of Ambrose Bierce, and then you may hear some erudite student whisper in an awed voice: ‘Ambrose Bierce is the greatest living prose writer.’”