The heat of summer is finally cooling down here on the east coast, so why not a chilling read? September's selection is "The Fall of the House of Usher and other tales". If this meets with approval, I thought perhaps we could read 3-4 stories a week. Any thoughts or suggestions?

Here is how my book is set up:

Week 1, Sept 1-6th "The Balloon Hoax"; "Ms. Found in a Bottle"; "A Descent into the Maelstrom"; and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue".

Week 2, Sept 7th-13th "The Purloined Letter"; "The Black Cat"; and "The Fall of the House of Usher"

Week 3, Sept 14th-20th "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Masque of the Red Death"'; 'The Cask of Amontillado" and "The Assignation"

Week 4 Sept 21st- end of month "The Tell-Tale Heart", "Diddling", "The Man that was Used Up".

My edition also has a novella entitled "Narrative of A Gordon Pym." Does anyone else have this, or any differing stories?

Football season in the US official kicks off September 7th, and I become a football widow free to read as much as I can.

Here's a short bio on Mr. Poe found in the front of my book, "Edgar Allan Poe was born 19th of January 1809 in Boston. He has been given credit for inventing the detective story and his pshycological thrillers have been infuences for many writers worldwide. Edgar and his brother and sister were orphaned before Edgar's third birthday and Edgar was taken in to the home of John and Fanny Allan in Richmond, Va. In January 1847 Virginia Died and Edgar took this very hard but he kept on writing until the day he died in Baltimore October 7, 1849."

I live just outside of Philadelphia and plan on visiting the Edgar Allan Poe house in this region, as he lived in the area for a short period of time. There is also an exhibit in Baltimore where Mr. Poe lived. I'll try to head down there by train, as it is a short trip. If these come to fruition I'll do my best to share any pictures or insight.

Happy Reading!

sebastiancat, I've got all your stories in my Penguin edition, except for "The Balloon Hoax", "The Assignation" and "Diddling". But I can read them on line. There's a complete edition of Poe here, and there's a site called abacci which has some of them in *.lit format for reading on Microsoft Reader (which I've got somewhere on my system).

I'm all ready for the off, both in cassette and book form. My hard copy has the extra novel too, which looks to be roughly the same length as all the other stories put together.

I seem to have the same book as you Tabby Tom, so thanks for the site with the missing ones on. So we start with The Balloon Hoax, eh? Then:
"Ms. Found in a Bottle"; "A Descent into the Maelstrom"; and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Are you ready? On your marks.....

Sebastaincat, we must have the same book? Mine has exactly the same content as yours. It is called "The Fall Of The House Of Usher and other tales" with an introduction by Stephen Marlowe. It's my daughter's, and she also has "Eight Tales Of Terror" and "Forgotten Tales" both which have some interesting info on Poe and the stories.

Yahoo LindaC. That means I must keep myself accurate or you can say "Crystal that is not what is in our version"

I have the day off today and do not want to do the laundry so I'll start reading shortly.

Sebastaincat, the great thing about this edition is that it showcases all types of stories that Poe wrote, not just his horror stories which Poe is perhaps most famous for.

I have finished the first two and am busily reading the third, but I will wait to post until the others have time to do some reading, too.

Yes, Linda, I do agree with you, there's no denying that Poe was an extremely talented writer who could turn his hand to many different styles. I've read a few of his short stories and most of his poetry and, although his works are generally dark and macabre, I do like his use of language. It's only the horror stories themselves which have never really appealed to me. That, however, might be because I was put off by all those corny, old Hammer House of Horror films like 'The Pit and the Pendulum'...not my sort of thing at all.

What a coincidence that in our first story, 'The Balloon Hoax', just as in our previous book by Wells, we witness Poe's scientific mind at work actively pre-empting yet another breakthrough of discovery. The first dirigible balloon wasn't assembled and flown until 1852, after Poe's death!

It also interested me to find that Poe cleverly included in this story so much factual information, especially regarding some of the characters, which must have added that touch of authenticity which made the article sound so plausible when it was first published. While I was googling for a chronology of the history of flight I found some information which verified that Mason and Holland were indeed keen balloonists.

www.geocities.com/Colosseum/Hoop/4390/history2.htm

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November 7-8, 1836

first long-distance flight in a balloon

Veteran British pilot Charles Green (1785-1870) flew the "Royal Vauxhall", with two passengers aboard (Monck Mason and Robert Holland), from London to Weilburg in the German Duchy of Nassau (a distance of 380 miles (770 km), in 18 hours)

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I've just found an entry regarding The Balloon Hoax in Wikipedia. It shows the actual diagram of the balloon as printed in the published article.

http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Balloon-Hoax

Interestingly, it also speculates that Poe might have been the person responsible for the printed retraction. So it looks as if this must have been either a publicity stunt, or a bit of a fund raiser when times were hard for Poe.

