Edgar Allan Poe

[gembird]

So I did a search, and the only vaguely relevant thing I found was from about a year and a half ago. Anyway.

Anyone else read any Poe? One of my strange gothic friends recommended his stuff, and I reckon it's pretty damn good. So has anyone else read any of it, and what did you reckon?

The Raven ftw, by the way... and it's quoted in The Crow, which makes it the most awesome thing of all that is awesome. Sort of.

[Chris]

He's Fucking Brilliant.
If anybody disagrees they're a Twat.

[Ferg]

Raven = Best poem ever. Even quoted at the start of a video game (eternal darkness).

Also, ever read the pit and the pendulum? Thats a psychological mind messer upper :(

[woody_tng]

Raven is also in the simpsons treehouse of horror. Not sure which one. Great stories and poems.

[ZekeyLizard]

there was a game called Zootopia that featured a cartoon of a raven rapping "The Raven" with a marionette Poe providing backup vocals.

God, it was wonderful.

[Smartie]

Poe is THE best gothic author.
A misunderstood genius who died at the age of 40, married his 13 year old cousin and had a dread fear of being buried alive (see the cask of the amontillado for example) .

His writing can be somewhat difficult to get into (espeically the poetry) but if you can find a set of his stories, start with the murder mystery ones first to get a feel for whis writing (the gold bug, murders in rue morgue etc).

If they're too difficult (!) then Vincent Price starred in many screen adaptations of Poe's films, the best of course being The Pit and the pendulum, House on haunted hill, Comedy of errors and the Masque of the red death. (DON'T bother with any of the recent Hollywood remakes - they're designed purely be gore-fests, and detract from the original intention of suspense and psychological horror, and are of little real merit).

[JebblehMooo]

I love EAP, his poems are so dark and beautiful, and of course one of my favourites is The Raven ^_^ I have it memorised, which is probably quite sad, but eh, it's still ace. I also love his stories, though havent read many of them :)

[feeshy]

Also, ever read the pit and the pendulum? Thats a psychological mind messer upper :(

Yep, most disturbingly I first read it aged 9/10 in a children's book of horror stories... Admittedly an abridged version, but still, it only really took out the 'boring' bits... The book had The Gold Bug in it too. And The Masque of the Red Death.... We did The Raven in English a couple of years ago, great poem.

[Aladdin Sane]

I'm quite fond of Poe's stuff, I remember back when I was doing A-Level English, we had to do a text transformation (take a text and change it into a different form). I chose to write a satirical short story version of The Raven. I had great fun writing, poking fun at all the moody Gothic references and such.


Also, has anyone listened to the Lou Reed album The Raven?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41FA7GTJKPL._AA240_.jpg

It's a great album, all about Edgar Allen Poe's stuff. There is an amazing spoken track where he reads The Raven, but also adds his own verses into it (but in the style of the poem). I definitely recommend giving the album a listen if you're a fan of Poe.

[Clowsrule]

Ya, a lot of his poems are pretty good, but by today's standerds, are not scary at all. Back then he made people piss thier pants though.

[gembird]

I am now going to pick up my book off the shelf and re-read The Raven and The Pit And The Pendulum.

Also JebblehMoo, I think it's quite cool that you memorised The Raven :) I have a friend who did that and he takes every opportunity to quote it.

[feeshy]

Nowt wrong with memorising poems, in fact I think The Raven should be the next one I learn...

[Spacemonkey]

The Raven is an amazing poem.

I had to study 'Ligea' and 'The Fall of the House of Usher' last year for my American Lit module, it was my favourite bit of the course.

Anyone who likes Poe may also like Washington Irving, another American gothic writer, although I think he was slightly before Poe.

He wrote Rip Van Winkle and also Sleepy Hollow (which has nothing in common with the Johnny Depp film apart from the title) which are both very awesome and full of political allegory. (Which I suppose is only awesome if you're an English Lit student and enjoy ripping apart the meaning behind texts until there is no joy left in them...:nana:)

[GorillaBearBear]

Never been a fan of Poe. His poetry has a fantastic command of structure, and I suppose he almost always achieves what he set out to do - to create an atmosphere of menace and dread - although in the modern world most of his stuff has lost it's impact - The Telltale Heart just seems silly now, and while the character in the Raven is obviously pretty freaked out, I find it doesn't affect me that much, being a cynical modern youth as I am. Having said that, the Pit and the Pendulum really grabbed me by the balls and nailed them to the wall the first time I read it.

