The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce

This is one of the great minor classics of American literature, from the cynical division. I do mean both "great" and "minor," even if they seem to be in opposition - a book can be great on its own merits but not a major work, and a list of witty definitions of standard words is exactly the kind of thing that is both of those.

Ambrose Bierce is a half-forgotten writer these days. I have the sense he's semi-remembered in the academy, that a new batch of students discover him each year, as I did back in the day, and a subset of those appreciate his dark stories and journalistic screeds and, most of all, this book. (And I also have the sense that men are much more likely to appreciate Bierce than women are, which is only fair: Bierce never appreciated women himself, so they have no reason to give him the benefit of the doubt.)

But he's deeply interesting for several reasons: he really was the writer a lot of people think Mark Twain was (cynical, doom-laden, a San Francisco newspaperman with a bushy mustache), he was the first important American writer to fight well in a war (the Civil War) and write well about it afterward, his supernatural stories are darkly wonderful, and his newspaper columns - voluminous and hard to access as they are - contain some gems as well.

But he's remembered, if at all, for this book and for "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," a nearly perfect short story that strikes a quintessential pessimistic, fatalistic Bierce tone. Of course, how many other writers of his day are remembered at all? Two points of reference is infinitely more than many 19th century writers have nowadays.

The Devil's Dictionary [1] was a long-running newspaper project, which Bierce worked at, off and on, for a couple of decades and only completed when working up his Complete Works in 1909-1911. One chunk was published in his lifetime as The Cynic's Word Book - the word "Devil," which is also quintessentially Bierce, caused him trouble with publishers and newspaper readers and others in those starchy late-19th century years, which didn't deter him but did bend the history of the work somewhat.

It is basically what you would assume: an alphabetical collection of definitions of words, from ABASEMENT to ZOOLOGY, in a cynical tone that will strike a lot of readers as more modern than they would expect for something written starting in 1881. Bierce provides verse to illustrate some of the definitions, which I do not find to be a highlight of the book but I suppose some people like them. (To my mind, Bierce is a fine prose writer who dabbled in verse; in his mind, I think, verse was much better than prose and he wanted to be seen as a versifier.)

Many of the entries in Devil's Dictionary have been quoted, sometimes even correctly. Here's a few you may have seen over the years:

BIGOT, n. One who is obstinately and zealously attached to an opinion that you do not entertain. (p.453)

CORPORATION, n. An ingenious device for obtaining individual profit without individual responsibility. (p.465)

HISTORY, n. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools. (p.513)

RADICALISM, n. The conservatism of to-morrow injected into the affairs of to-day. (p.591)

And one that seems particularly pertinent in the US in recent years, as one side of our political establishment openly yearns for the freedom of action provided by a late-19th-century legal apparatus:

PRECEDENT, n. In Law, a previous decision, rule or practice which, in the absence of a definite statute, has whatever force and authority a Judge may choose to give it, thereby greatly simplifying his task of doing as he pleases. As there are precedents for everything, he has only to ignore those that make against his interest and accentuate those in the line of his desire. Invention of the precedent elevates the trial-at-law from the low estate of a fortuitous ordeal to the noble attitude of a dirigible arbitrament. (p.585)

 This is a great book - if a minor one - and provides the closest thing to joy in all of Bierce's work. I wouldn't recommend reading it straight through; no dictionary works well that way, and Bierce's cynicism is best taken in smaller doses, interspersed with happier writers. But I do recommend reading it, at some point - it reinforces in a reader's mind that there were always scoundrels, and that their tricks have not changed all that much, but also that wit and cold anger can be a pretty good sword and shield for when those scoundrels are massing once again.

[1] I'm linking here to the best, most comprehensive single-volume edition of Devil's Dictionary, which incorporates every definition Bierce ever wrote for the project and removed a bunch of entries by other hands that had crept into other editions. Bierce is in the public domain, so there are a lot of other editions, now or recent enough in the past to be available used. If you want just the Dictionary, this is the preferable edition.

But what I read this time was the text in the Library of America The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs, which is based on the 1911 Collected Works volume, with only small editorial corrections, to reflect Bierce's intentions at the time. That's good, too, and is a solid one-volume Best of Bierce for anyone also interested in the stories.