Any ideas which?

It looks like a bit of both, I think ,Izzi:
There is "an explanation directly from Poe that these headlines had first appeared in the New York Sun and had excited all of the "quidnuncs," or busybodies in New York before they had received verification from Charleston that the story was not true at all. He adds that the mad rush of people to buy the newspaper was beyond description, implying that this was amusing to him. Finally, he states with great pride that even if a balloon named "Victoria" did not actually cross the Atlantic Ocean as the article initially reported, there is not a single flaw in his story to prove otherwise, since it was so convincingly written due to Poe's literary talents. "
I am pretty sure it wpould have convinced ME!

Ren, I would have believed Poe was actually reporting the first Atlantic balloon crossing, too. It certainly would have convinced me.

Izzi, thank you for the wonderful sites. I urge everybody to check them both out. It was really fun to look over the history of hot air ballooning and seeing all the hot air balloon postage stamps. I really enjoyed reading a copy of Poe's actual article, too.

Another interesting bit of balloon history, that you might enjoy, is that the Robert Scott expedition in 1902 was first the fly a balloon in the Antarctic, and Ernest Shackleton was among the first passengers.

There is one passage in "The Balloon-Hoax" that I really enjoyed. Poe had been describing two balloon models. One is very complex and excited great attention--but it just doesn't work. The other, which works wonderfully, has a simple design. Poe says:

"it excited very little interest in comparison with the previous comlex machine of Mr. Henson--so resolute is the world to despise any thing which carries with it an air of simplicity. To accomplish the great desideratium of aerial navigation, it very very generally supposed that some exceedingly complicated application must be made of some unusually profound principle in dynamics."

Back before there were loads of blood and violence on the big and little screen, we used to read Poe's story outloud to scare ourselves with as children. I so I think that's why I have all been such a fan of Poe's horror. One thing is the language Poe used--even if I didn't understand it all, I knew Poe was why different from what I had read before.

Some of Poe's most famous horror stories are included in this collecton, so maybe, together, we can all look at each from different points of views, and see them in a new light.

It has been an incredibly busy week here at work and home, so I'm sorry I haven't had a chance to put in my two cents worth. It's actually a good thing that it is a series of short selections as it makes the reading much faster. I just finished up "The Balloon Hoax" and read over everyone's comments.

I found myself checking out the background of Mr. Poe on the Web, and as I did that and read the "Balloon Hoax" I was amazed that he could come up with such and intellectual and scientific story. All accounts about Poe's life indicate he was a troubled person, always at odd's for money. It stated that in school and West Point he excelled in mathematics, which is perhaps an indication of where this stories logical background came from.

Thanks everyone for humoring me and letting this book be selected. I plan on reading more today at lunch.

I'm going on vacation for a week, so I probably won't be leaping into this discussion until the end of the month. I hope you all get off to a rolling start, and I look forward to joining in later.

Poe WAS a troubled person, and most likely suffered from brain lesions as well as alcoholism. His head was noticeably lop-sided---but the brain it contained was an A-Number-One quality brain. (*grin*) Much of Poe's knowledge was self-taught, which was quite common for the intelligent but poor people of his day.

It appears there is a controversy about Poe’s death, which include the possibility of brain lesions, to rabies even to his inability to digest alcohol, which cased a severe reaction to anything he drank. There is also a theory called “cooping”, where in persons were forced to vote for a particular person, came out of the voting booth and had to change clothes. If they did not due this they were beaten severely. This theory came up because Poe was in clothes that were scruffy and not his usual attire. The flipside is that Poe was recognizable in the area regardless of what he wore. Whatever the case may be, he was a troubled individual, and yet produced some amazing works. In the fine line that is both genius and insanity, Poe crossed over many times.


“Descent into Maelstrom” was a fascinating story, blending factual persons and locations, with fictional characters of Poe. The scholar Jonas Ramus mentioned in the story is real, and as self-taught as Poe is, he could have found information concerning both Ramus and the Maelstrom in the 6th edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica, printed in 1823. Lofoden, Vurggh and Moskoe are all real places in Norway.

