Rebeka’s Reviews > Edgar Allan Poe: His Complete Works: (Bauer Classics) > Status Update

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?

“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.

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.

The Pit and the Pendulum -- so continues Poe's obsession with the medieval. Here an unknown protagonist is thrown into an unknown dungeon to be tortured by the Spanish Inquisition and then saved in the lick of time by some general. Definitely more engaging than most of Poe's stories, and this one also triggered a medieval torture wikipedia rabbithole for me.

The Assignation -- a story of murder-suicide... I think? I'm unsure, but it seems Poe has entered his medieval obsession phase. Poisons, Italy, supposed mistresses and mysterious, unlikely survivals. At least this one seemed to have a semblance of a story.

The Island of the Fay -- more like a musing on the nature of time & god and microscopic world, a longing for impressionistic green valleys, and then a little imaginitive etude on meeting a fae.

The Imp of the Perverse -- Hardly a story, more like a reflection of Poe's. He theorizes what could cause the wish to do harm for harm's sake, but, of course, never comes even close to the real solution, instead combining procrastination and murder, as well as trolling a friend under the same behavioural cause. Still interesting to see, as always, that ppl have always been concerned with the same things.

The Cask of Amontillado — this is an intriguing story of revenge - medieval style. What I found specifically fascinating was the rythmic tempo of the text.