utter randomonium

Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe: I have several overlapping collections of Poe, so I decided, once I’d finished reading them all, to put them all together in a single post here. I think by and large that I like Poe, but he seems to alternate between marvelous horror at his best and boring nonsense at his worst.

• The Assignation – I couldn’t follow this one. What did the drowning child and the art aficionado have to do with one another?
• The Balloon-Hoax – Wow. That was really boring.
• The Bells – Fun to read aloud.
• Berenice – Delightfully disturbing.
• The Black Cat – Deliciously horrific.
• The Cask of Amontillado – I think makes Poe so memorable is his vivid first-person accounts from the point of view of a killer.
• A Descent into the Maelstrom – Not too memorable.
• Diddling – A random essay on swindling.
• The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar – Enjoyably bizarre.
• The Fall of the House of Usher – Not as interesting as his others, but good atmosphere.
• Hop-Frog – Um. What is this man’s obsession with orangutans?
• The Imp of the Perverse – A strange little story on why we knowingly act not in our own interest – such as lying, procrastinating, drinking, and other things sure to get us into trouble – to explain a confession of murder.
• Ligeia – Didn’t really go anywhere.
• The Man That was Used Up – Silly, amusing, but ends a bit too abruptly.
• The Masque of the Red Death – Meh. Weird for no reason and kind of boring.
• Metzengerstein – I’m not sure I entirely understand what happened in this one.
• MS. Found in a Bottle – Good suspense, but the ending confused me.
• The Murders in the Rue Morgue – A rather silly Holmes-esque mystery tale.
• The Mystery of Marie Roget – Needlessly complicated and hard to follow. There’s a reason Holmes became famous and Dupin did not.
• The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym – Some good bits, but I think I just don’t like maritime fiction.
• The Pit and the Pendulum – A delightful tale of suspense.
• The Purloined Letter – Not bad, but far too wordy.
• The Raven – An old favorite. I love the contrast between the subject matter and the singsong cadence.
• A Tale of the Ragged Mountains – Kind of weird. I’m not sure if I liked it or not.
• The Tell-Tale Heart – Funnier than I’d remembered. One of my all-time favorites.
• “Thou Art the Man” – Clever but very predictable.
• William Wilson – Brilliant piece of horror.