Status Updates From Selected Tales

I’M FREE!

Hop-Frog: I usually love an underdog story always but I think I’m just too woke for this one 😬

The Domain of Arnheim: Beautiful writing but very ornamental. This is really just a description of a garden.

The Cask of Amontillado: Simpler than the rest but one of the best! I’d read this one before but there’s a reason this one is so well known!

The Imp of the Perverse: This is barely a story. Over 2/3rds = just Poe musing on why people procrastinate or why they do bad and perverse acts with no character or plot.

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether: This is a satire comedy and I *think* it’s trying to satirise inhumane treatment of the mentally ill ie. Poe is in favour of their dignity. But if that’s the case… why is most of the humour laughing at the ‘lunatics’?

The Purloined Letter: The best of the Dupin stories! Clever writing, could actually follow along with the mystery this time, plus it actually had a little bit of character within it!

A Tale of the Ragged Mountains: No strong feelings on this one. This was fine!

The Black Cat: Possibly his most detestable narrator yet, but a solid and creepy story of comeuppance!

The Gold Bug: Yeah, I’m not reading that racist shit.

The Gold Bug: Yeah, I’m not reading that racist shit.

The Tell-tale Heart: The best known Poe story for a reason. 10/10, but the only 10/10 in this collection so far.

The Mystery of Marie Rogêt: A ‘mystery’ with no suspense, just 1hr of a supposed genius detailing his already completed deduction. Poe rambles for three dense pages about the circumstances where a body will float in water, does not even solve the murder: [For reasons we shall not specify, we have taken the liberty of here omitting from the MMSS]

The Pit and the Pendulum: Really liked this one! Highly atmospheric and strange! Very solid short story!

The Masque of the Red Death: Classic and simple story, elevated by the beautiful language and description.

Eleonora: An adult man falls in love with his child cousin, even acknowledges her as a child in the narrative. Sick.

The Murders in the Rue Morgue: I did not realise Poe wrote a mystery story, nor did I realise the influence he had on Arthur Conan Doyle and the modern detective story. Well worth a read for the literary merit of it but Poe’s prose is still so dense that the mystery is hard to follow.

The Man of the Crowd: didnt really ‘get’ this one, kept getting lost in the very dense prose; plot summaries make it sound like I didn’t miss too much.

William Wilson: Really struggled getting into this one but enjoyed it once I did! Felt like this one had some actual characters and movement, something that lacked in some prev stories! The collection is picking up!

The Fall of the House of Usher: the best of the short stories so far!

The Man who was Used Up: Classic authors go out of their way to use slurs. They *have* to write in a black character whose only purpose is to be called the n-word. Okay, cousinfucker, thanks for that.