Haphazard hybrids of humor and horror
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
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