Introduction to “On Literary Criticism” by Ambrose Bierce
In an age when literary opinions flood social media, when algorithms determine which books receive attention, and when the line between critic and consumer has all but vanished, Ambrose Bierce’s scathing assessment of literary criticism feels not just relevant but prophetic. Originally published in The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce in 1911, this essay stands as both a historical document and a mirror reflecting our contemporary literary landscape with uncomfortable clarity.
Ambrose Bierce (1842-c.1914), often called “Bitter Bierce” for his caustic wit and unsparing judgments, was one of America’s most formidable literary iconoclasts. As a journalist, satirist, and author of unsettling tales like “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” Bierce cultivated a reputation for intellectual ferocity. His most famous work, The Devil’s Dictionary, redefined words with sardonic precision that stripped away societal pretensions. This same unflinching eye for hypocrisy and pretense shapes his view of literary criticism.
What makes “On Literary Criticism” so enduring is Bierce’s willingness to challenge the very foundations of literary evaluation. While many essays on criticism merely quibble with specific judgments or argue for different standards, Bierce questions whether meaningful standards can exist at all. He takes aim at critics who impose false purposes on authors, at publications that mindlessly praise mediocrity, and at the cultural machinery that elevates certain voices while silencing others.
For today’s writers navigating a publishing landscape transformed by technology yet still governed by many of the same arbitrary forces Bierce identified, this essay offers both uncomfortable truths and strange comfort. The comfort comes from recognizing that the fundamental challenges of literary recognition—separating signal from noise, quality from fashion, lasting value from temporary acclaim—have remained essentially unchanged despite radical transformations in how books reach readers.
Bierce’s disappearance in Mexico in 1914, where he likely died during the Mexican Revolution, added a final mysterious chapter to his biography. This vanishing seems oddly appropriate for a writer who understood that literary judgments themselves often disappear into history, leaving behind only the works strong enough to speak directly to readers across time. His own critical voice, preserved in this remarkable essay, continues to challenge our assumptions about literary merit and the flawed human systems we’ve created to measure it.
ON LITERARY CRITICISM
by Ambrose Bierce
I
THE saddest thing about the trade of writing is that the writer can never know, nor hope to know, if he is a good workman. In literary criticism there are no criteria, no accepted standards of excellence by which to test the work. Sainte-Beuve says that the art of criticism consists in saying the first thing that comes into one’s head. Doubtless he was thinking of his own head, a fairly good one. There is a difference between the first thing that comes into one head and the first thing that comes into another; and it is not always the best kind of head that concerns itself with literary criticism.
Having no standards, criticism is an erring guide. Its pronouncements are more interesting than valuable, and interesting chiefly from the insight that they give into the mind, not of the writer criticised, but of the writer criticising. Hence the greater interest that they have when delivered by one of whom the reader already knows something. So the newspapers are not altogether unwise when asking an eminent merchant to pass judgment on a new poet, or a distinguished soldier to “sit” in the case of a rising young novelist. We learn something about the merchant or the soldier, and that may amuse. As a guide to literary excellence even the most accomplished critic’s judgment on his contemporaries is of little value. Posterity more frequently reverses than affirms it.
The reason is not far to seek. An author’s work is usually the product of his environment. He collaborates with his era; his co-workers are time and place. All his neighbors and all the conditions in which they live have a hand in the work. His own individuality, unless uncommonly powerful and original, is “subdued to what it works in.” But this is true, too, of his critic, whose limitations are drawn by the same iron authority. Subject to the same influences, good and bad, following the same literary fashions, the critic who is contemporary with his author holds his court in the market-place and polls a fortuitous jury. In diagnosing the disorder of a person suspected of hydrophobia the physician ought not to have been bitten by the same dog.
The taste of the many being notoriously bad and that of the few dubious, what is the author to do for judgment on his work? He is to wait. In a few centuries, more or less, may arise a critic that we call Posterity. This fellow will have as many limitations, probably, as the other had—will bow the knee to as many literary Baäls and err as widely from the paths leading to the light. But his false gods will not be those of to-day, whose hideousness will disclose itself to his undevout vision, and in his deviations from the true trail he will cross and chart our tracks. Better than all, he will know and care little about the lives and characters, the personalities, of those of us whose work has lasted till his time. On that coign of vantage he will stand and deliver a juster judgment. It will enable him to judge our work with impartiality, as if it had fallen from the skies or sprung up from the ground without human agency.
One can hardly overrate the advantage to the critic of ignorance of his author. Biographies of men of action are well enough; the lives that such men live are all there is of them except themselves. But men of thought—that is different. You can not narrate thought, nor describe it, yet it is the only relevant thing in the life of an author. Anything else darkens counsel. We go to biography for side lights on an author’s work; to his work for side lights on his character. The result is confusion and disability, for personal character and literary character have little to say to each other, despite the fact that so tremendous a chap as Taine builded an entire and most unearthly biography of Shakspeare on no firmer foundation than the “internal evidence” of the plays and sonnets. Of all the influences that make for incapable criticism the biographer of authors is the most pernicious. One needs not be a friend to organized labor to wish that the fellow’s working hours might be reduced from twenty-four to eight.
Neither the judgment of the populace nor that of the critics being of value to an author concerned about his rank in the hierarchy of letters, and that of posterity being a trifle slow, he seems to be reduced to the expedient of taking his own word for it. And his opinion of himself may not be so far out of the way. Read Goethe’s conversations with Eckermann and see how accurately the great man appraised himself.
When scratched in a newspaper Heine said: “I am to be judged in the assizes of literature. I know who I am.”
About the shrine of every famous author awaits a cloud of critics to pay an orderly and decorous homage to his genius. There is no crowding: if one of them sees that he can not perform his prostration until after his saint shall have been forgotten along with the intellectual miracles he wrought, that patient worshiper turns aside to level his shins at another shrine. There are shrines enough for all, God knows!