"Never shall I forgot the sensation of awe, horror, and admiration with which I gazed about me.” This sentence reminded me of an old science teacher I had. I lived in the Pacific Northwest for 17 years, and each year in school we would have earthquake drills, what to do in case of an earthquake. His insight was that in such an event, if possible to look around and take in just what nature can do for you and to you. Having lived through a major earthquake I can get a small, very small sense of what the old man in the story was speaking of. Despite the horrendous fear, there is still a part of you that can’t but help admire the force and majesty of nature, even if it is destructive.

I tried to find the article of Archimedes, and the site I was on www.bookrags.com, indicated that this was a ‘fabrication’ of Poe, as no such article exists. I was convinced it was real. At the end of the story we have to decide if the telling was truth, or fiction, much like the “Balloon Hoax”.

“MS Found in a bottle” starts with the main character and our narrator indicating he is a skeptic, a Pyrrohonist (a Greek philosopher 270bc who believed that there are no finite truths in this world). This sets the stage to the reader, that our narrator is not giving to flights of fancy, so anything he has to say must be the truth. It’s curious that both “Descent into Maelstrom” and “MS Found in a bottle” both deal with nature’s fury, specifically the wide open sea”. The main character in “MS” finds his skepticism being challenged with the supernatural when he comes face to face with what can only be described as a “ghost ship”, one whose crew is very old and aged. Their purpose, according to the narrator, is death. The protagonist finally found himself open to discovery and to another side of life, only to be faced with death.

The final story for this week was “The Murders in the Rue Morgue”. I greatly enjoyed this story, as it brought to mind the inner workings of Holmes and Watson. Dupin thought outside the box, and solved an extraordinary mystery that had others baffled. The friendship between Dupin and the narrator was an interesting one, retiring into a big old house to exploring the nighttime. How Dupin traced his friends train of thought one evening, showed his depth of imagination and understanding of his friend. Dupin is to make a return appearance in “The Purloined Letter” and I look forward to that.

As a complete aside, I ran across a book at Amazon.com entitled “Nevermore” by Harold Schechter. The book casts Edgar Allan Poe as the narrator recounting a tale of homicide with his own style of rapturous morbidity. I might have to pick up a copy just for the sheer fun of it.

In MS. Found in a Bottle, I wondered if the ghost ship was the "Flying Dutchman" and that finally the ghostly crew found peace from wandering the seven seas at last? After finishing the story, I came across this in the edition of Poe "Eight Tales Of Terror" published by Scholastic:

"The "I" of this story is a scientist who hates superstition. Such a man would only report what actually happened, says Poe: he would not stretch the "facts. In writing this weird tale of a ghost ship, did Poe make use of Samuel Coleridge's "The Rime of the Ancient Mariner"? The gloss, or prose guide, that appears alongside this poem contains such phrases as "The ship driven by a storm toward the South Pole" and "The land of ice, and of fearful sounds where on no living thing can be seen." These and other passages keep alive the rumor that Poe was deeply impressed by Coleridge's ballad of death".

It also says that in 1833, "MS. In A Bottle" won $50 and first prize in a story writing contest held by the "Baltimore Saturday Vistor".

"A Descent into the Malestrom" illustrates that Poe could set a mood of terror in few woods. Right off, we know that we are being related an experience so horrifying that the guide's jet black hair had turned white and has greatly aged him.

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" really shows another facet of Poe's talent. The story does not move forward using horror, but logic. This was supposedly the first story to use crime and detection, which (as already been mentioned) was later put to such great use by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in his Holmes and Watson stories.

All of us have heard that Poe's life was troubled by "demons" of various addictions, tragic loves, illness, etc. I wonder if Poe's stories are the result of those "demons" or despite of them? It seems that his writing became stranger as he went along.

Well, it took me a little time to warm to Poe, but by the end of the third week I think I'm getting into him.

"The Balloon Hoax" was a good start. Of course, one can enjoy the hoax so well because one knows it's a hoax: like some others, I suspect I'd have been taken in if I'd read it in its original newspaper report format.

As for "MS Found in a Bottle" and "Descent into the Maelstrom" I didn't take to these at first, but I've gone back and re-read them, and can now see how in each case the terrors of the world can be overcome by the human will - the fisherman's determination to survive in "Descent" and the narrator's desire to discover the hitherto unsuspected truth even at the price of death in "MS Found in a Bottle."

