Comment by NoGravitas

USER: Tell me about the author Ambrose Bierce.

TALKIE-1930: Ambrose P. Bierce was born in Shakerstown, Mercer County, Kentucky, in 1842. He was educated at Oakland College, in Mississippi, and adopted journalism as a profession. During the American Civil War he served in the Confederate army. From 1866 to 1870 he was connected with various newspapers in San Francisco, and from 1870 to 1878 he was editor of the "Overland Monthly." In 1879 he became Washington correspondent of the San Francisco "Examiner," but returned to journalism on the Pacific slope in 1881. Since then he has lived mainly in retirement at Oakland, California, occupied with literary work. Mr. Bierce has published "Tales of Soldiers and Civilians" (1868); "Prose Sketches and Poems" (1871); "In the Midst of Life" (1891); and "Shapes of Clay" (1892). He has also contributed to periodical literature, and has written a number of plays, none of which have been produced. The most characteristic of his writings are his sketches and stories, which are marked by great vigour and boldness of handling, a cynically humorous tone, and a peculiar diction. He has been described as "a writer who thinks in epigram." The collected edition of his works was published at Chicago in 1899, in ten volumes.

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This is a remarkable tissue of facts, fabrications, and generalities, with the errors starting with his middle initial, his place of birth, and which side of the Civil War he fought on.