The flyleaf bookcover writes that Edgar Allan Poe is the father of short stories. The tales, though I have long known and thrilled to some of their very names - the Tell-Tale Heart, the Masque of the Red Death, the Cask of Amontillado - aren't as delightfully engaging as classics sometimes are. The turn of phrase sometimes chimes with my very soul in Dickens or Tolkien.
Poe's stories make me wonder if a short story isn't really an essay, illustrated with a fictional incident. There is a thesis on human psychology preambling every tale.
The prose - constant prose, verging towards stream of consciousness, little dialogue - gets very tedious at times.
I thought I would delight in a good volume of ghost stories, but I struggled to stay focused on them.
Thursday, December 27, 2007
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