The most mischievous, because the ablest, of all this sycophantic crew is Mr. Howells, who finds every month, and reads, two or three books—always novels—of high literary merit. As no man who has anything else to do can critically read more than two or three books in a month—and I will say for Mr. Howells that he is a conscientious reader—and as some hundreds are published in the same period, one is curious to know how many books of high literary merit he would find if he could read them all. But Mr. Howells is no ordinary sycophant—not he. True, having by mischance read a book divinely bad, even when judged according to his own test, and having resolved to condemn nothing except in a general way—as the artillerists in the early days of the Civil War used to “shell the woods”—he does not purpose to lose his labor, and therefore commends the book along with the others; but as a rule he distributes the distinctions that he has to confer according to a system—to those, namely, whose work in fiction most nearly resembles his own. That is his way of propagating the Realistic faith which his poverty of imagination has compelled him to adopt and his necessities to defend. “Ah, yes, a beautiful animal,” said the camel of the horse—“if he only had a hump!”
To show what literary criticism has accomplished in education of the public taste I beg to refer the reader to any number of almost any magazine. Here is one, for instance, containing a paper by one Bowker on contemporary English novelists—he novelists and she novelists—to the number of about forty. And only the “eminent” ones are mentioned.
To most American readers some of the books of most of these authors are more or less familiar, and nine in ten of these readers will indubitably accept Mr. Bowker’s high estimate of the genius of the authors themselves. These have one good quality—they are industrious: most of them have published ten to forty novels each, the latter number being the favorite at this date and eliciting Mr. Bowker’s lively admiration. The customary rate of production is one a year, though two are not unusual, there being nothing in the law forbidding. Mr. Bowker has the goodness to tell us all he knows about these persons’ methods of work; that is to say, all that they have told him. The amount of patient research, profound thought and systematic planning that go to the making of one of their books is (naturally) astonishing. Unfortunately it falls just short of the amount that kills.
Add to the forty eminent English novelists another forty American, equally eminent—at least in their own country—and similarly industrious. We have then an average annual output of, say, eighty novels which have the right to expect to be widely read and enthusiastically reviewed. This in two countries, in one of which the art of novel writing is dead, in the other of which it has not been born. Truly this is an age of growing literary activity; our novelists are as lively and diligent as maggots in the carcass of a horse. There is a revival of baseball, too.
If our critics were wiser than their dupes could this mass of insufferable stuff be dumped upon the land? Could the little men and foolish women who write it command the persevering admiration of their fellow-creatures, who think it a difficult thing to do? I make no account here of the mere book-reporters of the newspapers, whose purpose and ambition are, not to guide the public taste but to follow it, and who are therefore in no sense critics. The persons whom I am considering are those ingenious gentlemen who in the magazines and reviews are expected to, and do, write of books with entire independence of their own market. Are there anywhere more than one, two or three like Percival Pollard, with “Gifford’s heavy hand” to “crush without remorse” the intolerable rout of commonplace men and women swarming innumerous upon the vacant seats of the dead giants and covering the slopes of Parnassus like a flock of crows?
Your critic of widest vogue and chief authority among us is he who is best skilled in reading between the lines; in interpreting an author’s purpose; in endowing him with a “problem” and noting his degree of skill in its solution. The author—stupid fellow!—did not write between the lines, had no purpose but to entertain, was unaware of a problem. So much the worse for him; so much the better for his expounder. Interlinear cipher, purpose, problem, are all the critic’s own, and he derives a lively satisfaction in his creation—looks upon it and pronounces it good. Nothing is more certain than that if a writer of genius should “bring to his task” of writing a book the purposes which the critics would surely trace in the completed work the book would remain forever unwritten, to the unspeakble advantage of letters and morals.
In illustration of these remarks and suggesting them, take these book reviews in a single number of The Atlantic. There we learn, concerning Mr. Cable, that his controlling purpose in The Grandissimes was that of “presenting the problem of the reorganization of Southern society”—that “the book was in effect a parable”; that in Dr. Sevier he “essayed to work out through personal relations certain problems [always a problem or two] which vexed him regarding poverty and labor”; that in Bonaventure he “sets himself another task,” which is “to work out [always something to ‘work out’] the regeneration of man through knowledge”—a truly formidable “task.” Of the author of Queen Money, we are told by the same expounder that she has “set herself no task beyond her power,” but “had it in mind to trace the influence of the greed for wealth upon a section of contemporaneous society.” Of Mr. Bellamy, author of Looking Backward (the heroine of which is not Mrs. Lot) we are confidently assured in ailing metaphor that “he feels intensely the bitter inequalities of the present order” of things and “thinks he sees a remedy,”—our old friends again: the “problem” and the “solution”—both afterthoughts of Mr. Bellamy. The “task” which in Marzio’s Crucifix Marion Crawford “sets himself” is admirably simple—by a “characteristic outwardness” to protect us against “a too intimate and subtle corrosive of life.” As a savior of the world against this awful peril Crawford may justly have claimed a vote of thanks; but possibly he was content with that humbler advantage, the profit from the sale of his book. But (it may be protested) the critic who is to live by his trade must say something. True, but is it necessary that he live by his trade?
Carlyle’s prophecy of a time when all literature should be one vast review is in process of fulfilment. Aubrey de Vere has written a critical analysis of poetry, chiefly that of Spenser and Wordsworth. An Atlantic man writes a critical analysis of Aubrey de Vere’s critical analysis. Shall I not write a critical analysis of the Atlantic man’s critical analysis of Aubrey de Vere’s critical analysis of poetry? I can do so adequately in three words: It is nonsense.
Spenser, also, it appears, “set himself a task,” had his “problem,” “worked it out.” “The figures of his embroidered poem,” we are told, “are conceived and used in accordance with a comprehensive doctrine of the nature of humanity, which Spenser undoubtedly meant to enforce through the medium of his imagination.” That is to say, the author of The Faerie Queene did not “sing because he could not choose but sing,” but because he was burdened with a doctrine. He had a nut to crack and, faith! he must crack it or he would be sick. “Resolved into its moral elements” (whether by Aubrey de Vere or the Atlantic man I can only guess without reading de Vere’s work in two volumes, which God forbid!) the glowing work of Spenser is a sermon which “teaches specifically how to attain self-control and how to meet attacks from without; or rather how to seek those many forms of error which do mischief in the world, and to overcome them for the world’s welfare.” Precisely: the animal is a pig and a bird; or rather it is a fish. So much for Spenser, whom his lovers may re-read if they like in the new light of this person’s critical analysis. It is rather hard that, being dead, he can not have the advantage of going over his work with so intelligent a guide as Aubrey de Vere. He would be astonished by his own profundity.
