I have always wondered how Ambrose Bierce could
possibly come up with all his impossible, disconcerting witticisms and surreal plots.
I assumed he might have suffered from what is now called PTSD, but I did not know
if those four years in the Union army had left a more direct mark on him. And I
never bothered to find out. Now it’s the centennial of Bierce’s mysterious disappearance
into Panhco Villa’s Mexico, and stories about him are hard to avoid – courtesy of
the imperative to maintain web traffic which even high-brow publications can
hardly escape.
As it turns out, Bierce suffered a severe wound to his
left temple. He carried the bullet that caused it lodged behind his ear, and
suffered from severe headaches and other neurological symptoms until the end of
his life. Granted, Bierce did not experience Jill Bolte Taylor’s elevation into
a state of magnificent transcendence following her left-hemisphere stroke. But,
as with her, perhaps it was the brain damage he suffered that made possible the
truly extraordinary associations his mind so reliably generated. Was that a
blessing in disguise? Fore his devoted readers – definitely? For Bierce himself
– it’s hard to tell. My guess is he would not have wanted to reclaim his young
self which, he later acknowledged, had not survived the war.
