The Devil's Dictionary

1911, undated possibly 1960s Dover edition
Ambrose Bierce
The Devil's Dictionary
Original price $2.50, purchase price unknown
Bent corners but otherwise good condition paperback
C+


I remember once reading some Steven Wright jokes online.  And they almost all fell flat, without his monotone and deadpan face.  There was another problem.  His dry, ironic sense of humor had become so mainstreamed in the intervening couple decades that it no longer stood out.  I think something similar has happened in the slightly over hundred years since this book was published, especially since the dictionary began in a newspaper in 1881.  Cynicism towards government, religion, and other aspects of society, including lexicography, is no longer startling or cutting-edge.  Even, perhaps especially, conservatives are snarky.  Not that Bierce was a liberal.  He at least certainly wasn't a feminist.  He seems to have been more of an iconoclast and, as he defines it, an iconoclast isn't interested in setting up new icons.  He just wants to smash.


So what are we left with?  Let's take p. 70 as an example.  The definition of "intimacy" as "a relation into which fools are providentially drawn for their mutual destruction" is not dated, although the poem that follows has lost its point unless you know what Seidlitz powder is.  (I don't, and it's one time I'm not going to Google it.)  The definition of "introduction," in the sense of social introduction, is dated but mildly amusing.  An inventor as "a person who makes an ingenious arrangement of wheels, levers and springs, and believes it civilization," sounds very steam-punk.  The definition of "irreligion" as "the principal one of the great faiths of the world" is neither shocking nor accurate, considering there is probably more religion, and religions, in the world than in 1911.  And I'm baffled by "itch" meaning "the patriotism of a Scotchman," since the only stereotypes I know about the Scottish are cheapness and bagpipes. 


I think I laughed out loud once, and there are occasional definitions that are worth quoting aloud.  But mostly, it's kind of tedious to read a dictionary, even one with clever wordplay.