But the big problem I have with Poe is that his aim was always to make something as unnerving as possible. Aside from that, there isn't a lot of meat to his stories or poems. Characterisation is usually reasonably shallow, and the plots tend to hinge on one thing in their entirety. Then again, maybe I am just not a fan of this "atmospheric" sort of writing. He's certainly leaps and bounds ahead of most modern authors.

Is he really gothic though? Perhaps I just haven't read enough of it, and I certainly haven't read any for a very long time, but I didn't think it was really very gothic in the "gormenghast," grotesque, sense.

[Smartie]

Ya, a lot of his poems are pretty good, but by today's standards, are not scary at all. Back then he made people piss their pants though.


I'm afraid that completely depends on your definition.
Also his work wasn't supposed to be scary.
It's thought provoking, psychological, often humourous, but not scary.

Good horror doesn't need gore and blood - that's Hollywoods twist. Good horror needs to be thought provoking, challenging, macabre and reasonably realistic. People are too exposed to "horror" - constantly seeking things more and more shocking for it to be believable. It's about how the author plants ideas into your head and genuinely makes you start to wonder. Poe wrote things which you could genuinely believe could happen. The masque of the red death can be considered in similarity with AIDS. That's why his writing has longevity.


There are lots and lots of contemporary remakes of Poe-based films which have just been gored up to try and shock and up the bloodfest ante. I will never ever chose a contemporary remake over an original. House of wax, for example was absolutely awful, although the original was a genuine masterpiece. You'll be amazed just how many recent films are actually remakes. The originals are vastly superior in every aspect because they don't need to rely on horrific shock tactics to draw in the viewer.

I'd urge anyone to read the original texts and try to compare to the hollywood gore-fest film versions, and modern horror literature. There really is no comparison.

[GorillaBearBear]

Oh gosh I'm not sure that is why he was saying that Poe doesn't have the impact now that he used to. It certainly wasn't why I said it.

Poe uses words as a very visceral, primal medium. It's all calculated to create a certain feeling, but word shift and language evolution takes away a lot of what made it scary back then, especially to anyone who is not used to reading literature from that era. Sure, you can appreciate how it would be unnerving, some of them still are, but most of the time I think they fall a bit flat nowadays. It's hard to imagine ladies fainting while reading the Pit and the Pendulum nowadays.

It's rather like jokes in Shakespeare. None of them are funny anymore.

[feeshy]

Sure, you can appreciate how it would be unnerving, some of them still are, but most of the time I think they fall a bit flat nowadays. It's hard to imagine ladies fainting while reading the Pit and the Pendulum nowadays.


The thing is though, I think that's true for all writing-based horror. It hasn't really changed much over the years because it all relies on basic themes and ideas, yet our perception of what is scary and what isn't is a bit different, especially now we rely on special effects and visual medium to scare us.

[GorillaBearBear]

I don't think that's true. I don't read much horror because I think it's a pretty silly genre, but I think if you compare Poe, Stephen King and tacky point horror you can see how far the second two are from Poe. Poe relies on the repetition of a central device to create a mounting sense of dread. King is quite similar, but he will use several devices for the same affect. King probably couldn't create atmosphere in the same way as Poe because the types of language Poe used, while effective, would just seem faintly ridiculous now. More to the point, maybe, is that people don't have the patience for that slow buil anymore, hence why I brought in the tacky point horror stories - they rely almost exclusively on a fast switch between events which are almost always shocking. Perhaps the more sophisticated ones mix shock with bathos, but for tension rather than to unnerve.

But that wasn't really the point I was trying to make. I was saying that because Poe is categorically focussed on atmosphere rather than story, and he does that with as little actually in the story as possible - he uses language to turn what he has into something unsettling. The only problem is that the way he uses his language is so important to the story that it no longer has the same affect because we aren't as used to that style, and therefore a lot of the nuances are lost on us.

[Hannisburg]

I really enjoyed reading Poe's 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'. I read it for a 'Literary Detectives' unit on my degree and in comparison to later crime writers (Christie, Paul Auster etc.) Poe was a million times better written and about that again in terms of enjoyability!