Haphazard hybrids of humor and horrorAmerican writer Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) was a prolific and popular man of letters in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. An author of novels, short stories, poetry, journalism, and essays, Bierce is perhaps best known as a biting satirist and a pioneering writer of horror literature. Can Such Things Be?, published in 1893, is a collection of two dozen of Bierce’s short stories in the horror genre.
In general, Bierce’s horror stories aren’t as terrifying, gruesome, or macabre as those of his contemporary Edgar Allan Poe. Bierce’s work tends to be more uncanny than frightening, somewhat like a Gilded Age and Progressive Era precursor to The Twilight Zone. Bierce was born in the Midwest, fought in the Civil War, and eventually settled in San Francisco. His stories are set all over America, and he writes in the style of early American naturalism. The tales in Can Such Things Be? combine elements of horror and fantasy with a down-to-earth, local-color humor reminiscent of fellow San Franciscan Bret Harte. The results of this amalgamation of contrasting tones are mixed. Sometimes the horror and humor work against each other, but in some cases they come together quite nicely to form an enjoyable gallows wit. The best stories in this collection, however, are probably those in which Bierce dispenses with the humor and plays it straight.
I’m not very familiar with Bierce’s extensive literary output, having only previously read one of his books. Given his reputation, however, and the fact that many writers and critics have credited him with a profound influence on American realism, I expected a better book than this. Overall, I was disappointed with the hit-and-miss quality of the selections included here.
Rather than dwell on the negatives, however, I choose to accentuate the positive: The best stories in the book include “Moxon’s Master,” in which the invention of an automaton (robot) inspires some fascinating speculative discussion on artificial intelligence and atomistic consciousness. “A Resumed Identity” takes place during the Civil War, but involves an unexpected time warp plot element that would have made a great Twilight Zone episode. “The Middle Toe of the Right Foot” is a delightfully quirky tale in which Bierce manages to ingeniously tie together a duel held in a haunted house, an escaped murderer, and a woman with an amputated digit. “The Damned Thing,” about a vicious invisible beast, has an element of sci-fi to it that reads as if Jules Verne wrote horror. “An Inhabitant of Carcosa” is the most Poe-esque entry in the book, with its desolate landscapes and dreary graveyard atmosphere. This story is really a different style than the others and gives a glimpse of the macabre classic this collection might have been. The place name of Carcosa has been reused by subsequent horror and fantasy writers—Robert W. Chambers, H. P. Lovecraft, and even George R. R. Martin among them—presumably as a tribute to Bierce, even though the fictional city is barely mentioned in this brief story.
Despite my reservations about this volume, Bierce hits his mark often enough to make me want to seek out more of his work. Although the horror in Can Such Things Be? isn’t very hard-hitting by today’s standards, Bierce is a fine storyteller in the old-school vein of classic literary naturalism. His stories reveal a bygone error of American life, yet they were admirably daring and edgy for their time.
Stories in this collection
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 Mortensen’s Funeral
The Realm of the Unreal
John Bartine’s Watch
The Damned Thing
Haïta the Shepherd
An Inhabitant of Carcosa
The Stranger
A shocking ending doesn’t redeem an unexceptional story
The Monk and the Hangman’s Daughter is the translation and/or retelling of an 1891 novel by German author Richard Voss. It was translated by Adolphe De Castro (a.k.a. Adolphe Danziger), who submitted it to Ambrose Bierce for editing. The resulting English version was published in a San Francisco newspaper later that same year, and in book form in 1892. Afterwards De Castro and Bierce fought over the story’s rights. Eventually it ended up in a collection of Bierce’s complete works, and since he’s the most famous of the three authors involved, he generally gets the credit for it.
The story takes place in 1680. Brother Ambrosius, a Franciscan monk, is sent to the Monastery of Berchtesgaden, in the Bavarian Alps near Salzburg. Approaching his destination, he meets a pretty girl frolicking in a meadow beneath a corpse hanging from a gallows. Her name is Benedicta, and she is the hangman’s daughter. After taking up residence in the monastery, Brother Ambrosius continues to take an interest in the young woman. She and her father are shunned by the townspeople because of his useful but loathsome profession. Ambrosius pities Benedicta, and tries to provide her with aid and comfort. He must admit to himself that he is attracted to her, but is determined to overcome his desire and behave like a proper spiritual advisor. His superiors do not approve of his association with the hangman’s daughter, however, and punish him for it.
This is an odd and disjointed novel, which is not necessarily bad, but it’s not particularly good either. In the beginning it is pretty pedestrian and rather lighthearted in tone. There are frequent sprinklings of humor in which the author (Voss or De Castro?) pokes fun at Brother Ambrosius’s blind faith, Benedicta’s babe-in-the-woods innocence, and the randiness of the townspeople. Women are often throwing themselves at the handsome monk, who piously pretends not to notice their amorous advances. The atmosphere is reminiscent of the jolly, wine-sipping friars and romping shepherdesses of a nineteenth-century German genre painting. Yet the unmerited persecution of Benedicta is undeniably cruel. There is nothing funny about the way she is reviled, slandered, and ostracized for no other reason than her father’s unpleasant but necessary occupation. The story turns darker as it goes along, and an incongruity develops between the elementary vocabulary of the fairy-tale prose and the serious, almost operatic events of the plot. The surprising ending is the best part of the book, but it’s just twisted enough to offend pretty much anybody, whether devout Christian or Atheist.
I’m not sure to whom I would recommend this novel, if anyone. Renaissance enthusiasts, perhaps? It’s not even a must-read for Bierce fans, since he didn’t really write it. When all is said and done, it’s just a mediocre story with a memorable ending. Should you choose to read it, it won’t be a complete waste of your time, but it’s nothing to get excited about either.
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