Status Updates From The Fall of the House of Us...

Poe was a pretty good literary critic: “Men admire but are wearied with the ‘Paradise Lost’ for platitude follows platitude, inevitably, at regular interspaces (the depressions between the waves of excitement) until the poem (which, properly considered, is a succession of brief poems), having been brought to an end, we discover that the sums of our pleasure and of displeasure have been very nearly equal.

“William Wilson” is very similar to “The Double” by Dostoyevsky. In both stories, a doppelganger rival intrudes on the protagonist’s life and ruins it.