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_______________________________________BIERCE IN
THE ARTS
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original art by Arnold Stark Lobel (1933-1987)
ORIGINAL BIERCE COVER PRINTS
The excellent artist JARED BOGGESS is offering original SIGNED prints of the striking cover for The Assassination of Ambrose Bierce: A Love Story. The prints come in two sizes: 6 x 9 for $15 and 11 x 16.5 for $20. Available at: ETSY
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BIERCE'S STORY 'AN INHABITANT OF CARCOSA' PLAYS ...
...a writerly role in the HBO series 'True Detective' with Mathew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson.
The sensational eight-part HBO series True Detective managed to produce echoes of Ambrose Bierce, Robert W. Chambers, and H.P. Lovecraft as personally-troubled Louisiana detectives McConaughey and Harrelson investigate a series of ritualistic killings of children. Scrawled on the wall of McConaughey's makeshift office are the words "Yellow King" and "Carcosa."
The name "Carcosa" refers to the Ambrose Bierce short story "An Inhabitant of Carcosa" first published in 1886 and included in his story collection Can Such Things Be? (1893). Bierce's story goes like this:
A resident of the city of Carcosa wanders in a delirium within a bleak landscape where he discovers a gravestone on which is his own name and the dates of his birth and death. In horror, he realizes that he is dead, and as he hears the howling of wolves he knows that he is standing on the ancient ruins of the city of Carcosa.
It's a shocking and original theme that fiction and screenwriters have borrowed ever since. Robert W. Chambers adopted "Carcosa" as the setting of his fictitious play and story collection, The King in Yellow in 1895, thus the reference in the movie to "Yellow King," a suspect in the Louisiana child murders. Beginning with "The Whisperer in Darkness," a short story in Weird Tales, August 1931, H. P. Lovecraft, an icon of the weird tale, picked up the Bierce and Chambers references in his own work.
Another take on these otherworldly parallels by
By Alyssa Rosenberg at: Think Progress
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Turkish Artist Kemal Ozyurt Puts Bierce in an Envelope
Access HERE
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JOHNNY DEPP'S BIERCE MUSIC VIDEO
 Some media sources have banned the video, which is based on Bierce's psychological masterpiece, "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge," because of its graphic and violent ending. Actor Johnny Depp directed "Unloveable," sung by Stephen Jones, lead singer of the British rock band Babybird. It was shot in Herts, England, and marks Depp's directorial debut. Bierce fan or not this is powerful!
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TEN PARALLELS BETWEEN SOUTH PARK'S
ERIC CARTMAN AND AMBROSE BIERCE
 "It's surprisingly easy to see similarities between Bierce's infamous collection of misanthropic, cynical definitions in The Devil's Dictionary, and the poop joke-smattered tao of [the comic character] Cartman." By Gray Chapman at
Paste Magazine.com
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AMBROSE BIERCE: TALES & TIMES
original poster |
Rob Holmes as Bierce |
Staged at Chicago's Lincoln Square Theater, winter 2009.
For cast photos and other notes click HERE.
Visual Artist Adopts Bierce Motif
Stephen G. Rhodes applies sculpture, photographs, drawings, and a double-screen video based on "An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge." Go to The New York Times. Rhodes' bio and more images here
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ORIGINAL BIERCE ART
by
Kathryn Landis
Tom Redman
Original rendering of Bierce by Jason Eckhardt
click to enlargeThis painting and twenty-four black and white sketches by Eckhardt are included in a limited edition of some of Bierce's best work: Masters of the Weird Tale, published by Centipede Press. The book is signed by Eckhardt and S.T. Joshi, who wrote the introduction. Limited to 200 copies in slipcase.
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TWO SHORT PLAYS ABOUT
AMBROSE BIERCE
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Sparks fly as Swaim's one-act play focuses on the combative first meeting between Bierce and the California novelist Gertrude Atherton in 1889. read here
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Gertrude Atherton
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Thomas Burks as Bierce
in original production
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Foster's two-act play is set in Mexico in 1913 as Bierce toys with the notion of suicide. Premiered at the Unicorn Theatre, Carmel, California, 2001 read here
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Four Bierce Operas
 above: From David Lang's Difficulty of Crossing a Field
Saint Ambrose by Rodney Waschka II
Here is the Waschka opera's first segment following the Overture:
Good Evening.