How literary reviewing may be acceptably done in Boston may be judged by the following passage from the Boston Literary Review:
“When Miss Emma Frances Dawson wrote An Itinerant House she was plainly possessed of a desire to emulate Poe and turn out a collection of stories which, once read, the mention of them would make the blood curdle. There is no need to say that Poe’s position is still secure, but Miss Dawson has succeeded in writing some very creditable stories of their kind.”
The reviewer that can discern in Miss Dawson’s work “a desire to emulate Poe,” or can find in it even a faint suggestion of Poe, may justly boast himself accessible to any folly that comes his way. There is no more similarity between the work of the two writers than there is between that of Dickens and that of Macaulay, or that of Addison and that of Carlyle. Poe in his prose tales deals sometimes with the supernatural; Miss Dawson always. But hundreds of writers do the same; if that constitutes similarity and suggests intentional “emulation” what shall be said of those tales which resemble one another in that element’s omission? The truth probably is that the solemn gentleman who wrote that judgment had not read Poe since childhood, and did not read Miss Dawson at all. Moreover, no excellence in her work would have saved it from his disparaging comparison if he had read it. “Poe’s position” would still have been a “secure,” for to such minds as his it is unthinkable that an established fame (no matter how, when or where established) should not signify an unapproachable merit. If he had lived in Poe’s time how he would have sneered at that writer’s attempt to emulate Walpole! And had he been a contemporary of Walpole that ambitious person would have incurred a stinging rap on the head for aspiring to displace the immortal Gormley Hobb.
The fellow goes on:
“To one steeped in the gruesome weirdness of a master of the gentle art of blood-curdling the stories are not too impressive, but he who picks up the book fresh from a fairy tale is apt to become somewhat nervous in the reading. The tales allow Miss Dawson to weave in some very pretty verse.”
The implication that Miss Dawson’s tales are intended to be “gruesome,” “blood-curdling,” and so forth, is a foolish implication. Their supernaturalism is not of that kind. The blood that they could curdle is diseased blood which it would be at once a kindly office and a high delight to shed. And fancy this inexpressible creature calling Miss Dawson’s verse “pretty”!—the ballade of “The Sea of Sleep” “pretty”! My compliments to him:
Dull spirit, few among us be your days,
The bright to damn, the fatuous to praise;
And God deny, your flesh when you unload,
Your prayer to live as tenant of a toad,
With powers direr than your present sort:
Able the wights you jump on to bewart.
The latest author of “uncanny” tales to suffer from the ready reckoner’s short cut to the solution of the problem of literary merit, the ever-serviceable comparison with Edgar Allan Poe, is Mr. W. C. Morrow. Doubtless he had hoped that this cup might pass by him—had implored the rosy goddess Psora, who enjoys the critic’s person and inspires his pen, to go off duty, but it was not to be; that diligent deity is never weary of ill doing and her devotees, pursuing the evil tenor of their way, have sounded the Scotch fiddle to the customary effect. Mr. Morrow’s admirable book, The Ape, the Idiot and Other People, is gravely ascribed to the paternity of Poe, as was Miss Dawson’s before it, and some of mine before that. And until Gabriel, with one foot upon the sea and the other upon the neck of the last living critic, shall swear that the time for doing this thing is up, every writer of stories a little out of the common must suffer the same sickening indignity. To the ordinary microcephalous bibliopomps—the book-butchers of the newspapers—criticism is merely a process of marking upon the supposed stature of an old writer the supposed stature of a new, without ever having taken the trouble to measure that of the old; they accept hearsay evidence for that. Does one write “gruesome stories”?—they invoke Poe; essays?—they out with their Addison; satirical verse?—they have at him with Pope—and so on, through the entire category of literary forms. Each has its dominant great name, learned usually in the district school, easily carried in memory and obedient to the call of need. And because these strabismic ataxiates, who fondly fancy themselves shepherding auctorial flocks upon the slopes of Parnassus, are unable to write of one writer without thinking of another, they naturally assume that the writer of whom they write is affected with the same disability and has always in mind as a model the standard name dominating his chosen field—the impeccant hegemon of the province.
II
Mr. Hamlin Garland, writing with the corn-fed enthusiasm of the prairies, “hails the dawn of a new era” in literature—an era which is to be distinguished by dominance of the Western man. That a great new literature is to “come out of the West” because of broad prairies and wide rivers and big mountains and infrequent boundary lines—that is a conviction dear indeed to the Western mind which has discovered that marks can be made on paper with a pen. A few years ago the Eastern mind was waiting wide-eyed to “hail the dawn” of a literature that was to be “distinctively American,” for the Eastern mind in those days claimed a share in the broad prairies, the wide rivers and the big mountains, with all the competencies, suggestions, inspirations and other appurtenances thereunto belonging—a heritage which now Mr. Garland austerely denies to any one born and “raised” on the morning side of the Alleghanies. The “distinctively American literature” has not materialized, excepting in the works of Americans distinctively illiterate; and there are no visible signs of a distinctively Western one. Even the Californian sort, so long heralded by prophets blushing with conscious modesty in the foretelling, seems loth to leave off its damnable faces and begin. The best Californian, the best Western, the best American books have the least of geographical “distinctiveness,” and most closely conform to the universal and immutable laws of the art, as known to Aristotle and Longinus.
The effect of physical-geographical environment on literary production is mostly nil; racial and educational considerations only are of controlling importance. Despite Madame de Staël’s engaging dictum that “every Englishman is an island,” the natives of that scanty plot have produced a literature which in breadth of thought and largeness of method we sons of a continent, brothers to the broad prairies, wide rivers and big mountains, have not matched and give no promise of matching. It is all very fine to be a child o’ natur’ with a home in the settin’ sun, but when the child o’ natur’ with a knack at scribbling pays rent to Phœbus by renouncing the incomparable advantage of strict subjection to literary law he pays too dearly.
