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An exclusive interview with S. T. Joshi about
Ambrose Bierce 
S. T. Joshi, the author of H. P. Lovecraft: A Life and an acclaimed expert on Ambrose Bierce, recently spoke with us about Bierce’s place in American literature and about the new collection of Bierce’s writings that he edited for The Library of America.
The Devil’s Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs
In the Midst of Life (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians) • Can Such Things Be? • The Devil’s Dictionary • Bits of Autobiography • Selected Stories
“Bierce’s cynicism, phrased with really extraordinary concentration, appalled his contemporaries; but it is more likely to attract than to appall us. . . . He seems quite a man of our time.”—Clifton Fadiman
Table of Contents
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE (TALES OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS)
Soldiers
A Horseman in the Sky
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Chickamauga
A Son of the Gods
One of the Missing
Killed at Resaca
The Affair at Coulter’s Notch
The Coup de Grâce
Parker Adderson, Philosopher
An Affair of Outposts
The Story of a Conscience
One Kind of Officer
One Officer, One Man
George Thurston
The Mocking-Bird
Civilians
The Man Out of the Nose
An Adventure at Brownville
The Famous Gilson Bequest
The Applicant
A Watcher by the Dead
The Man and the Snake
A Holy Terror
The Suitable Surroundings
The Boarded Window
A Lady from Red Horse
The Eyes of the Panther
CAN SUCH THINGS BE?
Can Such Things Be?
The Death of Halpin Frayser
The Secret of Macarger’s Gulch
One Summer Night
The Moonlit Road
A Diagnosis of Death
Moxon’s Master
A Tough Tussle
One of Twins
The Haunted Valley
A Jug of Sirup
Staley Fleming’s Hallucination
A Resumed Identity
A Baby Tramp
The Night-Doings at “Deadman’s”
Beyond the Wall
A Psychological Shipwreck
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot
John Mortonson’s Funeral
The Realm of the Unreal
John Bartine’s Watc
The Damned Thing
Haïti the Shepherd
An Inhabitant of Carcosa
The Stranger
The Ways of Ghosts
Present at a Hanging
A Cold Greeting
A Wireless Message
An Arrest
Soldier-Folk
A Man with Two Lives
Three and One Are One
A Baffled Ambuscade
Two Military Executions
Some Haunted Houses
The Isle of Pines
A Fruitless Assignment
A Vine on a House
At Old Man Eckert’s
The Spook House
The Other Lodgers
The Thing at Nolan
“Mysterious Disappearances”
The Difficulty of Crossing a Field
An Unfinished Race
Charles Ashmore’s Trail
THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY
BITS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY
On a Mountain
What I Saw of Shiloh
A Little of Chickamauga
The Crime at Pickett’s Mill
Four Days in Dixie
What Occurred at Franklin
’Way Down in Alabam’
Working for an Empress
Across the Plains
The Mirage
A Sole Survivor
SELECTED STORIES
Mrs. Dennison’s Head
The Man Overboard
Jupiter Doke, Brigadier-General
A Bottomless Grave
For the Ahkoond
My Favorite Murder
Oil of Dog
Ashes of the Beacon
Ambrose Bierce
S. T. Joshi, the author of H. P. Lovecraft: A Life and an acclaimed expert on Ambrose Bierce, recently spoke with us about Bierce’s place in American literature and about the new collection of Bierce’s writings that he edited for The Library of America. Why should anyone read Ambrose Bierce today? What is his contribution to American literature?
In the realm of horror or supernatural literature, Bierce occupies an honored place: he is the most notable American writer in the field between Edgar Allan Poe and H. P. Lovecraft, and his influence has been immense. But Bierce was chiefly a satirist, and all his work—short stories, journalism, poetry, and The Devil’s Dictionary—was written under the satirical impulse. He may well be the greatest satirist America has ever produced, and in this regard can take his place with such figures as Juvenal, Swift, and Voltaire.
As a writer who dealt with war and its variegated effects, Bierce was a demonstrable influence on Stephen Crane, Ernest Hemingway, and many others. And as a journalist Bierce has no rival in American literature save H. L. Mencken. As to why we should read Bierce today: we can learn much of what it was like to be a soldier in the Civil War; we can be terrified by his tales of supernatural and psychological horror; and we can gain a refreshing skepticism regarding our species’ motives and foibles by sampling his unrelentingly cheerless view of human folly and hypocrisy.
