The Devil's Topographer: Ambrose Bierce and the American War Story (review)

The best parts of David M. Owens's The Devil's Topographer answer a simple question: To what degree are the places and events described in Bierce's Civil War fiction real?

Owens proves himself an indefatigable literary detective in scouring, among other sources, memoirs, war records, and regimental histories, as well as Bierce's own autobiographical writings, in his effort to determine just how much of "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" and other stories are rooted in fact. In addition, Owens himself retraced the footsteps of Bierce—who spent much of the war serving as a topographic engineer under Union General William B. Hazen—in an effort to pin down connections between actual places that Bierce visited (and in some cases mapped) and the settings of his stories. For example, near the end of "A Horseman in the Sky," which Bierce set in West Virginia, a rider and his horse fall over a cliff one thousand feet high. As Owens notes, this drop is comparable to falling from the observation deck of the Sears Tower in Chicago, so readers may assume that Bierce is exaggerating. Owens, however, finds a likely match for this setting in Seneca Rocks, located in the area of West Virginia where Bierce spent late 1861.

In separating fact from fiction, Owens notes interesting patterns in Bierce's work. When read in order of their publication, Bierce's stories are a jumble, jumping around in time, location, and theme. When the locations of Bierce's war stories are plotted on a map, however, they correspond to their author's movements during the war, and the times when the stories are set match the times when Bierce visited these locations. Furthermore, when the stories are studied in order of their wartime settings, developing themes mirror the changing concerns of Bierce the soldier, whose rank and responsibility increased as the war progressed. Thus, Owens asserts that the most illuminating way to read these stories is in order of their wartime settings, not in order of their publication. Owens rejects the notion that one can trace any kind of artistic growth in Bierce by reading his stories in publication order, though this claim is largely unsubstantiated, as when Owens dismisses the artistry of a story, his grounds for doing so are often slight.

This short book is padded with a preface, introduction, conclusion, and afterword that add little to its central concerns. The substance of Owens's scholarship can be found in his book's numbered chapters, though some readers will be frustrated to find that much of this scholarship is not documented. The book gives detailed documentation only when it quotes directly from a source.