Nothing new is to be learned in any of the great arts—the ancients looted the whole field. Nor do first-rate minds seek anything new. They are assured of primacy under the conditions of their art as they find it—under any conditions. It is the lower order of intelligence that is ingenious, inventive, alert for original methods and new forms. Napoleon added nothing to the art of war, in either strategy or tactics. Shakspeare tried no new meters, did nothing that had not been done before—merely did better what had been done. In the Parthenon was no new architectural device, and in the Sistine Madonna all the effects were got by methods as familiar as speech. The only way in which it is worth while to differ from others is in point of superior excellence. Be “original,” ambitious Westerner—always as original as you please. But know, or if you already know remember, that originality strikes and dazzles only when displayed within the limiting lines of form. Above all, remember that the most ineffective thing in literature is that quality, whatever in any case it may be, which is best designated in terms of geographical classification. The work of whose form and methods one naturally thinks as—not “English”; that is a racial word, but—“American” or “Australian” or (in this country) “Eastern,” “Mid-Western,” “Southern” or “Californian” is worthless. The writer who knows no better than to make or try to make his work “racy of the soil” knows nothing of his art worth knowing.
III
Charles A. Dana held that California could not rightly claim the glory of such literature as she had, for none of her writers of distinction—such distinction as they had—was born there. We were austerely reminded that “even the sheen of gold is less attractive than the lustre of intellectual genius.” “California!” cried this severe but not uncompassionate critic—“California! how musical is the word. And again we cry out, California! Give us the letters of high thought: give us philosophy and romance and poetry and art. Give us the soul!”
How many men and women who scorn delights and live laborious days to glorify our metropolis with “the letters of high thought” are on Fame’s muster-roll as natives of Manhattan island? Doubtless the state of New York, as also the city of that name, can make an honorable showing in the matter of native authors, but it has certain considerable advantages that California lacks. In the first place, there are many more births in New York, supplying a strong numerical presumption that more geniuses will turn up there. Second, it has (I hope) enjoyed that advantage for many, many years; whereas California was “settled” (and by the non-genius-bearing sex) a good deal later. In this competition the native Californian author is handicapped by the onerous condition that in order to have his nose counted he must have been born in the pre-Woman period or acquired enough of reputation for the rumor of his merit to have reached New York’s ears, and for the noise of it to have roused her from the contemplation of herself, before he has arrived at middle age. This is not an “impossible” condition; it is only an exceedingly hard one. How hard it is a little reflection on facts will show. The rule is, the world over, that the literary army of the “metropolis” is recruited in the “provinces,” or, more accurately, from the provinces. The difference denoted by the prepositions is important: for every provincial writer who, like Bret Harte, achieves at home enough distinction to be sought out and lured to a “literary metropolis,” ten unknown ones go there of their own motion, like Rudyard Kipling, and become distinguished afterward. They wrote equally well where they were, but they might have continued to write there until dead of age, and but for some lucky accident or fortuitous concurrence of favoring circumstances they would never have been heard of in the “literary metropolis.”
We may call it so, but New York is not a literary metropolis, nor is London, nor is Paris. In letters there is no metropolis. The literary capital is not a mother-city, founding colonies; it is the creature of its geographical environment, giving out nothing, taking in everything. If not constantly fed with fresh brains from beyond and about, its chance of primacy and domination would be merely proportional to its population. This centripetal tendency—this converging movement of provincial writers upon the literary capital, is itself the strongest possible testimony to the disadvantages which they suffer at home; for in nearly every instance it is made—commonly at a great sacrifice—in pursuit of recognition. The motive may not be a very creditable one; I think myself it is ridiculous, as is all ambition, not to excel, but to be known to excel; but such is the motive. If the provincial writer could as easily obtain recognition at home he would stay there.
For my part, I freely admit that “the Golden State can not ‘boast’ of any native literary celebrities of the first rank,” for I do not consider the incident of a literary celebrity of the first rank having been born in one place instead of another a thing to boast of. If there is an idler and more barren work than the rating of writers according to merit it is their classification according to birthplace. A racial classification is interesting because it corresponds to something in nature, but among authors of the same race—and that race the restless Americans, who are about as likely to be born in a railway car as anywhere, and whose first instinct is to get away from home—this classification is without meaning. If it is ever otherwise than capitally impudent in the people of a political or geographical division to be proud of a great writer (as George the Third was of an abundant harvest) it is least impudent in those of the one in which he did his worthiest work, most so in those of the one in which he was born.
Why Writers Today Should Read Bierce’s “On Literary Criticism”
More than a century after its publication, Ambrose Bierce’s acerbic take on literary criticism offers contemporary writers something increasingly rare: liberation from the tyranny of critical opinion. In our hyperconnected era of instant feedback, algorithmic rankings, and professional reviewers competing with armies of online commentators, Bierce’s essay provides a bracing antidote to the anxiety that accompanies the public evaluation of creative work.
A Shield Against Critical Obsession
For writers navigating today’s publishing landscape, Bierce offers a powerful defense mechanism against the paralysis that comes from overvaluing critical reception. His central insight—that “the writer can never know, nor hope to know, if he is a good workman”—may initially seem disheartening, but ultimately provides freedom. By recognizing the fundamental subjectivity and temporal limitations of all criticism, writers can focus on craft rather than reception, on creation rather than validation.
When Bierce declares that “in literary criticism there are no criteria, no accepted standards of excellence by which to test the work,” he isn’t promoting nihilism but perspective. The endless cycle of critical reappraisal—yesterday’s genius becoming today’s outdated relic, only to be rediscovered as tomorrow’s visionary—suggests that external validation is an unreliable compass for artistic decisions.
Unmasking Industry Mechanisms
Perhaps most valuable is Bierce’s unflinching examination of how literary reputation is manufactured. His analysis of contemporary book reviewing—with its tendency toward excessive praise, its reliance on comparison rather than evaluation, and its susceptibility to fashion—remains startlingly accurate in describing today’s publishing ecosystem.
The essay provides writers with an insider’s view of the machinery that determines which books receive attention, helping them understand that critical reception often has little to do with literary merit. This knowledge is especially crucial for writers from marginalized backgrounds or those working outside established trends, who might otherwise internalize rejection as judgment of their talent rather than recognition of systemic biases.
Permission to Ignore Prescribed “Problems”
Bierce’s mockery of critics who insist that authors must be “presenting problems” or “working out solutions” grants modern writers permission to resist the demand that their work serve prescribed social or political functions. In an era when books are increasingly evaluated for their messaging rather than their artistry, Bierce reminds us that great literature need not be didactic to be meaningful.
