This book stands with the Devil's Dictionary and In the Midst of Life as one of Ambrose Bierce's finest achievements. Dozens and dozens of short - sometimes very short - fables, each one a small, sharp needle in the backside of respectable hypocrisy. Some are simply written-out jokes, like the one about the baby ostrich who swallowed a bottle-cap ("Go quickly, my child, and swallow a corkscrew", says its mother); but the best of them to my mind are those featuring metaphors or abstract concepts as characters, like the one about the Moral Principle and the Temporary Expedient which met on a narrow bridge one day with predictably humiliating results. All the usual suspects are here - corrupt politicians, pious hypocrites, daffy judges and members of the Women's Press Association snarl, whimper, wheedle, preach, cheat and sneak alongside various Pairs of Hands making unauthorised incursions into Treauries, Streaks of Lightning failing to match the speed of Politicians Running for Office, and Blotted Escutcheons doing what Blotted Escutcheons do. Readers of the Devil's Dictionary, with its numerous improving anecdotes and rhymes, will know what to expect; anyone else is in for a treat, or possibly a coronary.

A timeless collection of must-have-read literature. The compilation is of the highest quality, the presentation most satisfactory. Particularly suitable for students, many of us older people will also enjoy new encounters with old friends. amazing how the impact of those stories grows with one's own age. Highly recommendable!

It's like Fuentes wrote "The Old Gringo" in his sleep. Or maybe something was lost in the translation. But I couldn't think of a worse way to commemorate the memory of Ambrose Bierce than this book.

Bierce was the proud and cantankerous alcoholic Civil War writer, famous to his contemporaries as the author of the "Devil's Dictionary." More famous to us as the author of "Incident at Owl Creek Bridge." By any standards, Bierce is a cynic and hard-nosed realist. Here, for example, is the "Devil's Dictionary" entry for "Laughter":

"An interior convulsion, producing a distortion of the features and accompanied by inarticulate noises. It is infectious and, though intermittent, incurable."

In "The Old Gringo," Fuentes imagines what happened to Bierce when he disappeared in Mexico during the revolution around the turn of the 20th century. In the book, Bierce is an old tough guy who can shoot pesos in midair, and who seeks his death at the hands of Pancho Villa, the infamous Mexican bandit. In addition, there's a young American schoolteacher to woo, an angry young rebel general, and lots of booze and spicy food. And lots of Freudian sex (as the schoolteacher pretends her lover is her father). And the whole thing is written in poor stream-of-consciousness style.

Bierce must be writhing in his grave.

Read "The Death of Artemio Cruz" for Fuentes' work of genius. "The Old Gringo" misses its mark.

I've always wondered what happened to Ambrose Bierce. He's one of my favorite short story writers -- his war stories are pretty hard to beat and his satires are the epitome of sarcasm. Given my love of Bierce's work, I had to read Carlos Fuentes's novel which weaves a story around Bierce's trip to Mexico to fight alongside Pancho Villa.

The story centers around the Old Man or Old Gringo (who is not openly identified as Ambrose Bierce until the end) and his relationship with a young single American woman, Harriet, and General Tomas Arroyo. Harriet is a frustrated, emotionally lost woman who has accepted a job tutoring children at a hacienda. When she arrives at the estate, it has been abandoned. Almost immediately, the estate is commandeered by Tomas Arroyo and his band of rebels. Old Gringo (who has absolutely no fear of death and, as a result, performs impressive acts of bravery) has asked to join Arroyo's band. The Old Man has conflicted, confused feelings for both Harriet and Arroyo. To him, they are his daughter and son. At the same time, he desires Harriet and desires death even more. (...).

All is told in stream of consciousness narration. Fuentes has a way with words and is terrific with character development. The story is very, very slow-paced and the end is abrupt and disappointing, but reading it is still fun because the words are so poetic. Harriet's stream of consciousness is unsettling to say the least. I wish Fuentes had put a little more Bierce into the character of the Old Gringo...but, hey, Old Gringo went to Mexico to lose himself, so the vague characterization serves a purpose. Over all, the story is a nice fantasy.

Goodbye, if you hear of my being stood up against a Mexican stone wall and shot to rags, please know that I think it a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease, or falling down the cellar stairs. To be a Gringo in Mexico--ah, that is euthanasia! -Ambrose Bierce in a letter to a friend

In 1914, the great American journalist and short story writer Ambrose Bierce, age 71, traveled to a Mexico that was in the midst of Revolution and promptly disappeared. He thereby fulfilled the dark prediction above and provided one of the great literary mysteries of the 20th Century.

In The Old Gringo, Carlos Fuentes offers his take on Bierce's fate. An "Old Gringo", carrying just a couple of his own books, a copy of Don Quixote, a clean shirt and a Colt .44, joins a group of Mexican rebels under General Tomas Arroyo. In turn, they meet up with a young American school teacher named Harriet Winslow, who was supposed to tutor the children of the wealthy landowner who illegally holds Arroyo's family property. The three become enmeshed in an unlikely romantic triangle, which necessarily ends in tragedy.

