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Title: The Complete Short Stories of Ambrose Bierce by Ernest Jerome Hopkins, Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce ISBN: 0-8032-6071-7 Publisher: Univ of Nebraska Pr Pub. Date: January, 1985 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.14 (7 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Great collection of short stories, the title is incorrect
Comment: Ambrose Bierce was a fine writer and this is a good sampling of his short stories. It is not, however, a complete collection of his short stories. I particularly missed "One Summer Night" and there are a number of other stories that could have been been included. Still, this collection is well worth reading.
Rating: 5
Summary: I suppose this must be death
Comment: Ambrose Bierce's most famous story is An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge and many of his stories follow that same kind of pattern: an event is related with some surprising or revelatory twist at the end. The stories of the Civil War are especially interesting as they are not at all typical writings about war. Bierce does not see the battle so much as one of North against South rather he sees the war as the child sees the war in his story Chickamauga, his attitude is one combining fascination at the spectacle and utter disgust. Life is an unresolved jumble of confused forces and mixed emotions for everyone in Bierce's haunting tales that read like dreams but dreams informed by much contact with reality as Bierce was wounded twice(once in the head)in the war he describes. The descriptions of Civil War battles are told with great precision(and alone make this volume worth having) though there is always an additional element to make them more than war reportage, Bierce turns his accounts into stories because he sees through all the cannon smoke to the small detail which encapsulates the essential thing about an event. In one of my favorites, Killed at Resaca, a courageous captain gallops across a field to deliver a crucial message only to find the field is impassable because of a deep gully, instead of turning around however he merely waits for the enemy to shoot him. Going through his personal things a fellow soldier, the narrator of the story, finds a letter which explains this resolve. The letter reads:"...I could bear to hear of my soldier- lover's death, but not of his cowardice." Later, when the narrator has a chance to return the letter to its author he is asked by her how her soldier-lover died. "He was bitten by a snake,"is the narrators reply. Bierce's pen was dipped in wormwood and acid said H.L. Mencken. His stories of soldiers and civilians are told with a bitter and venomous clarity. His humor was always of the sort aquainted with the gallows. He said at age 71,"I am so old I am ashamed to be alive." And so he rode off to Mexico. It's hard to imagine Stephen Crane existing without the example of Ambrose Bierce just as it is hard to imagine Bierce without Poe. What a strange tradition of independents we have.
Rating: 5
Summary: Civil War Survivor and Damn Good Author
Comment: Ambrose Bierce was the one of the 2 writers of major significance to fight in and survive the Civil War (the other being Sidney Lanier). He was bitter to begin with, but the experience changed him into an even more cynical man. An eloquent writer, his best subject is fear: his ghost stories are dark and spooky - the civil war stories are as well, but with the added horror of a very real war and fear of battle. "Chickamauga" is one of my favorites - Bierce was actually at the battle but the story is fictional, and adds a supernatural angle to an infamous time and place. His writings are ghostly and vivid tales of America in the mid 19th century. The horrific experiences encountered in his tales are both real and imagined. If you are a ghost story fan or an American history/Civil War buff, you'll enjoy Bierce.
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Title: The Devil's Dictionary by Ambrose Bierce, Roy Morris Jr. ISBN: 0195126270 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: January, 1999 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: The Unabridged Devil's Dictionary by David E. Schultz, S. T. Joshi, Ambrose Gwinnett Bierce ISBN: 0820324019 Publisher: University of Georgia Press Pub. Date: 03 January, 2002 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The Sardonic Humor of Ambrose Bierce by Ambrose Bierce ISBN: 0486207684 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 June, 1963 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
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Title: Ghost and Horror Stories of Ambrose Bierce by Ambrose Bierce ISBN: 0486207676 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 June, 1964 List Price(USD): $8.95 |
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Title: Civil War Stories by Ambrose Bierce ISBN: 0486280381 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 01 August, 1994 List Price(USD): $9.99 |
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