The Dupin stories were a revelation. As with so many truly original works, it makes me wonder how it would have felt to read them when they were first published. Coming out when Sherlock Holmes was nearly half a century in the future, they must have seemed utterly new in a way that's difficult to imagine now.

Poe's detective, Dupin, fascinates me with his clever thought proccesses but annoys me immensely with his arrogance. Like Holmes and Poirot, Dupin gets too much of a kick out of proving his superiority. The "Murders of the Rue Morgue" came across that way to me, some of the facts seemed completely superfluous, and the reader didn't appear to stand much of a chance at solving the case before it was explained.

I couldn't quite understand why Poe styled Dupin as an incredibly brilliant detective with such a highly superior brain and yet totally destitute and dependant on the handouts of a stranger. Did I miss something?

"The Purloined Letter" almost got skipped because of Dupin's arrogance, but I'm glad that I read it after all. The ending surprised me, not in the way that the case was solved, (that was fairly obvious this time), but because Dupin didn't seem concerned that he wouldn't be given the credit for doing so, nor that the blackmailer wouldn't have realised that he'd had the tables turned on him. Dupin might have been very glad of the reward money, and would have wallowed in the revenge, but somehow I felt that recognition would be so much more important to him.

The horror stories really don't appeal to me, but I have read a few of them through. Once again, I found Poe's writing skills superb, his evocative words chosen with such care, bringing a real sense of suspense into these tales.

I wasn't quite sure what to make of The Pit and the Pendulum. Are we to believe that he really lived through the sheer terror, or was it supposed to be just a drug induced dream?

My favourites so far have been the mysteries. In "MS Found in a Bottle", there's an addendum in my copy which states that he didn't know of Mercator's map when he first wrote this tale. An unexpected touch of humility, or was Poe just proving that despite not having prior knowledge of Mercator's work he understood these things anyway?

Poe certainly was a strange one!

I've been very bad this month. I'm only up to "Black Cat" and I picked the book! It has been a rough month so hopefully i can do some catch up work soon.

The only Edgar Allan Poe I had read prior to this book was in school, and it was "The Raven", "Tell-Tale Heart" and the "Pit and the "Pendulum", so it was an interesting twist to see other genres exposed in this book.

"Purloined Letter" actually reminded me of a Holmes story I read a few months ago, or perhaps it would be more correct to say that there was a Holmes story that now reminds me of "Purloined Letter". In it a young woman possesses a letter that has the potential to cause a great deal of trouble so Holmes is hired. After causing a disturbance, I believe someone yelled "FIRE" or something like that, the letters whereabouts were exposed. Holmes figured that in case of great emergency a person would run to that which means the most, in this case it would be the letter. Sneaky Holmes.

"Black Cat" actually disturbed me. You could almost peer into Poes' mind and soul and see it churning and bubbling with latent anger and paranoia. I'm against cruelty to animals and have two cats myself and the nonchalant way Poe was able to describe the tortures he did to this cat, with the eye and then blockading it in the cellar, only to be tormented by his own twisted conscience....

I'm going away this weekend for my 6month anniversary (you can tell we are newlyweds, celebrating only 6months. What would be the gift for that you wonder? Cardboard? I will catch up with everyone soon.

Quote:

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I couldn't quite understand why Poe styled Dupin as an incredibly brilliant detective with such a highly superior brain and yet totally destitute and dependant on the handouts of a stranger. Did I miss something?

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Izzi, I've always suspected Poe made his detective this way because Dupin represents Poe himself. Poe was a no doubt brilliant man, who never seemed to quite make his mark on the world---at least not during his lifetime. He spent much of his life dependent on friends, relatives, and even strangers. And Dupin isn't the only Poe character with these traits.

I expect you are right MsBatt, many of his characters appear to share some of his own personality and character traits.

I have long been a fan of Poe's horror, but I really appreciate sebastiancat giving me the opportunity to explore the other types of his stories. I really had no idea that the arm chair/thinking detectives genre owed so much to Poe's Dupin. I guess even Nero Wolfe would come under this genre, also?

"The Black Cat" was a case of Jusctice served for me. The narrator would have us believe that his sadistic ways were only given free rein by his alchohol problems. I think a lot of alcholics use their drinking as an excuse to be abusive, and I very much enjoyed the ironic fact that the black cat was his downfall.