Steve Duke plays both sax and Bierce himself.
Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge by Thea Musgrave
Mocking Bird by Thea Musgrave
Difficulty of Crossing a Field by David Lang
Kudos for Bierce Tale Staged by Long Beach Opera
Robin T. Buck as "Andrew"
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Based on the Bierce story "The Difficulty of Crossing a Field," the opera was produced by the Long Beach [California] Opera in June 2011. Composed by David Lang, libretto by Marc Wellman, the opera was originally performed in 2002 by the Kronos Quartet in San Francisco.
Opera details HERE.
Review by John Farrell in the Long Beach Press-Telegram HERE.
Review in the Los Angeles Times HERE.
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FOUR BIERCE IMPERSONATORS
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Stephen Mellor as Ambrose Bierce
Marc Robinson in the Village Voice reviews the Mac Wellman play, Bitter Bierce, or The Friction We Call Grief. And a review by Neil Genzlinger in The New York Times.
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Stephen Mellor as Bierce
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Ed Scutt as Bierce
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Almighty God Bierce
Ed Scutt Portrays Ambrose Bierce
Ed Scutt's two-act, one-man play is posted here in its entirety -- and serves as a virtual biography of Ambrose Bierce. Click on the title above to read it.
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Joshua Kane's Gothic at Midnight
In his one-man show Kane, as Bierce, draws from the works of such literary giants as Bierce, Dickens, Poe, and Shaw.
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Joshua Kane as Bierce
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Felix Justice as Bierce
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Bierce Returns
Felix Justice is Ambrose Bierce
Justice is an African-American Bierce in a one-man show, The Miraculous Return of Ambrose Bierce, written by Bart Schneider and performed in San Francisco. View four short vidoes HERE
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ONE-HOUR RADIO SHOW DEVOTED TO AMBROSE BIERCE
Guests:
S.T. Joshi, editor of The Devil's Dictionary, Tales, & Memoirs
Cathy Davidson, professor at Duke University and a Bierce scholar.
Felix Justice, actor playing Ambrose Bierce, re-imagined as a contemporary black man in the one-man show, "The Miraculous Return Of Ambrose Bierce"
Bart Schneider, publisher at Kelly's Cove Press and playwright of "The Miraculous Return Of Ambrose Bierce"
to listen to broadcast of Nov. 29, 2011 click HERE
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ARCHIVE OF BIERCE LETTERS FETCHES $37,000 AT AUCTION
The thirteen letters, dated July 6, 1898, through September 29, 1913, were penned to Bierce's friend Silas Orrin Howes, editor of Bierce's 1909 essay collection, The Shadow on the Dial.
The winning bid on April 22, 2013, was more than double the estimate of between $10,000 to $15,000 made by the Doyle auction house in New York. The winning bidder has not been identified. After the premium charged by the auction house, the owner of the letters netted some $30,000. The Bierce letters were the largest such trove to come to auction in the last twenty-five years.
click to enlarge and read
Of particular interest is the last letter in which Bierce writes of his plans to go to Mexico via Texas: "...thence down to the Mexican border (perhaps at Laredo) seeking a chance to cross and be shot or hanged. For I hold to my project of going through Mexico on horseback -- an 'innocent by-stander' in the war. Adios -- God prosper you."
The lot included a letter from Bierce's daughter Helen in 1915 in which she writes to Howes, "He wrote me just after he arrived in Laredo ... and how I hope he did get out of Mexico alive."
According to Robin Reid, the letters were owned by Davis Howes III, Reid's uncle and Silas Howes' great nephew. In a eulogy to Silas Howes in 1918, the bibliophile Christopher Morley wrote that Howes had intimate, friendly contact with Bierce, "...and used to tell many entertaining anecdotes about that erratic venturer in letters."
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