Fuentes uses the story to explore a plethora of themes, some of which I followed and some of which I could not. Perhaps the most interesting aspect of the book is the degree to which it reflects Latin American obsession with the United States, an obsession which it must be admitted is met by only a fleeting interest on our part. Fuentes and the tragic chorus of Mexican characters elevate the tale of the Old Gringo to the status of myth; ironic, since Bierce is barely remembered here, but then one of his themes is that we are a people without memory, while the very soil of Mexico carries memories.

It all adds up to a diverting speculation about an interesting historical puzzle, but I'm not sure that the story will bear all of the psychological and political weight that Fuentes loads upon it.

GRADE: C+

I think the Ingram reviewer above was on something when he wrote of the "danger" that grew from the sisters' game, and of the "evil man determined to control their thoughts". I didn't get any of that out of _The Game_.

_The Game_ is basically the story of two sisters: Julia, a sociable but shallow novelist who writes about the boredom of domestic life; and Cassandra, a nunlike scholar who hides away from real life in the cloistered world of high academia. The "game" referred to in the title is an imaginary Arthurian world invented by the sisters when they were children, but it has little bearing on the rest of the novel, except in that Cassandra went on to become an Arthurian scholar, and Julia uses it as an example of Cassandra's condescension. It could have been dropped from the plot without much effect, which is sad for me, since the Arthurian element is the biggest reason I wanted to read the book in the first place.

Leaving out Arthur, who is mostly irrelevant anyway, we have Julia and Cassandra, who are just repairing their estranged relationship, when Simon Moffat comes back into their life. Simon was both women's first love; Cassandra adored him from a distance, while Julia slept with him. This triangle was the reason for their estrangement. When he reappears, so do the tensions between the sisters.

_The Game_ failed to engage me; most of the characters were pretty one-dimensional and cold. Cassandra had a few moments of stunning dignity, but she didn't seem real either. A.S. Byatt has gotten much better since.

Although it's some years since I read this excellent book, the reviews thus far in my view, do not do it justice. Many people know of Byatt's writing through her book "Possession" but although this is a fine example of her work, all her writing demonstrates a wonderful story-telling ability, embroidered throughout by her extensive literary and historic knowledge. "The Game" is a very "readable" novel, drawing the reader in as the tale evolves. To over analyze "The Game" is to miss the beauty of the mystery and intrigue; to miss the interplay between the main characters and the complexities of family emotions. "The Game" is a wonderful book for any mystery-loving reader and for anyone who has not already been drawn in by Byatt's writing is an excellent place to begin a reading relationship with her work.

In contrast to the other reader reviewers, I loved this book. I've not read anything else by the author except for the Matisse stories, which did not hold my attention. I am certainly looking forward to her other novels if this is, to her fans, a second-rate effort.

I find the two lead female characters richly drawn and interesting. The younger is the prototype of a writer who must publish as she wills even though she hurts those dear to her. Her self-knowledge is finally revealed to be nothing but complete self-absorption, in contrast to her pretensions. The older sister, shut off in an arid cell of her own making, is gradually learning to live and accept people again before the final climax.

The philosphical concepts and conflicts which are argued throughout are apropos to the plot and well developed. I enjoyed the book thoroughly.

The plot is predictable; the setting ill-developed; and the characters are shallow. The novel could have been as easily set in the LA of the 1930s as SF of the 1890s. Each chapter is preceded by an entry from the Devil's Dictionary the relevance of which for any given chapter is often problematic. What really rankles me is that although Ambrose Bierce is featured in the title he is a VERY minor character in the novel coming across as a somewhat cynical middle aged de facto bachelor smitten by a rather supercilious newspaperwoman. On the positive side the novel is short and not demanding--a perfect soporific.

To put Bufe between the same covers with Bierce is a joke. His contribution is simply a left liberal attack against America and an outlet for radicalism run amuck..A waste of money and dumped in the garbage bin !

As usual, Ambrose Bierce said it best. In the preface to "The Devil's Dictionary," he describes the country being "flooded by its imitators with a score of 'cynic' books- The Cynic's This, The Cynic's That, and The Cynic's t'Other. Most of these books were merely stupid, though some of them added the distinction of silliness."...

(What Bufe lacks in wit or talent, however, he more than makes up for in effrontery. Consider, for example, the pretentious title ("The Devil's Dictionaries..."), in which he places his own inadequate work on an equal footing with Bierce's timeless classic. What's next? "The Hamlets, Revised and Expanded, by William Shakespeare and Chaz Bufe?" Consider also his lame self-justification above: "Progressive-minded people have generally loved it, while fundamentalists and other authoritarians have generally hated it." In other words, if you fail to be amused by Bufe's weak attempts at humor, it must be because you're a fundamentalist authoritarian- it couldn't possibly be because the book just plain stinks. Talk about blaming the victim!

Postscript: In a new statement in the editorial review section above, the publisher blames this book's uniformly bad reviews on "right-wingers, fundamentalists, and prudes" who are trying to suppress sales of this book because it "gores their sacred cows." For the record: I'm not a right-winger, a fundamentalist, or a prude by any possible standards, and the only "sacred cows" of mine that this book "gores" are (a) that great authors whose works happen to be in the public domain should be treated with respect, rather than used for posthumous "endorsements" of inferior works that can't stand on their own merits, and (b) that reading a humor book should be an enjoyable experience.

A caustic exercise in political and social black humor. 300 plus definitions such as - JUSTICE, n. A term of vicious mockery, as in "equal justice under the law."