"A cause is always a venal thing. It is purely an individual affair. Christ had no cause to fight for. Paul had. It was his business. A cause creates fanatics. Whoever writes purely for a cause and for nothing else, that is, with no motive other than to serve a cause, never creates literature." (117)
This odd and close look at the life of a beautiful literary scorpion is disorienting in its blindness. Chronology is flexible; De Castro ignores Bierce's head wound, one of his children, and several intermittent decades of his life, while professing the intimacy of their friendship. All the same the letters, photographs, and anecdotes provide a fascinating and direct look at the man Bierce. The impression I am left with is as strange and striking as the drawn floating head of Ambrose opposing the title page in my edition (original 1929, withdrawn from the Dayton Metro library, likely a Hara Arena book sale acquisition). The man lived the modern conundrum: a critic and moral agent incorruptible by the rampant scandal and literary games of his time, while also a cog in Hearst's machine as he grew his dynasty. If only we could all vanish into Mexico. ( )