Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) was born on this date, January 19. He was one of the greatest writers of the strange and macabre. Depending on how you split hairs when defining your terms, he has been credited with creating the detective story and science fiction. And while some might say that’s a stretch, there’s no denying that he was an early practitioner of those genres as well as a writer of some truly gothic tales. H. P. Lovecraft, himself no slouch in the weird fiction department, was greatly influenced by him.
I don’t recall when I first became aware of Poe. I have vague memories of someone talking about “The Pit and the Pendulum” when I was very young, like about five or so.
I was certainly aware of him and his work when I first read The Martian Chronicles. This would have been in fifth grade, I believe. You might be wondering what The Martian Chronicles has to do with Poe. So let me explain.
Ray Bradbury was a great admirer of Poe. Early in The Martian Chronicles there is a chapter that also functions as a stand alone short story, as many of the chapters do. The title of this one is “Usher II”. (It’s been more years than I want to try to calculate since I last read it, so I beg your indulgence if I get some of the details wrong.) In it, a man builds a house on Mars and is showing it to a group of people. He calls the house Usher II. None of the guests get the reference.
Ray Bradbury
Only it’s not an ordinary house. It’s a house deisgned to recreate the settings and events of some of Poe’s stories. The person the protagonist is talking to has never read Poe, so he doesn’t realize that the deaths of some of the other guests that he sees are taken from Poe’s stories. The protagonist explains all of this to him and why the stories are important just before the man dies. If memory serves, the protagonist flies off in a helicopter, and thouse collapses in on itself, must like its namesake.
As I stated above, I’d not read Poe before then. I quickly rectified that oversight. And not jsut because some of Poe’s stories showed up in the literature books we had in school, such as “The Cask of Amantillado”, “Hop-Frog” and even “Usher II”.
I don’t recall which Poe stories I’ve read and which ones I’ve only read about. I know I’ve read the ones listed above, as well as “The Pit and the Pendulum” (one of the first I read), “The Premature Burial”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and of course, “The Masque of the Red Death”. And of course, there’s the poetry, such as “The Raven”, “Lenore”, and “The Conqueror Worm”.
I’m sure I’ll think of some others after this post goes live, probably once I’m in bed and starting to drift off to sleep. Isn’t that how it always works?
Poe’s style may be a little hard for some, but the effort is usually rewarded. He wrote at a time when rich descriptions were the norm.
Richard Matheson
A series of films based (some times very loosely based) on Poe’s works were made by Roger Corman in the early 1960s and starred Vincent Price. There were eight of these. Richard Matheson wrote four of the scripts, and Charles Beaumont wrote three. I sat up late on Friday nights when I was a freshman and maybe a sophomore in high school and caught as many of them as I could on the late show, although I didn’t see all of them. Good creepy, gothic fun.
Poe’s influence is still going strong, and compendiums of his work are readily available since it’s all in the public domain. I’ve not been keeping up with television and cinema much over the last couple of years. Too many other demands on my time. But I understand one of the streaming services, I think Netflix, is doing a series based on “The Fall of the House of Usher”.
A few years ago, I reviewed a book entitled In the Shadow of Edgar Allan Poe. The thesis of the book was that other writers of fantasy and horror who followed after Poe in the 1800s have been neglected if not forgotten because Poe casts such a long shadow. It’s a book worth seeking out just for its contents.
So, now we come to the part of the post where, as is my wont, I ask what Poe stories are your favorites and why. I’ve not read all of Poe’s work, and if I have a few free minutes to pick one up, which one would you suggest. Feel free to mention stories I’ve already read that I mentioned above. Like I said, it’s been years since I read any of Poe’s work.
Also, I’ve picked up some biographies on the cheap (thank you, ABE) and I’m looking forward to reading them. If I can find what box they’re in.
The Dupin stories—Murder in the Rue Morgue and especially The Purloined Letter. Just a sucker for a logical reasoning detective. To be fair, I am sucker for other kinds, as well.
I think I first read Poe in junior high lit class. I think I was the only one in class who liked Masque of the Red Death.
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“The Casque of Amontillado” is my favorite.
Its opening line, “The thousand injuries of Fortunato I had borne as I best could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.”, is memorable and as is the narrator stating he will “punish with impunity”.
But it’s also masterpiece of stripping a story down to its essence. Poe knows it’s not really important to know what exactly Fortunato did because this is a story about getting vengeance. Why, for narrative purposes, is irrelevant. And punishing with impunity is surely the goal of every revenger.
You could interpret the ending as a confession or, as VIncent Price did in An Evening with Poe, as one long gloat fifty years later.
As to Poe biographies, Silverman’s Edgar A. Poe: A Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance is very thorough even if Silverman doesn’t like Poe much and fills the book with nonsensical Freudian interpretations. Paul Collins’ Edgar Allan Poe: A Fever Called Living is very concise but quite good. William F. Hecker’s Private Perry and Mister Poe is a focused look at Poe’s days as a soldier and at West Point with some interesting things to say about how Poe’s work as an “artillery artificer”.
Good points, Randy. And thanks for the reccommendations.