Rebeka > Recent Status Updates

The Duc L Omelette - may be funny, if you know French. I don’t. So quite a bit was lost in translation. Still, I was vaguely amused.

Mellona Tauta - the most boring letter/story that could be imagined. Just endless intertextuality and snobbery.

The Angel of the Odd - a quaint story and a bit of a morality tale against those who don’t believe Poe’s odd, unbelievable stories. I think he was criticized (rightfully) that his stories just don’t hold water, and in vengeance he wrote this story.

Diddling - not a story but more of a musing on the topic of scams (that’s what’s meant by diddling here). Poe describes various scams and scam artists of his day. Interesting!

Mystification — A story of a usual fare. A very long set up and explanation of an unbelievable event, that gets resolved in few sentences. Except this time the premise was more believable, as these were some college guys taking the mick out of each other.

A Predicament — A truly macabre story of the experience of having your head cut off. Really disgusting this one, but not in a moral sense.

How to Write a Blackwood Article — A satire on publishing industry, which is in itself an introduction to another story.

The Literary Life of Thingum Bob Esq. — I think was a satire on his own career. Incredibly boring and tedious.

The System of Doctor Tarr and Professor Fether — a more interesting and better written kind of Poe’s story. It’s a comical story of a revolution in a mental institution.

Metzengerstein — The descriptions of young baron and his infernal horse are evocative, but the story surrounding them was rather boring. I think these characters could surely do more.

X-ing a Paragraph — an unassuming and genuinely hilarious story. Probably because Poe stopped trying so hard to set up a believable ground to an unbelievable story. Very natural. Best of the bunch, I’d say!

Lionizing — absurdist satire again, about a man who’s huge nose makes him the cream of society until he shoots another fellow’s nose off. I didn’t get it.

The Devil in the Belfry — a nonsense silly type of satirical story that seems taken straight out of Poe’s morphine dreams. Not my type at all, but perhaps I just didn’t get the references.

Three Sundays in a Week — Poe starts strong with a very submissive narrator’s voice, in servile rage toward a master. Very intriguing, but in the end it devolves into the same boring narrative trickery.

King Pest — contains a really strong and jolly start, especially the starting paragraph which so well establishes the setting and principal characters. The ending was also funny and abrupt. However in a true Poe fashion, he spends pages building up the horrors, and then theres only like a paragraph of the horrors/punchline itself

The Spectacles — a young man with poor eyesight marries a granny because he refuses to wear glasses. The mystery is a bit funny, but it takes a long time to set up the joke and it takes just as much to explain it afterward, giving it a very artificial feel

A Tale of the Ragged Mountains -- a story where Poe explores his newest fascination - magnets and electricity! In something called psychomagnetism, there's doppelgangers, parallel lives etc. I couldn't be bothered. I just don't like it when Poe reads up something intriguing in science and then waxes poetic about what he thinks could happen.

Morella — Once more, a story about a beautiful wife/bride who dies young from tuberculosis while loving the protagonist dearly, and then supernatural stuff happens. This time, the twist is that she dies in childbirth and somehow gave birth to herself.

Ligeia — Another one of those Poe stories about a beautiful wife/bride/promised who dies young from tuberculosis while loving the protagonist dearly and strongly, and then he marries again and supernatural stuff happens. Very meh. Though description of Ligeia was really evocative and beautiful.

Narrative of A. Gordon Pym — Boring & neverending. It’s clear why this is Poe’s only novel. Messy and haphazard and indecisive, nobody edited Poe’s work. It’s full of neverending descriptions of things that he’s never seen or interacted with, to justify their miraculous use in some aspect. It’s like a fever dream. Poe couldn’t even properly finish it.

Picture of Dorian Gray — Excellent writing, twist and idea, but I’m not all sold on the psychology and opinions. Despite his contrarian and flippant, self-obsessed nature, Wilde does have insight, wit and heart.
I find that it’s okay that some classicists have a single work and nothing else. Wilde’s worst written sentence could be someone else’s life’s pinnacle.

Eleanor — more of the same. Beautiful cousin that the protagonist loves dies young from TB probably, supernatural occurs. Narrated as a ‘believe it or not it happened to me’. Nothing special

Berenice — as always, I want to tell Poe, as all his maincharacters are imaginings based on his own self, to just stop thinking about himself so much all the time. The narrative voice is unbearably annoying. The twist and the story of this is interesting and very creepy this one!

The Tell-Tale Heart is a really standout, solid gothic short story. It has it all - an unreliable narrator, a focused story, melodic, rhytmic writing - what’s not to love?

“William Wilson” is an interesting short story with a paranormal vibe. The protagonist has a mysterious kindhearted doppelganger who keeps following him around and stopping him from villainous acts. Fun twist.

“Landor’s Cottage” is simply a description of a place in the style of romanticism. As is with Poe, the weather outside conveys something about the mood and inherent goodness of inhabitants, as well as the beauty of a woman conveys something of her morals. Simply put, I was bored senseless by this Poe’s attempt in landscape architecture.

With "Little Men" Louisa May Alcott returns to what she writes best - honest, if idealistic portrayals of young children in a home setting. Here the home environment keeps the characters close, which really seems to be a setting where she shines. Here we can see the transcendentalist ideas of her time - of not hitting children, of leading by example. The chapters often have a clever theme or format.

Little Women -- a charming, if moralistic tale. I'm not too taken with overly preachy novels, but this one somehow manages to ring the right chord and finds me nodding along, my heart full.
Good Wives -- a lot of people hate this one because it's not a tropey romance flick. it's grounded and realistic, yet its not as charming because you're split up in time and space among the sisters. the cozy feeling is gone.

The Domain of Arnheim — much ado about nothing. Just a fanciful imagining of what it would be like to be rich and live in a pretty place. Quite literally, just descriptions of Poe’s dream home with his usual faffery of groundless arrogance and certainty in it

The Premature Burial — I actually liked this one. Poe seems rational and a bit tongue-in-cheek regarding his own fearfulness and seeing spectres where there lay none.