THE TRUTH IN FICTION
Ambrose Bierce’s writing is not for the squeamish. Describing a soldier he saw dying at Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee, in April 1862, he wrote: “He lay face upward, taking his breath in convulsive, rattling snorts, and blowing it out in sputters of froth which crawled creamily down his cheeks, piling itself along his neck and ears.”
The soldier lay amid a litter of mutilated corpses, all victims of the Battle of Shiloh, Tennessee. That bloody clash of 100,000 men changed Bierce forever. It drove him to spend the rest of his life mulling over the horrors he saw in his four years as a Union soldier.
Fortunately for us, Bierce committed many of his morbid musings to paper in newspaper articles, poems, and short stories. The American Listeners Theatre audio book The Civil War Tales of Ambrose Bierce features seven of his short stories. Read by Timothy Patrick Miller in a clear and compelling voice, the selections include Bierce’s best-known works about the war: “Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge,” “Chickamauga,” and “A Horseman in the Sky.” Like the best Civil War non-fiction, these stories provide a glimpse at the universal truths that dwell at the core of America’s greatest war.
Carl Zebrowski
The Civil War Tales of Ambrose Bierce, American Listeners Theatre, P.O. Box 50056, Austin, TX 78763, two cassette tapes, $18.00 plus $4.50 for shipping and handling.
Like most Civil War volunteers, Ambrose Bierce spent only four years as a soldier, but he obsessed over those days for the rest of his life.
