Posted on 10/06/2019 9:09:58 PM PDT by vannrox
Poe would have been a “goth” today, so obsessed he was with death.
He was a weirdo. Meager talent but vaunted for the same reasons as Stephen King. Just told scary stories so people think him to be deep or something.
For some reason my Father read Poe to me when I was little.
Meager talent? Hardly that and a far better writer than that hack Stephen King!
Though you obviously don't appreciate his work, you are hardly a knowledgable nor qualified judge of Poe's abilities, the era in which he wrote, or a credible reviewer.
Victorian America was just as strange as Victorian Europe.
Caught ‘The Pit and the Pendellum’ the other day. Vincent Price. The mother had been walled in (buried alive, which was a thing back then).
Drugs, booze, and bad dreams, I think were Mr Poe’s problem. However, he’d had a knack for the macbre that was interesting. The Mask Of The Red Death didn’t leave out the privileged. Just saying. Vincent Price narrated some of Poe’s stories with great effect. If you happen to be in the mood.
He did invent the modern detective story.
Hardly meager. Albeit, Poe was a strange cat.
POE and H.P. Lovecraft. Two of the best! Of course there are others trying to best them, and many of them are good!
He had a terrible childhood, a nasty, brutish father, times were extremely different from what any of us know/have ever known now, and the stories about his drinking are just that...stories! Nobody even know why or how he died, for sure and certain; it's all rumors and innuendo.
That link led to utter C-R-A-P! :-(
You left out Ambrose Bierce; who should be included with the other two.
He really reflected the era, if not influenced it. I studied him a bit. Big fan.
He appealed to many. Then and now. Even the ‘Simpsons’ have used his work in their Halloween Specials. (Tell Tale Heart and The Raven)
Classic works.
People, back then, had a terrible fear of burial alive. WHY? Because it did happen!
Both Poe and Nathanial Hawthorne, to name but two of America's best writers of that era, wrote undeniable great fiction in the GOTHIC style and true "classics", which many other later authors have been influenced by.
I too have been a huge fan of Poe's works, from the time I first read them win 7th or 8th grade; when schools actually required kids to read and know great literary works.
Dang, you beat me to it.
When I saw the thread title, that song immediately came to mind.
My mother gave me a book of Poe’s stories when I was around five or six years old.
It was my favorite book.
At the same time, I was also becoming a Stephen King fan.
I read some Poe in grade school it was OK. Jack London was a way better story teller I thought.
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