"The Fall of the House of Usher" is one of my favorite Poe stories. It seems to me to a gothic tale with everything rolled into one--and I love the ending when the House comes crashing down.
Poe also brings up a real fear that people had back at his time--that of being buried alive and uses it to great effect.

I think the events in "The Pit and the Pendulum" were actually real. It's the tale of a poor soul tortured during the Inquistion and literally snatched from death's door by lucky intervention. It's actually one of Poe's horror tales that ended on less than a tragic note, too. In fact, the ending was upbeat.

"The Cask of the Amontillado" is my absolute favorite Poe story. It's the story of ultimate revenge and the perfect murder. Have you ever had a friendship that ended because, for whatever reason, you began to literally dislike this friend? Well, I think Montressor actually started as Fortunato's friend--but then, he beings to blame all his misfortunes on Fortunato's good fortune. He weighs every word that Fortunato says and finds it all insults. It just goes on and on until Montressor's affection for his friend is a burning, obessive hatred. He realizes he must get rid of Fortunato once and for all. Is Ontressor insane in a legal sense? I can't say, but he certainly is sane enough to plan the perfect murder.

In most of Poe's stories, the villian, insane or not, pays for his acts, but I don't think this was the case here. I think Montressor went right on with his daily life, put on a bereaved face when his friend doesn't show up, all the time laughing madly behind an outward mask of sorrow, and enjoys playing the "grieving friend.

"The Tell-Tale Heart" I love the way it begins. Here we have this character, obviously inasane (it certainly isn't sane to kill the old man because of his eye), but he assures us he is sane--and proceeds to prove it to his by telling us how carefully he planned and accomplished the old man's murder. He darn near got away with it, too--the same madness that drove him to kill in the first place, gets him caught.

I think "The Masque of the Red Death" says to me that we cannot change our fate or cheat death. This is the most horrifying of all Poe's stories to me, and my least favorite.

I am posting without my edition of Poe, which I don't really like to do, but hopefully, I have been coherent enough to add to the discussion of Poe's horror tales.

I agree entirely, Linda. This has been an excellent book to read...a really good choice, sebastiancat.

>>>I think the events in "The Pit and the Pendulum" were actually real. It's the tale of a poor soul tortured during the Inquistion and literally snatched from death's door by lucky intervention. It's actually one of Poe's horror tales that ended on less than a tragic note, too. In fact, the ending was upbeat.<<<

Yes, I feel quite sure that the incarceration was real enough, and the torture too, but to what degree? Would the walls have moved and the inferno suddenly disappear just as quickly as it appeared had this not been a dream?

The ending was surprising for me because, for once, it wasn't all doom and gloom, totally unlike Poe's normal work.

This month seems to have flown by for me, but I hope that we can discuss some of the stories in more depth once everyone's finished.

I realize this book wasn't for everyone, but I'm glad that everyone tried. I fudged a bit here and there due to a lot of business.

Linda..i just finished up "Cask of Amontillado" on the train ride home and am surprised in a unique way that this is your favorite. I completely understand with your synopsis and agree with the most part. My only cause for concern was that Montresso got away with the crime. My little sense of justice and fair play made me say "hey" as Fortunato was being mortared up.

I noticed Poe has a penchant for mortaring things up. In "Black Cat", the cat was walled up in the basement. In "Fall of the House of Usher", Usher's sister was boarded up in a wall and now this story. Perhaps it was the era or a uniquely justifiable fear of Poe's.

Today I was able to read not only "Cask" but "Fall of the House of Usher" and "Pit and the Pendulum", both of which emotionally shook me. Mostly because the horror is mental, you feel the anguish for the protagnoist in "Pit" and try to possibly conceive what that could feel like and fail miserably.

In "Fall of the house of usher" I wondered how much of Usher came from Poe himself. At times he seemed almost manic of two minds. The bosom friend who came to stay symbolized the rational, calm part of the mind, whereas Usher himself came to represent all that was irrational, paranoid. I wonder if Poe were alive today, would he be considered bipolar or manic-depressive?

The "Masque of the Red Death" was oddly horrifying. A ruler of the people holes himself and a 1,000 chosen friends up with provisions to sustain, while the outside world withers and dies away from the Red Death, only to find themselves plagued with it. Linda's observation that you cannot escape fate, and in this case death is keen.

I plan on finishing the rest of the book and commenting in addition to starting "Don Quixote".