“The fact that Henry Armstrong was buried did not seem to him to prove
that he was dead: he had always been a hard man to convince.”
First
line from One Summer Night
Ambrose Bierce was one of American’s best writers in the 19th century. He was a journalist, critic
and short story writer. Bierce never used needless words when it came to his
writing. He unlike many of his contemporaries did not use “flowery” prose in
his fictional stories.
“Virtually everything that came from his pen was
notable for its’ judicious wording and economy of style.” *
This style makes his writing
modern even by today’s standards. I admire this most about his stories because
a well-respected university professor once stated to me, “When you write cut out
the garbage”.
“Bierce’s tales often included: abrupt beginnings,
dark imagery, and vague references to time, limited descriptions, and
impossible events.” *
His stories left the details
to the imagination of the reader. This style served him particularly well when
it came to his short horror and ghost stories.
Bierce born in the 1840s was
a Union soldier in the Civil War for four years. Many of his best tales are about
war. As a journalist he made more than one enemy. He was a ruthless editorialist,
i e., critic, which brought even more enemies to his doorstep. Despite this ire
no one denied that fact that he was a very talented writer. So he unlike many critics today actually
practiced what he preached.
Bierce entitled his anthology
of ghost stories, Can Such Things Be? This collection of supernatural tales reflects
Bierce’s own life experience. He knew the pain and terror of war and he used
these feelings to enrich his ghost tales. But unlike the typical scary story he
never brought the object of the “horror” too close to his readers. Instead he
always kept it slightly at a distance, even blurred--this keeps the reader in
the dark, which effectively keeps them on edge. The end result of this makes
his stories even more horrifying.
Ambrose Bierce disappeared at
the age of 71 while in Mexico gathering information about the Mexican
Revolution.
One of his best war stories:
One of his best horror
stories:
One of his best ghost
stories:
* Rafferty, Terence (2011, October 28) Ambrose
Bierce: The Man and his Demons, The New York Times, Sunday Book Review, Retrieved
from http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/books/review/ambrose-bierce-the-man-and-his-demons.html?_r=1&
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