A blackout to remember « Bay Time Reporter

A blackout to remember

31Aug07

“You can’t wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.”
—Jack London

“(Jack London writes) as if his digestion, like his politics and rhetoric, was out of order.”
—Ambrose Bierce

Take two famous, controversial and egotistical writers. Pair them up for the first and only time amidst towering ancient redwoods. Place bottles of Three Star Martel cognac in each of their eager hands. Okay, history buffs – what do you get?

Answer: The legendary 1910 Bohemian Grove bender pitting 67 year old misanthropic satirist, poet and author of macabre fiction, Ambrose “Bitter” Bierce, against a man half his age – the one-time oyster pirate, avowed socialist, white supremacist and world’s best selling novelist, Jack London.

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It started out innocently enough. “Bitter Bierce, the Wickedest Man in San Francisco,” was camping out on his brother’s property, across the Russian River from Sonoma County’s Bohemian Grove. Bierce had been invited to attend that August’s Bohemian Club High Jinx spectacular, no doubt aiming to run his literary dagger through this fanciful pageant at the first opportunity presented him.

When his old friend and former personal sycophant George Sterling (himself a poet and long time Boho) informed Bierce of Jack London’s presence at the Grove, Bierce pressed Sterling for a face-to-face pow-wow. Sterling claims he was none too anxious to arrange the meeting.

“You mustn’t meet him,” Sterling insisted, “You’d be at each other’s throats in five minutes.”

“Nonsense,” Bierce responded, hoisting his drink. “Bring him on. I’ll treat him like a Dutch uncle.”

Bierce demanded Sterling perform his mission post haste. Meanwhile Bierce, ever dapper, draped in his customary derby-topped black-suited garb, continued tippling brandy beneath the open air Bohemian Grove redwood bar. Soon he pulled focus on a gaggle of besotted Bohos stumbling towards him from some distance beyond.

A stocky fellow wearing Levis and a red vest led the parade. The man’s muddy workshirt pushed out from his jeans. He had a moon face, piercing blue eyes (like Bierce’s own), and displayed a wide smile revealing the gap where two front teeth paid the price for a marvelous barroom brawl. The man’s bottle swung to and fro as he moved, and grew ever lighter with each bottleneck-to-mouth inspection. This man, of course, was Jack London. Ambrose Bierce smiled wickedly, and motioned his bar boy to refresh his drink.

Brandy, n. A cordial composed of one part thunder-and-lightning, one part remorse, two parts bloody murder, one part death-hell-and-the-grave and four parts clarified Satan.
—Ambrose Bierce from “The Devil’s Dictionary”

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The two combatants had three things, and only three things, in common: Writing, alcoholism and occasional paychecks from William Randolph Hearst, whom each reviled. Beyond that they were a study in contrasts.
The surly yet gregarious “Wolf” London knocked about through cat houses, creep joints and dive saloons the world wide. His two missing front teeth attested this.

London consumed oceans of liquor, built an every-boy’s fantasy stone mansion specifically to house, party with and impress his many friends. While a communal idealist, a utopian farmer and radical socialist, Jack limited his love of humanity to caucasians, espousing the “humane” extermination of even a certain derelict portion of that white minority.

Radicalism, n. The conservatism of tomorrow injected into the affairs of today.
—“The Devil’s Dictionary”

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Ambrose Bierce, by contrast, survived the horrors of the Civil War to write what is arguably the conflict’s most notable piece of short fiction. He had long been the bad boy of San Francisco journalism and a thorn in the side of most everyone, but most especially railing against the high and the mighty.
Bierce called Big Four member and California Governor Leland Stanford “Stealand Landford.” He singlehandedly prevented Stanford and his fellow “Railrogues” from robbing the U.S. Treasury of more booty than they’d already plundered from it.

Though an avowed political conservative, Bierce often sided with abused minorities while still looking down his nose at them and continually pummeling big money interests, politicians, writers and humanity in general. But Ambrose Bierce didn’t acquire his misanthropic reputation for hating humanity equally. In fact, he hated some people much more than he hated others.

Conservative, n. A statesman who is enamored of existing evils, as distinguished from the Liberal, who wishes to replace them with others.

Cynic, n. A blackguard whose faulty vision sees things as they are, not as they ought to be.
—“The Devil’s Dictionary”

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The lauded and successful Jack London wrote 1,000 words each and every day no matter his condition, and he was proud of it. But London’s boast was grist for Bierce’s contempt. And no wonder – London’s work was wildly uneven, and Bierce was green with envy over upstart London’s incredible success. One can only imagine what linguistic tortures Bierce devised watching the near embalmed London lurch toward Bierce’s liquored web that day.

Success, n. The one unpardonable sin against one’s fellows.
—“The Devil’s Dictonary”

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Unfortunately, specifics concerning what further transpired between the two literary titans that day are slim to none. Even photos purportedly shot of the two were either lost or ruined.

So while today’s rich and powerful spend the next week or so terrorizing their livers at the Bohemian Grove, each member owes an unpardonable debt to two legitimate “Bohemians” who did battle there, nearly a century ago. While dialectic specifics passed on unrecorded we still hear echoes in the famed lexicographer’s timeless study of humanity:

Loquacity, n. A disorder which renders the sufferer unable to curb his tongue when you wish to talk.
—“The Devil’s Dictionary”lL