Fantastic Fables
by Ambrose Bierce
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Don't judge a book by its cover—if you're looking for tall tales about Greek gods or American folk heroes, you're in the wrong place. Instead, noted satirist Ambrose Bierce unleashes the full wrath of his wit on the leaders of industry, church, and state in this series of sharp-edged but hilariously spot-on short tales and vignettes..
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Since Sunday I’ve been leafing through this little book. I don’t say “reading” because I’m not reading it from cover to cover, because it’s just not possible. Not because it’s too difficult or anything like that. It’s just… Uninteresting. I can’t quite remember why I bought it. Probably because it contained the word “Fantastic” on its title and was written by a renowned author.
Turns out, not everything that is a classic is good.
And not that Fantastic Fables is bad per se. It’s just out of its time. If you’re not a mildly rich man from the 1860s, this piece is probably not for you. Contrary to its back cover, most of its fantastical anecdotes are not meant for a wider audience. It’s a piece written to be show more critical about its time, and some very specific aspects of it.
Once in a while, you can bump into something more universal or contemporary. For the majority of its pages, it’s History you’re reading there, and if you know little about the state of things in the US in the nineteenth century, it’s not gonna make a lot of sense to you.
You can see Bierce has a sharp sense of humor in any century (and eventually sexist, as you’d expect), and probably was funny enough on his own time. Fortunately, this time has passed.
One interesting thing: he actually uses abstract ideas as characters, such as a Pugilist meeting the Community’s Moral Sense, which is a hell of a shameless narrative that I really liked.
I’m probably never going back to this, but it was good to know about its existence. show less
Turns out, not everything that is a classic is good.
And not that Fantastic Fables is bad per se. It’s just out of its time. If you’re not a mildly rich man from the 1860s, this piece is probably not for you. Contrary to its back cover, most of its fantastical anecdotes are not meant for a wider audience. It’s a piece written to be show more critical about its time, and some very specific aspects of it.
Once in a while, you can bump into something more universal or contemporary. For the majority of its pages, it’s History you’re reading there, and if you know little about the state of things in the US in the nineteenth century, it’s not gonna make a lot of sense to you.
You can see Bierce has a sharp sense of humor in any century (and eventually sexist, as you’d expect), and probably was funny enough on his own time. Fortunately, this time has passed.
One interesting thing: he actually uses abstract ideas as characters, such as a Pugilist meeting the Community’s Moral Sense, which is a hell of a shameless narrative that I really liked.
I’m probably never going back to this, but it was good to know about its existence. show less
While these stories vary in quality (the misogynisti ones will not appeal to most moderns) many are very witty, cyncial, and highly applicable today
El Lector Digital terminó su libro y se dispuso a escribir un comentario sobre él. ¿Adónde vas? - preguntó, inquieta, la procrastinación.
Ο Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914;) έγραψε σχεδόν 850 μύθους σε μια λογοτεχνική και δημοσιογραφική καριέρα που διήρκεσε περισσότερα από σαράντα χρόνια. Λιγότεροι από τους μισούς από αυτούς τους μύθους έχουν ανατυπωθεί από τις αρχικές τους εμφανίσεις σε εφημερίδες και περιοδικά πριν από έναν αιώνα ή περισσότερο, και ο ίδιος ο Bierce επανεκτύπωσε μόλις περισσότερο από το ένα τρίτο από αυτούς στις δύο εκδόσεις των Fantastic Fables του show more (1899, 1911). Οι μύθοι του Bierce είναι μοναδικοί στο είδος τους, και ωστόσο αποκαλύπτουν μια βαθιά εξοικείωση με τη μακρά ιστορία του μύθου ως λογοτεχνικής μορφής. show less
Oct 12, 2024Greek
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551+ Works 15,262 Members
Ambrose Bierce was a brilliant, bitter, and cynical journalist. He is also the author of several collections of ironic epigrams and at least one powerful story, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Bierce was born in Ohio, where he had an unhappy childhood. He served in the Union army during the Civil War. Following the war, he moved to San show more Francisco, where he worked as a columnist for the newspaper the Examiner, for which he wrote a number of satirical sketches. Bierce wrote a number of horror stories, some poetry, and countless essays. He is best known, however, for The Cynic's Word Book (1906), retitled The Devil's Dictionary in 1911, a collection of such cynical definitions as "Marriage: the state or condition of a community consisting of a master, a mistress, and two slaves, making in all, two." Bierce's own marriage ended in divorce, and his life ended mysteriously. In 1913, he went to Mexico and vanished, presumably killed in the Mexican revolution. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title
- Fantastic Fables
- Original title
- Fantastic Fables
- Alternate titles
- Fantastic Debunking Fables
- Original publication date
- 1899
Classifications
- Genres
- Fiction and Literature, General Fiction, Fantasy
- DDC/MDS
- 818.408 — Literature & rhetoric American literature in English American miscellaneous writings in English Later 19th Century 1861-1900
- LCC
- PS1097 .F3 — Language and Literature American literature American literature Individual authors 19th century
- BISAC
Statistics
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- 207
- Popularity
- 157,352
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (3.21)
- Languages
- 15 — Catalan, Chinese, simplified, English, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Serbian, Croatian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 62
- UPCs
- 1
- ASINs
- 7