His skepticism about critics who read between lines that don’t exist offers a necessary counterbalance to contemporary criticism that often prioritizes ideological analysis over aesthetic appreciation. Writers struggling with expectations that their work should primarily serve as cultural commentary will find in Bierce an ally who understood that entertainment and artistic expression are valid ends in themselves.
Regional and Identity Questions
Writers grappling with questions of authenticity, representation, and “writing what you know” will find particular relevance in Bierce’s dismissal of geographical determinism in literature. His argument that “the effect of physical-geographical environment on literary production is mostly nil” challenges contemporary assumptions about who has the right to tell which stories.
While his perspective may seem at odds with certain current literary movements, his insistence that great literature transcends provincial concerns offers an important counterpoint to discussions about the relationship between identity and creativity. His belief that “racial and educational considerations” matter more than geography acknowledges the importance of lived experience while questioning simplistic notions of artistic ownership.
The Long View
Perhaps most importantly, Bierce offers writers something increasingly scarce: the long view. In our age of overnight viral sensations and rapid publishing cycles, his reminder that posterity is the only meaningful judge of literary worth encourages writers to create work that might outlast fleeting trends.
When he notes that “the judgment of posterity is a trifle slow,” he’s acknowledging the hard truth that meaningful literary achievement may not be recognized within a writer’s lifetime. This perspective doesn’t diminish the importance of contemporary success but places it within a larger historical context that liberates writers from the desperation for immediate recognition.
Conclusion
Reading Bierce’s essay won’t provide writers with a roadmap to publication or commercial success. What it offers instead is something more valuable: intellectual armor against the arbitrary and often irrational forces that determine literary reputation. By understanding the limitations of criticism, writers can reclaim their artistic autonomy and focus on the work itself rather than its reception.
In an age obsessed with metrics, rankings, and immediate validation, Bierce’s century-old skepticism about the entire enterprise of literary evaluation feels not just relevant but revolutionary. For writers drowning in feedback yet starving for perspective, “On Literary Criticism” remains essential reading—not despite its age, but because of it.
Social Media: Bierce’s Nightmare Realized
If Ambrose Bierce could witness today’s social media landscape, he might experience the dual satisfaction of vindication and horror. The man who declared that “in literary criticism there are no criteria, no accepted standards of excellence” would find in our digital public square the ultimate expression of his cynical vision—a vast ecosystem where everyone is a critic, yet critical authority has never been more fragmented or arbitrary.
The Democratization of Critical Authority
Bierce understood that traditional criticism operated through an illusion of authority. When he mockingly suggested that newspapers were “not altogether unwise when asking an eminent merchant to pass judgment on a new poet,” he was highlighting the arbitrary nature of critical credentialing. Social media has stripped away even the pretense of such credentials.
On platforms like Goodreads, Twitter, and TikTok, the distinction between professional critic and casual reader has essentially vanished. The English professor’s carefully considered analysis holds no inherent advantage over the viral BookTok video where a teenager emotionally reacts to a novel’s plot twist. Both exist in the same attention marketplace, but the latter often reaches audiences hundreds of times larger.
This democratization would likely amuse Bierce, who had little respect for professional critics’ pretensions. Yet the chaos that has replaced the old order would confirm his worst suspicions about the public’s critical faculties. When he wrote of “the taste of the many being notoriously bad and that of the few dubious,” he couldn’t have anticipated a world where algorithms amplify precisely the most extreme, reductive, and emotionally charged critical responses.
The Hashtag as Critical Framework
Particularly troubling to Bierce would be how social media platforms have accelerated the tendency he despised in critics—creating simplistic frameworks that reduce complex works to marketable formulas. Today’s hashtag-driven discourse has created an entire taxonomy of literature that would make Bierce’s “problem and solution” critics seem sophisticated by comparison.
BookTok’s obsession with categorizing novels as “spicy” or “clean,” Twitter’s reduction of complex narratives to their representation scorecards, and Goodreads’ star-rating system that encourages binary thinking all exemplify the critical flattening that Bierce warned against. The drive to make literature algorithm-friendly has created new forms of the very reductionism he despised.
When Bierce mocked critics for insisting that Mr. Cable’s purpose in The Grandissimes was “presenting the problem of the reorganization of Southern society,” he was targeting the tendency to impose extraneous frameworks on creative work. Today’s social media criticism has industrialized this tendency, with readers routinely judging books by criteria entirely divorced from literary merit—the author’s social media presence, their political affiliations, or how well the work aligns with current ideological trends.
The Acceleration of Critical Cycles
“The judgment of posterity is a trifle slow,” Bierce wrote, suggesting that only time could provide sufficient distance for fair evaluation. Social media has created the opposite condition: a hyperspeed critical cycle where books are declared masterpieces or failures within days of publication.
This acceleration has profound implications for writers. Works are now judged within an intensely contemporary framework that may become incomprehensible a decade later. The distance that Bierce valued—the perspective that comes when a work is judged outside its immediate cultural moment—has been sacrificed for instantaneous reaction.
Literature that might have found its audience slowly, building appreciation over years as Bierce’s own work did, now faces extinction if it fails to generate immediate engagement. The “copresence of numberless phenomena” that Bierce recognized as the essence of luck has been amplified in a system where algorithmic visibility can determine a book’s fate regardless of quality.
The Performative Turn in Criticism
Perhaps most troubling is how social media has transformed criticism from evaluation to performance. When Bierce wrote that criticism provides “insight that they give into the mind, not of the writer criticised, but of the writer criticising,” he identified something that has become the dominant mode of online literary discourse.
On BookTok and BookTwitter, the critic’s emotional response—their tears, laughter, outrage, or enthusiasm—becomes the primary content, with the book itself reduced to a prompt. This performance often reveals more about the critic’s desire for audience engagement than about the text under discussion.
The result is a critical environment where books are increasingly judged not on their intrinsic qualities but on their utility as vehicles for creating engaging content. Works that provoke extreme reactions—whether adoration or outrage—receive disproportionate attention, while nuanced literature that resists easy categorization or emotional performance struggles for visibility.