Bierce was not quite twenty when, a week after the firing on Fort Sumter, he enlisted in the Union army in Indiana. He saw considerable action over the next four years, fighting at Shiloh and Chickamauga, taking a bullet to the head at Kennesaw Mountain, and being captured by and escaping from the Confederates in 1864. He wrote about his experiences decades later, sometimes as essays, sometimes as fiction. Many consider these pieces, as H. L. Mencken put it, “some of the best war stories ever written.” What distinguishes Bierce’s war writings?
Bierce’s war stories are indeed based on first-hand experience, and Bierce himself took pride in that fact; but beyond that, these tales convey the widely varying emotions felt by common soldiers—terror, panic, heroism, tedium, self-preservation—in an absolutely detached and unsentimental manner. . . .
Read the entire interview (PDF) http://www.loa.org/images/pdf/LOA_Joshi_on_Bierce.pdf
Ambrose BierceRead the entire interview (PDF) http://www.loa.org/images/pdf/LOA_Joshi_on_Bierce.pdf
The Devil’s Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs
In the Midst of Life (Tales of Soldiers and Civilians) • Can Such Things Be? • The Devil’s Dictionary • Bits of Autobiography • Selected Stories
“Bierce’s cynicism, phrased with really extraordinary concentration, appalled his contemporaries; but it is more likely to attract than to appall us. . . . He seems quite a man of our time.”—Clifton Fadiman
Table of Contents
IN THE MIDST OF LIFE (TALES OF SOLDIERS AND CIVILIANS)
Soldiers
A Horseman in the Sky
An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge
Chickamauga
A Son of the Gods
One of the Missing
Killed at Resaca
The Affair at Coulter’s Notch
The Coup de Grâce
Parker Adderson, Philosopher
An Affair of Outposts
The Story of a Conscience
One Kind of Officer
One Officer, One Man
George Thurston
The Mocking-Bird
Civilians
The Man Out of the Nose
An Adventure at Brownville
The Famous Gilson Bequest
The Applicant
A Watcher by the Dead
The Man and the Snake
A Holy Terror
The Suitable Surroundings
The Boarded Window
A Lady from Red Horse
The Eyes of the Panther
CAN SUCH THINGS BE?
Can Such Things Be?
The Death of Halpin Frayser
The Secret of Macarger’s Gulch
One Summer Night
The Moonlit Road
A Diagnosis of Death
Moxon’s Master
A Tough Tussle
One of Twins
The Haunted Valley
A Jug of Sirup
Staley Fleming’s Hallucination
A Resumed Identity
A Baby Tramp
The Night-Doings at “Deadman’s”
Beyond the Wall
A Psychological Shipwreck
The Middle Toe of the Right Foot
John Mortonson’s Funeral
The Realm of the Unreal
John Bartine’s Watc
The Damned Thing
Haïti the Shepherd
An Inhabitant of Carcosa
The Stranger
The Ways of Ghosts
Present at a Hanging
A Cold Greeting
A Wireless Message
An Arrest
Soldier-Folk
A Man with Two Lives
Three and One Are One
A Baffled Ambuscade
Two Military Executions
Some Haunted Houses
The Isle of Pines
A Fruitless Assignment
A Vine on a House
At Old Man Eckert’s
The Spook House
The Other Lodgers
The Thing at Nolan
“Mysterious Disappearances”
The Difficulty of Crossing a Field
An Unfinished Race
Charles Ashmore’s Trail
THE DEVIL’S DICTIONARY
BITS OF AUTOBIOGRAPHY
On a Mountain
What I Saw of Shiloh
A Little of Chickamauga
The Crime at Pickett’s Mill
Four Days in Dixie
What Occurred at Franklin
’Way Down in Alabam’
Working for an Empress
Across the Plains
The Mirage
A Sole Survivor
SELECTED STORIES
Mrs. Dennison’s Head
The Man Overboard
Jupiter Doke, Brigadier-General
A Bottomless Grave
For the Ahkoond
My Favorite Murder
Oil of Dog
Ashes of the Beacon
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