Nevermore!
I'm a big Poe fan, have his collected works in a nice leather book.
Poe: Not just that ghost in Zelda
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 On 10/19/2013 at 01:27 AM by daftman See More From This User » |
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is a famous and important literary figure for many reasons. He helped popularize the short story and turned the horror story genre on its head, creating detective fiction/the mystery genre in the process. But even his tales of terror and the macabre feature much more character depth and motivation than anything else of his time. Horror stories leading up to Poe’s works tended toward mindless brutality, violence, and shock for their own sake. But Poe’s characters grappled with grief, alcoholism, and hatred, to name a few, and often lost their battles and their sanity in the process. Whether the terrible acts and outcomes in the stories are actual occurrences or the delusions of Poe’s tortured narrators is not always clear. Was she buried alive? Was the tell-tale heart actually beating? Of course, pigeonholing Poe into the horror genre would be a mistake. Aside from establishing the mystery genre (which Sir Arthur Conan Doyle readily credited him for), he wrote satires, humorous pieces and hoaxes, poetry, and even contributed to the burgeoning science fiction genre (Jules Verne actually wrote a sequel to Poe’s only complete novel). Speaking of poetry, who isn’t familiar with “The Raven,” no doubt Poe’s most famous work?
It’s impossible to calculate the impact of Poe’s writings. Without him we probably would not have Sherlock Holmes and perhaps not the works of H.P. Lovecraft or even Stephen King! And though it’s been more than 200 years since his birth, Edgar Allan Poe casts a long shadow we’re still living in today. It seems a fitting image.
Experience Poe!
Any of Poe’s macabre stories would do for Halloween but if you asked my wife, for Poe is her favorite author, she would recommend “The Black Cat,” and it is an excellent choice. Read it online here.
Basil Rathbone, most famous for his portrayal of Sherlock Holmes in a series of movies produced during World War II, does a masterful reading of “The Raven.” Listen to it below.
And yeah, that recording of "The Raven" is pretty good. Rathbone was a classy guy.
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