The Writer’s Dilemma Intensified
For writers, these developments have intensified precisely the dilemma that Bierce identified. If traditional criticism was an “erring guide,” social media criticism is a cacophony of contradictory directions. Writers face unprecedented pressure to consider not just how their work might be received by thoughtful readers, but how it might perform within attention economies optimized for conflict and emotional intensity.
Bierce’s advice to “wait” for judgment now seems almost quaint in an environment where a book’s commercial fate may be determined by its first weekend’s social media traction. Yet his fundamental insight—that the writer “can never know, nor hope to know, if he is a good workman”—provides an essential counterweight to the tyranny of immediate digital feedback.
Finding Wisdom in Bierce’s Skepticism
Despite these challenges, Bierce’s skepticism offers a pathway through the social media morass. By recognizing the fundamental limitations of all criticism—now magnified and accelerated across digital platforms—writers can maintain perspective when navigating the bewildering landscape of viral takes, algorithmic amplification, and performative reading.
The writer who internalizes Bierce’s warnings will approach social media neither with naive hope for validation nor with cynical contempt, but with a clear-eyed understanding of its nature. They will recognize that the 280-character critique, the star rating, and the emotional BookTok review are not meaningful measures of literary value but ephemeral responses to a work that may endure long after the platforms themselves have disappeared.
In a media environment engineered to reward immediate reaction over sustained reflection, Bierce’s century-old skepticism provides something increasingly precious: the freedom to create work according to artistic rather than algorithmic imperatives, and the courage to accept that true literary judgment still operates on a timescale measured in decades rather than days.
The Algorithmic Critic: How Technology Shapes Literary Value
Bierce lamented that “in literary criticism there are no criteria, no accepted standards of excellence by which to test the work.” Were he writing today, he might observe with mordant satisfaction that we have indeed found such criteria—not through critical enlightenment, but through algorithmic reduction. The invisible hand of the market that once guided critical reception has been replaced by the even less visible hand of the algorithm, a development that would confirm Bierce’s worst suspicions about the arbitrary nature of literary evaluation.
The Black Box of Literary Merit
When Amazon pioneered its recommendation system in the late 1990s with the seemingly innocent “Customers who bought this item also bought,” few recognized it as the first step toward algorithmic literary criticism. Today, complex recommendation engines make critical judgments that determine which books readers discover—judgments masked as neutral technology but embodying specific values and biases.
These systems don’t merely reflect reader preferences; they create them. When Amazon’s algorithm prioritizes books with high velocity of sales, or Goodreads’ rating system privileges books with particular patterns of user engagement, they establish de facto critical standards more powerful than any reviewer’s opinion. A book that receives a steady stream of four-star ratings is ranked higher than one with a polarizing mix of five-star and one-star reviews—a judgment about which type of book has more “merit” that no human critic explicitly made.
Bierce understood that even in his era, “the customary rate of production is one [novel] a year, though two are not unusual, there being nothing in the law forbidding.” Today’s algorithms have intensified this pressure, actively rewarding prolific authors who maintain visibility through regular releases. The “forty eminent English novelists” producing books at a staggering pace that Bierce mocked would find themselves perfectly adapted to algorithmic success today.
Optimization as Literary Criticism
Perhaps most troubling is how these systems transform criticism from evaluation to optimization. When authors and publishers receive real-time data on which books, covers, titles, and even sentences generate higher engagement, literary decisions become exercises in algorithm appeasement.
Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform offers authors granular data on precisely where readers abandon their books. This ostensibly helpful feedback creates a new form of criticism more powerful than any reviewer’s pen—an anonymous, aggregate judgment that doesn’t need to articulate its reasoning. Writers facing this data must decide whether to optimize for algorithmic retention or maintain artistic choices that might cause readers to abandon ship.
This dynamic would confirm Bierce’s intuition that market forces corrupt literary judgment. When he sarcastically noted that in his era, “the intolerable rout of commonplace men and women” were “swarming innumerous upon the vacant seats of the dead giants,” he couldn’t have anticipated how algorithmic amplification would accelerate this process, actively rewarding work that generates predictable engagement patterns over challenging literature.
The Metrics of Success
“Add to the forty eminent English novelists another forty American, equally eminent…and similarly industrious,” Bierce wrote with evident disdain. “We have then an average annual output of, say, eighty novels which have the right to expect to be widely read and enthusiastically reviewed.”
Today’s algorithms have exponentially multiplied these numbers. Amazon alone now hosts millions of titles, all theoretically competing for attention on a supposedly level playing field. But this apparent meritocracy masks how algorithms create new hierarchies based on metrics that would bemuse Bierce:
- Page reads in Kindle Unlimited
- Completion rates
- Highlight frequency
- Review velocity (not just quantity)
- Social media mentions
- Reader engagement with samples
None of these metrics measure what Bierce might consider literary merit, yet they collectively exert more influence on a book’s success than any traditional critical assessment. The “good workman” he believed could “never know, nor hope to know” their own quality must now optimize for these proxies of quality instead.
The Perpetual Bestseller List
Bierce understood that posterity’s judgment—however imperfect—at least offered a correction to contemporary critical fashion. “In a few centuries, more or less, may arise a critic that we call Posterity,” he wrote. “This fellow will have as many limitations, probably, as the other had…But his false gods will not be those of to-day.”
Algorithmic criticism fundamentally disrupts this corrective cycle. By continuously recalculating “relevance” based on recent engagement, these systems collapse historical perspective into an eternal present. A novel published last month competes directly with Tolstoy in Amazon’s recommendation system, with the algorithm privileging recency and engagement over historical significance.
This perpetual present would horrify Bierce, who valued the distance that time provides. When a recommendation system can only measure engagement, not meaning—velocity, not value—it creates a critical environment hostile to precisely the kind of challenging, uncompromising literature that Bierce himself produced.
The Human Behind the Machine
The final irony that would confirm Bierce’s cynicism is that today’s algorithmic critics aren’t truly neutral—they’re human judgments laundered through technology. Every recommendation engine embodies the values, assumptions, and biases of its creators, from the metrics they choose to measure to the weights assigned to different variables.
When Spotify’s algorithm determines that a podcast is “performing well” because listeners complete episodes, or TikTok’s algorithm amplifies content that keeps users on the platform, these are not neutral assessments but value judgments about what constitutes “good” content. Applied to literature, these mechanisms create a system of criticism that pretends to objectivity while embodying specific, often commercial, criteria.
