THE AMBROSE BIERCE SATANIC READER

Ambrose Bierce who once said that a Saint is a ""dead sinner revised and edited,"" is now further canonized via some recently discovered two million words from the first half of his forty year career, through excerpts prepared by Professor Hopkins. Bierce, who was a great aphorist and paragraph-ist (none of these pieces extend beyond these shorter forms) was also one of our original black comics even though he never had quite the charm of Mencken. He wrote about just everything in his day (extending here from the 1870's around the bend of the century): politics, education, crime, women, doctors, old age, etc., etc. and in recommending a list of books for school libraries, he proposed that they be printed ""in large, clear type, with the syllables properly estranged."" Bubble bubble, no toil, dabble--the ""Laughing Devil"" advocate.