Edgar Allan Poe

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That was nice. Almost like an adaptation of "The Oval Portrait", only about The Raven. Incidentally, I love silent movies. There's something about them (the way they are shot, the acting, the mostly visual storytelling, etc) that just captures my attention in a way other movies don't--or can't. I do enjoy a good deal of modern movies of all sorts, but they really don't make them like they used to anymore.
 
Yes, I've posted it before. But one of the demands of middle or old age is to recall the ignorance of youth. What we have known, they know not. And so it goes.

EDGAR ALLAN POE - The Assignation on Vimeo
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Mark S.
 
Anyone else see Extraordinary Tales on Netflix???
Pure concentrated Poe with Christopher Lee, Bela Lugosi, Del Toro, etc narrating. Animated but with AWESOME art! Loved it!
 
Yesterday I paid a visit to the Edgar Allan Poe Museum in Richmond, VA. This interview with the curator summarizes my experience quite well.

https://youtu.be/8jZChWBJDNc

And at the gift shop I scored a reprint of Tales of Mystery and Imagination, with illustrations by Harry Clarke. It's an incredibly sexy volume, and though it isn't the first edition it's a treasure in itself.
 
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I'm currently listening to an audiobook of this, which is pure bliss. "The Masque of the Red Death" is a masterpiece of atmosphere and horror.

It's certainly not news to anyone, but Lovecraft deeply plundered Poe's style and content in creating his own. Which is fine, as I did the same to Lovecraft when I first started writing prose. So it goes, as those who bite get bitten.

Nemonymous said:
Nemonymous said:




My favourite Poe - I am reviewing it here after first reading it in 1965 -- https://dflewisreviews.wordpress.com/2015/04/20/tales-of-mystery-and-imagination-edgar-poe/
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Just finished this review.
Has anyone else compared The Giaour by Lord Byron (about Leila) with LIGEIA?
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In Lovecraft's early, imperfecr stories, the influence of Poe is evertwhere, I agree.

But actually if anyone plundered Poe, it was M. P. Shiel. Or maybe he channeled him. "The House of Sounds " is the greatest story Poe ever wrote, fifty years after his death.

Regarding Lovecraft, I agree with Edmund Wilson on one point: his style could never be mistaken for Poe's, not in his mature works. In "The Colour Out of Space" and "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," Lovecraft is a far better stylist, at least to my taste, if not Wilson's.
 
Shiel's dependence on Poe was hilarious. So many shameless rip-offs. Mostly entertaining, thankfully. The man was half hack and half brilliant.

I think Poe was a better stylist than Lovecraft, but this is more to do with how highly I rate Poe than me being dismissive of Lovecraft's style. Lovecraft at his best was as good as Poe, for sure. I think he was at his best when his narratives more resembled Poe's, as with The Music of Erich Zann or Dagon. Worthy of the master. Other times he feels like a Poe parodist, such as in The Lurking Fear, Herbert West or The Horror at Red Hook. It's hard for me to really imagine Poe writing horror stories with stylistic deficiencies such as those. He was of such a high literary level.

Ligeia, The Fall of the House of Usher and The Masque of the Red Death are still just so far ahead of what almost anybody in the field is doing.
 
HPL built off his Poeish foundation, to be sure.

Lovecraft's later, best work also benefited from a century of technological, scientific, medical, philosophical, and artistic advances.

Druidic said:
In Lovecraft's early, imperfecr stories, the influence of Poe is evertwhere, I agree.

But actually if anyone plundered Poe, it was M. P. Shiel. Or maybe he channeled him. "The House of Sounds " is the greatest story Poe ever wrote, fifty years after his death.

Regarding Lovecraft, I agree with Edmund Wilson on one point: his style could never be mistaken for Poe's, not in his mature works. In "The Colour Out of Space" and "The Case of Charles Dexter Ward," Lovecraft is a far better stylist, at least to my taste, if not Wilson's.
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Yes, T, E., the early stories like "The Tomb" and "The Alchemist" read like uninspired imitations of Poe with some Hawthorne thrown in. Fortunately, this would soon change. "In the Vault" is an early 20's tale that pretty much feels like Lovecraft to me. It's a grand tale of gruesome horror that Stephen King often confuses with "The Tomb" (arrgh!) Still in a subsequent story, "Hypnos," Lovecraft fell back inro Poe parody...regrettably. But he was growing out of it. I can imagine Poe writing "The Purple Cloud" but never "The Dunwich Horror"...
 
Sorry, James,but I must disagree. I'll stand with Robert M. Price and claim it as one of Lovecraft's three best stories. It wasn't until critics like Mosig began to harp on it not towing the philosophical line, that some began to underestimste its brillance. It contains Lovecraft's most memorable characters and, honestly, like Peter Penzoldt remarked in "The Supernatural in Literature", HPL always improved on what he borrowed. Like the Bard.
 
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Your post implies Robert M. Price disagrees with my perspective that it is a Machen pastiche, but he himself has said:

Robert M. Price said:
'The Dunwich Horror' is in every sense an homage to Machen and even a pastiche. There is little in Lovecraft's story that does not come directly out of Machen's fiction.
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I largely enjoy the story (I think it peaks with the discovery of Wilbur's body and wish it ended there), but I don't consider it one of Lovecraft's best ten stories, and I think Machen did it all better. My top three Lovecraft today would probably be The Music of Erich Zann, The Festival and The Shadow Over Innsmouth. Then again, maybe I'd include The Night Ocean, Dagon, The Colour Out of Space, The Case of Charles Dexter Ward or The Rats in the Walls. I think Lovecraft wrote his fair share of bad stories and lurid Weird Tales shlock, but he wrote more than enough classic stories for me to still worship him. The only reason I'm even aware of his predecessors who did it better is because of him.

I'm not a fan of In the Vault. I'd take The Tomb over it, honestly.
 
Don't get me wrong, James. I'm not putting down Machen's tale. I admire it as well. But I don't see "Dunwich" as being pastiche in any way. The connections between the two stories are vague at best. People over intellectualize it because HPL gave Artie a tip of the hat.

In Wikipedia's entry for the story you'll find mention that Price regards it still as his favorite. Kingsley Amis in New maps of Hell singled it out for praise along with "The Rats in rhe Walls."
 
I think it's pure Machen, down to the descriptions of the 'domed hills'. I wasn't criticising the story when I said it was a Machen pastiche. I can't think of a single weird writer who wasn't heavily indebted to what went before – including Poe. I just think The Great God Pan is a more subtle and frightening story.

The Dunwich Horror is still overall decent due to its strong atmosphere. I listened to a YouTube reading of it recently and overall had a nice time. Certainly a much better time when I listened to The Thing on the Doorstep earlier in the year and was left wondering why I liked the story so much upon initial reading.
 
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