Bierce’s observation that “in literary criticism there are no criteria” turns out to be both right and wrong. We have established criteria—engagement, velocity, completion—but they measure not literary merit but algorithm-friendly behaviors. The algorithmic critic has solved the problem of subjective judgment not by transcending it, but by disguising it as data.
For writers navigating this landscape, Bierce’s skepticism offers a crucial perspective. Understanding that algorithmic success is no more a reliable measure of literary merit than the reviews he dismissed allows authors to maintain artistic integrity in a system designed to reward conformity. In recognizing the new algorithmic critic as merely the latest manifestation of the arbitrary forces Bierce identified, writers can find the freedom to create work that answers to more enduring standards than a recommendation engine’s ephemeral metrics.
The Rise of Influencer Criticism: New Authorities in the Literary Marketplace
When Bierce mockingly suggested that newspapers were “not altogether unwise when asking an eminent merchant to pass judgment on a new poet, or a distinguished soldier to ‘sit’ in the case of a rising young novelist,” he was satirizing the arbitrary nature of critical authority in his day. Little could he have anticipated how his sardonic observation would become literal reality in our era of BookTok stars, Instagram reviewers, and YouTube critics—individuals whose qualification to judge literature is often nothing more than their ability to attract and maintain an audience.
From Professional Critics to Content Creators
The traditional literary critic that Bierce scorned—with formal education, professional credentials, and institutional backing—has been largely supplanted by a new breed of literary authority: the book influencer. These digital tastemakers operate outside traditional critical institutions, building audiences through personality, relatability, and entertainment value rather than literary expertise.
The 22-year-old BookToker with two million followers wields more market influence than the veteran reviewer at a major newspaper. The Instagram account showcasing “aesthetic” book photos drives more sales than academic journals. The YouTube channel delivering emotional reactions to popular fantasy series shapes reader expectations more powerfully than formal analysis.
This transformation represents the ultimate realization of Bierce’s cynicism about critical authority. When he wrote that criticism is “more interesting than valuable, and interesting chiefly from the insight that they give into the mind, not of the writer criticised, but of the writer criticising,” he identified precisely what has become the selling point of influencer criticism—it’s primarily about the personality delivering the judgment, not the work being judged.
The Aestheticization of Reading
“Reading has become a performance,” Bierce might observe today, noting how influencer criticism has transformed a private intellectual activity into a public spectacle. The most successful book influencers don’t merely review books—they create visually appealing “reading experiences” complete with carefully arranged props, atmospheric lighting, and performative emotional reactions.
On BookTok, the tearful reaction video to a novel’s emotional climax constitutes a more influential form of criticism than any careful analysis. On Instagram, a book photographed alongside a latte, autumn leaves, and a cozy blanket communicates more about its perceived value than a thousand-word review.
This aestheticization of reading would confirm Bierce’s suspicion that literary judgment often has little to do with literary merit. The books that succeed in this environment aren’t necessarily those with the most profound insights or skilled prose, but those that photograph well, produce dramatic reaction moments, or generate quotable passages that can be overlaid on atmospheric images.
The New Taxonomy of Literature
Perhaps the most significant impact of influencer criticism has been the creation of entirely new taxonomies for categorizing literature—classifications that would baffle traditional critics but dominate contemporary discourse:
- “Beach reads” versus “spicy books”
- “Books that will make you sob” versus “comfort reads”
- “Dark academia” versus “romantasy”
- “Books with trauma” versus “books with good representation”
These categories, emerging organically from influencer discourse rather than formal literary theory, have become the primary framework through which many readers discover and evaluate books. When Bierce lamented critics who imposed arbitrary frameworks on literature, he couldn’t have imagined how thoroughly such frameworks would come to dominate literary discussion.
What’s notable is how these categories often emphasize emotional response or aesthetic alignment over literary technique or thematic depth. A book’s membership in the “will make you sob” category may drive more sales than any assessment of its prose quality or narrative innovation—precisely the triumph of emotional reaction over critical analysis that would validate Bierce’s skepticism.
The Commodification of Opinion
“Criticism becomes commerce,” Bierce might observe of today’s influencer economy, where book recommendations are increasingly tied to affiliate marketing, sponsored content, and brand partnerships. When a BookToker includes Amazon affiliate links beneath their emotional reaction video, or an Instagram reviewer showcases books provided by publishers, the line between critical assessment and marketing blurs beyond recognition.
This commercial entanglement would vindicate Bierce’s cynicism about critical independence. The book influencer who receives free advance copies, publisher sponsorships, or commission from sales faces incentives that complicate honest evaluation—especially when negative reviews risk future opportunities.
Even without direct financial incentives, the algorithmic pressures of social platforms push influencers toward content that generates engagement rather than insight. Critical opinions that attract likes, shares, and comments—often the most extreme, reductive, or emotionally charged takes—are amplified regardless of their merit.
The Democratization Paradox
When Bierce wrote that “the taste of the many being notoriously bad and that of the few dubious,” he was expressing a skepticism about mass literary judgment that seems elitist to modern ears. Yet influencer criticism presents a fascinating paradox: while appearing to democratize literary discussion by removing institutional gatekeepers, it often creates new, equally arbitrary authorities.
The most successful book influencers achieve their status through algorithmic favor as much as audience judgment. The TikTok algorithm that propels certain BookTokers to virality operates according to engagement metrics that have nothing to do with critical acumen. The Instagram feed that prioritizes visually appealing book content over substantive analysis creates a new hierarchy based on aesthetic presentation rather than intellectual authority.
This democratization paradox would likely amuse Bierce, who understood that replacing one arbitrary system of evaluation with another doesn’t solve the fundamental problem of critical authority—it merely shifts the arbitrariness to a different foundation.
Finding Value in the New Criticism
Despite Bierce’s justified skepticism, influencer criticism isn’t without value. When he observed that criticism provides “insight… into the mind… of the writer criticising,” he identified what has become the genuine contribution of today’s book influencers: they offer authentic personal responses that can forge meaningful connections between readers and books.
