The 3 best books by Ambrose Bierce

Trying recently about Clive Barker, one of the last great references of the horror genre, it is more than due justice to recover an author not yet touched on this blog who also has a lot to say in the foundations of the most shocking genre.

Because Ambrose Bierce is a perfect link between two essential pillars of terror: Edgar Allan Poe Y Lovecraft. And that the dream of Bierce of his passage to posterity perhaps did not focus on the literary.

To be a reference without intending it, to keep the flame of Poe's horror story alive so that others would pick up the gauntlet generations later, giving channel and continuity to a literary space in the darkness of reason.

Of course, in addition to cultivating the most fertile spaces in the narrative of horrors, Bierce also liked to go through his sharp pen made guillotine of satire any social or political field.

And that's how Ambrose Bierce ended up, being an outspoken guy, feared (in the broadest sense) in any of his open-grave exhibitions in articles, chronicles or stories.

Top 3 Recommended Books by Ambrose Bierce

Tales of soldiers and civilians

A recent volume that collects his famous "Incident at the Owl Creek Bridge." The good thing about the passage of time, the analysis of a scattered work such as Bierce's, is that it can be regrouped a posteriori by thematic analogy, by intensity or by any other aspect that makes up that stereoscopic vision of a bibliography as particular as one's own. Ambrose Bierce's character.

On this occasion, the stories with war overtones rescued from the experiences of Bierce, who did not reject visiting any conflict from the front or as a reporter, are adorned with that impression of life always looking into dark abysses. Beyond the horrors of war with an undeniable anti-war intention, the final set of this volume addresses other more atavistic conflicts that in this case introduce us to deep California.

The roots of each community with its beliefs beyond official religions ends up inserting us into darkness about desires, hatreds. Fear in essence from where the event of the owl stream was born, with one of the brightest twists of the horror tale.

Tales of soldiers and civilians

The Devil's Dictionary

Well yes, because the words are carried by the devil and the meanings can be shrapnel received in each conscience. Newspeak is a perfect tool for the good user of this weapon. And the curious thing is that it is as old as language itself.

And in the face of the evil uses of politics, good manners, protocol or any other channel disguised as goodness, there is nothing better than discovering an Ambrose Bierce determined to give a good bath to every social area besieged by conformity, which customary and reactionary, serving the ultimate goal of the meaning of perverse statuses that are inaccessible to changes in times. It is very easy for Bierce to discover the naked emperor once again. Only his vision is no longer that of the child who shows the truth. Because Bierce also ridicules and accuses to try to transcend the ridicule towards the awakening of a more critical consciousness. Illustrated edition for the cause by Alberto Montt.

The Devil's Dictionary

Can such things happen?

The curious back-and-forth effect between Bierce's experiences and his stories awakens that distressing sensation of harsh reality.

Bierce's fantastic projections are born from that feeling of humanity exposed to violence and death, to atavistic fears and hopes focused solely on survival, like beasts. Because Bierce soaked up the horrors of the wars in which he participated in search of his particular truth. From the American Civil War to the Mexican Revolution, existence on the edge, with Bierce's own war wounds and his disappearance in Mexico after he was 60 years old, seemed like a message that Bierce wanted to transcribe without filters.

Except that the fantastic touch ended up being revealed as the focus of light when you are about to reach the other side after death. With that light these stories are written to whose question about the occurrence and repetition of the horrible in man appear twisted and fulfilled answers, like echoes of the doom and terror that loom over the human soul, unbalanced on so many occasions towards evil in the ancestral struggle. More than forty stories that take your breath away.

Such things can happen
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