https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Playlist
For Halloween 2024, you’ll have a wider variety of scary stories to choose from than ever before, and definitely a scarier variety. But whatever its relevance to the particular lives we might live or the particular fears we might feel today, it’s no wonder that such cutting-edge works are not only of historical interest but also of genuine chills. How many of these are likely to be read centuries later? As the 200th anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe’s literary debut approaches, and as Halloween approaches, the work of the American pioneer of the grotesque and macabre only becomes more and more problematic.
“The most definitively repeated phrase in Poe’s novels is, horror,” Marilyn Robinson writes: new york book reviews. “His stories often take the narrator and the reader to places where the use of the word is justified, where the word and the experience it evokes are explored or defined by their connotations. Clearly, therefore, crypts, burials, and physical morbidity appear in Poe’s writings with a salience not found in mainstream literature in general. He was fascinated by ideas, crime, and premature burials” – obsessions that have not lost much of their popularity since his time.
Upon closer examination, we find that “the horrors that captivated him and gave his stories their terrifying unity were often the inevitable confrontation of self with perfect justice, the revelation of which was a reactionary reaction of the mind.” It is an exposure of sin in such a way that “Robinson writes that this is true for works that are still widely read, including “The Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Mask of the Red Death,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Tell-Tale Heart.” .
You can hear all of these stories and more below. Youtube playlist aboveChristopher Lee, Vincent Price, William S. Burroughs, Orson Welles, Bela Lugosi, Basil Rathbone, and the late James Earl Jones. I am.
Whether you read it out loud or on the page, Robinson said: Poe has always been criticized or praised for the lack of moral content in his works, even though all of these stories are straightforward moral fables. For a writer so fascinated by the workings of the mind, his interest in conscience became an interest in concealment and self-deception, something secret and intensely personal and yet universal enough to shape civilization. It’s connected.” While there will be civilization, there will also be a telling heart. And on Halloween and other nights, some audiences will respond to Edgar Allan Poe’s brand of horror while having a story-telling heart.
Related content:
Download The Complete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Stories as a free ebook and audiobook
Why should you read Edgar Allan Poe? Animated video explains
Edgar Allan Poe’s 7 tips for writing vivid stories and poetry
Listen to the 14-hour “Essential Edgar Allan Poe” playlist: “The Raven,” “The Tell-Tale Heart,” and more
Hear the stories of Edgar Allan Poe read by Iggy Pop, Jeff Buckley, Christopher Walken, Marianne Faithful and more
Check out the bizarre animation of Edgar Allan Poe’s Tell-Tale Heart (1953), voted the 24th greatest cartoon of all time.
Based in Seoul, Colin Mbemust write and broadcastIt’s about cities, languages and cultures. His projects include the Substack newsletter books about cities and a book Stateless City: A Stroll Through Los Angeles in the 21st Century. Follow him on Twitter @Colinbemust or facebook.
Source: Open Culture – www.openculture.com