The BookToker excitedly recommending a novel that changed their perspective, the Instagram reviewer thoughtfully discussing a book’s impact on their life, the YouTube critic passionately analyzing a character’s development—these personal, subjective responses create entry points to literature that traditional criticism often failed to provide.
For writers navigating this landscape, Bierce’s core insight remains invaluable: no single critical voice, whether a traditional reviewer or viral influencer, can definitively judge literary worth. The wise author neither dismisses nor deifies influencer criticism, but recognizes it as one more manifestation of the perpetual human attempt to evaluate art through imperfect frameworks.
In a world where a TikTok video can make a backlist title a sudden bestseller, or where an Instagram aesthetic can determine a book’s target audience, Bierce’s skepticism about critical authority provides an essential counterbalance—a reminder that true literary value transcends both the judgments of traditional critics and the viral enthusiasm of digital tastemakers.
About the Author
Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce (1842-c.1914) was an American short story writer, journalist, poet, and Civil War veteran whose sardonic worldview earned him the nickname “Bitter Bierce.” Born in Ohio to a large, impoverished family, Bierce served with distinction in the Union Army during the Civil War, an experience that profoundly shaped his writing and outlook.
After the war, Bierce began his literary career in San Francisco, where he became a prominent journalist known for his acerbic wit and unflinching social criticism. As a columnist for William Randolph Hearst’s San Francisco Examiner, he gained notoriety for his scathing attacks on corruption, hypocrisy, and incompetence in both politics and the arts. His “The Prattler” and “Prattle” columns made him one of the most feared literary figures on the West Coast.
Bierce’s fiction often drew on his wartime experiences, most notably in his collection Tales of Soldiers and Civilians (1891), which included his masterpiece “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge.” His work frequently explored psychological horror, supernatural themes, and the darker aspects of human nature. However, he achieved his greatest literary fame with The Devil’s Dictionary (originally published as The Cynic’s Word Book), a satirical lexicon that redefined familiar terms with brutal honesty about human failings.
Despite his significant literary output and influence, Bierce never achieved the commercial success or widespread recognition of contemporaries like Mark Twain. His personal life was marked by tragedy, including the deaths of his two sons and the dissolution of his marriage.
In 1913, at the age of 71, Bierce embarked on a journey to Mexico to observe Pancho Villa’s forces during the Mexican Revolution, telling friends, “To be a Gringo in Mexico—ah, that is euthanasia!” He disappeared without a trace, his fate becoming one of American literature’s most enduring mysteries. This enigmatic end seemed fitting for a writer whose work often explored the thin boundaries between life and death, reality and illusion.
Though underappreciated in his lifetime, Bierce’s influence has grown steadily over the decades. His unflinching skepticism, precise prose, and exploration of psychological themes anticipated literary modernism, while his sardonic humor and moral clarity continue to resonate with contemporary readers facing their own disillusioned age.
Further Reading
Primary Works by Ambrose Bierce
- The Devil’s Dictionary (1911) – Bierce’s satirical lexicon redefining familiar terms with biting cynicism. His definitions of literary terms especially complement his views on criticism.
- The Collected Works of Ambrose Bierce (1909-1912) – The twelve-volume collection published by The Neale Publishing Company that includes “On Literary Criticism” along with Bierce’s complete fiction, journalism, and poetry.
- “Write It Right: A Little Blacklist of Literary Faults” (1909) – Bierce’s guide to good writing shows his exacting standards and impatience with linguistic sloppiness, offering insight into what he considered quality prose.
- “In the Midst of Life: Tales of Soldiers and Civilians” (1892) – His most famous short fiction collection, including “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” demonstrates the craftsmanship that informed his critical perspective.
- “Fantastic Fables” (1899) – These short, acerbic parables reveal Bierce’s gift for concentrated satire and moral scrutiny, often targeting literary pretension.
Biographies and Critical Studies
- “Ambrose Bierce: The Devil’s Dictionary, Tales of Soldiers and Civilians, and Other Writings” edited by S.T. Joshi (2011) – This Library of America volume includes an excellent biographical introduction and notes.
- “Ambrose Bierce: Alone in Bad Company” by Roy Morris Jr. (1995) – A thorough biography that places Bierce’s critical stance in the context of his life experiences, particularly his Civil War service.
- “Ambrose Bierce and the Dance of Death” by Sharon Talley (2009) – Examines how Bierce’s preoccupation with mortality informed his literary judgments and aesthetic values.
- “The Formation of the American Literary Canon: The Forgotten Renaissance” by Vincent B. Leitch (2023) – Contains discussion of how critics and institutions systematically marginalized writers like Bierce.
Contemporary Literary Criticism
- “Better Living Through Criticism” by A.O. Scott (2016) – A defense of criticism that both echoes and challenges Bierce’s skepticism, offering a contemporary perspective on criticism’s value.
- “How to Read Now” by Elaine Castillo (2022) – Essays tackling contemporary critical issues that would have fascinated Bierce, particularly regarding who gets to evaluate literature and how.
- “The Art of Reading” by Damon Young (2016) – Explores the philosophical dimensions of interpretation that underlie Bierce’s critique of critical authority.
- “Literary Theory: An Introduction” by Terry Eagleton (1983, updated 2008) – Provides a framework for understanding the theoretical developments in criticism since Bierce’s time.
Digital Resources
- The Ambrose Bierce Project (www.ambrosebierce.org) – A comprehensive online resource with texts, bibliography, and scholarly articles about Bierce’s work.
- The Ambrose Bierce Site at brbl-archive.library.yale.edu – Yale University’s collection of Bierce papers, manuscripts, and rare editions, portions of which are digitized.
- “The Skeptic’s Guide to Writers’ Houses” podcast series by Anne Trubek – Includes an episode on Bierce that explores his enduring influence on American letters.
Related Historical Context
- “The War That Forged a Nation” by James McPherson (2015) – Provides context for understanding how Bierce’s Civil War experience shaped his unsentimental worldview.
- “The Rise and Fall of American Growth” by Robert J. Gordon (2016) – Offers insight into the dramatic social and technological changes occurring during Bierce’s lifetime that influenced literary production and criticism.
- “The Yellow Press” by Milton Esterow (2018) – Examines the journalistic world of the late 19th century in which Bierce operated, particularly his relationship with media baron William Randolph Hearst.
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