This guy is a great writer. I vaguely remember having a read a few of his short stories in a high school class. It seems kind of odd that he isn't talked about that much, or propped up as a major American writer. I mean, maybe he is, since I read him in school, but I'm talking about outside of school. And I didn't even remember I read him until I read "A Watcher by the Dead" this morning.I understand why the 20th century seems to overshadow all literature these days, but I don't understand why we give it so much space, especially for leisure reading.
>Ambrose Bierce>Edgar Allan Poe>Charles Baudelaire (how can one not aspire the name of Poe without expelling the name of Baudelaire?)>Algernon Blackwood>Lord Dunsany>Guy de Maupassant (why not?)Why was the 19th century to early 20th century such a kino time for short story writers?
>>24849893He wasnt that good. Most of it is drek.
>>24849914What did you not like about Ambrose Bierce? What makes you call it "drek" [sic] (it's spelled dreck by the way)?
>>24850018>corrects me on drek not realizing I'm Jewish and spelling it like a JewAnd that's why you're a goy cattle.
>>24849914The Devil’s Dictionary alone is a significant literary accomplishment
He wrote an essay criticizing feminism, which he predicted would drive down wages for men and make it impossible for them to support families, and often said some rude things about liberalism like suggesting in San Francisco the victims of robbery are hanged. The fact that he was just as cynical about conservatism and was sickened by patriotism doesn’t exonerate him in a lot of eyes. He was both cynical about anti racism (see the definition of African in the Devil’s Dictionary) and racism (he wrote an essay which argued that cannibal savages were more civilized than Europeans because they didn’t waste the dead bodies and actually made practical use of hunting other humans). He also just had a very bleak outlook, like the short story the Hypnotist which is told satirically about a kid who hypnotizes a girl and rapes her and hypnotizes his parents to kill each otherThis is what set him apart from Mark Twain whom he is often compared with.
>>24849911nathaniel hawthorne was so much better as a short story writer
>>24851832>He also just had a very bleak outlook, like the short story the Hypnotist which is told satirically about a kid who hypnotizes a girl and rapes herHe doesn't rape her, he steals her lunch. He does murder his parents though.
>>24851856>He doesn't rape her, he steals her lunchIt's a metaphor, a euphemism
>>24851856subtext
I like him and read a bunch of his stories when I was younger. They left quite an impression. But I think he doesn't get a prominent seat at the table in the history of American literature because his range was pretty limited -- not in the kinds of fiction he could write, but what he could express in it. Edmund Wison argues this pretty convincingly in Patriotic Gore: "...Death may perhaps be said to be Ambrose Bierce’s only real character."
