ianatxt reviewed Fantastic Fables by Ambrose Bierce
Review of 'Fantastic Fables' on 'Goodreads'
2 stars
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 critical about its time, and some very specific aspects of it.
Once in a while, you can bump into something more …
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 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.
