/lit/ - Literature

Already one Poe thread in the catalog that discusses the same topics as yours >>23113300

>moby dick - the boys fuck around on a boat - end

>>23113924
Not exactly the same thing. What I want to know is how he managed to actually become of the U.S. canonical writers, consdering his uneventful stories.

>>23113932
>the raven - guy tries to get annoying bird out of the house - end
I agree, this guy isn't finna bussin fr and was probably a racist sexist ableist intelligencist islamaphobic transphobic chud

>>23113932
We don't need two Poe threads.

Your a fag.

he should have put zombies and ninjas in his book

>>23114005
And crocodiles, pokémon, and rabbis

>>23113932
Wow. I don’t usually say this but…

filtered.

>Hop-Frog - midget tricks a king into dressing up like an orangutan, hangs him from a chandelier, and then sets him on fire.

>>23113919
You don't explain how they fall flat. What specifically do you think he's lacking? All those synopses you gave sound potentially compelling, yet you seem to think their weakness is self-evident.

What he's aiming at in these short stories is an intense, fascinated, compulsive focus on a single image or vignette. It's the throb of the heart under the floorboards, the man seeing the last brick seal him into his tomb, the aristocrat awaking from his trance to find his sister's bloody teeth in his hand.

He strips away the subtleties of character and plot in order to set up his black, bare, showman's stage, with a pale corpse in a varnished box. You might think that that aesthetic is dry and oversimplified, but it's because of - not despite - that compression, that obsessive intensification and distillation, that people like Poe.

There's none of Hawthorne's moral allegories or fireside quaintness framing the scene. There's none of the normal narrative development of the nineteenth-century tale, because while those tales concern the complexities of the social world - complexities you can chart and navigate and unravel into a plot - Poe is concerned with obsessive psychological states that are detached from any world and any thing except their object of fixation.

The criminal in a Dickens story is a figure either of moral approbation or of tragic pity. He has a social meaning, and you respond to the story as you would respond to an anecdote told you by a friend. The criminal in a Poe story is beyond social reference points: he is simply a breathless voice of manic compulsion that carries you along in its hell-bound momentum.

If emotions respond to people and events, the states Poe explores respond to singular dream images - the oblong box, the hooded Inquisitor, the unknown man in the crowd. When you wake from a dream, haunted by some face, some gloomy building you walked through, some domestic object turned strangely ominous, I'd wager you wouldn't call that dream simple. In fact it's so dense with enigmatic significance that you wouldn't be able to begin to unravel it, because the significance seems bound up with that haunting image itself, not the development of episodes around it.

While the nineteenth-century realists were still spinning anecdotes as if everyone knew what the human mind was, Poe was distilling the irrational dream-energy that would later be fuel for modernism. That's why the surrealists liked him, that's why Baudelaire admired him, that's why he broke new ground for fiction. Anyway, that's my angle on him.

>>23113919
Plotfags and charactercucks once again filtered by the master.

>>23113919
I don't think I've ever seen someone get so filtered. Are you ESL?

>>23113945
We don't need 14 Nietzsche or Blood Meridian threads either, but here we all are.

>>23113919
>The Tempest- Guy gets stuck on a island. End.

>>23114051
Nice blog post faggot. How delusional do you have to be to think anyone's going to read all that babble?

OP literally mentioned the problem with his stories. They're are no seconf or third acts. He sets things up and then ends them abruptly. It's like he was terrible storyteller out somethong.

>>23114605
So you think a proper plot and complex characters are irrelevant to stories? Why the fuck do you read stories then? Just read the fucking dictionary if you want to glance over some words.

>>23115411
post a selfie. i have a strong feeling that you are obese

>>23113919
I like his stories but think his poetry is awful.

>>23115411
>what is a short story

>>23115431
Even short stories are supposed to have a beginning, middle and end. If it's just the setup, it's not a story. It's only the first act. It's lazy writing.

>>23115425
Why? Because I'm on Mobile and didn't proof read before sending? You'll make a shit detective.

I've read his pendulum and other short stories when I was a kid and enjoyed it. I was reading anything I could get my hands on and Poe was the first taste of good literature for me, I've forgotten a lot of other junk but not him. so I think for a child a book from Poe is a good gift. don't see the point of reading them again when you're older though.

>>23113919
>style over substance
Welcome to /lit/ enjoy your stay.

>>23113919
>The Premature Burial - open with a page about how extremely spooky the story is going to be and how the reader should get themselves in the right mood

That's your job, Poe!

>>23115411
>They're are no seconf or third acts.
This is what happens when your aesthetic sensibilities are heavily informed by Marvel movies.

>>23115419
They are scaffolding to get to the core of literature. A few writers of extreme excellence managed to write novels basically without them (thinking of Celine for instance, but Poe occasionally fits the bill) and you don't miss them provided the style and effect are there.

>>23113919
Y’all niggas should read Eureka then come back

Agree. Just dropped a collection of his short stories. They lack substance, they have no soul. It's as if his main purpose was trying to make his writing "pretty" but in the road completely forgot that the story needs to be alive.

This is why I found his poetry more compelling, in poetry you can abandon the essence of a work and focus only on beauty.

the times were different and he was targeting the audience of his era. in the absence of modern distractions those concepts of his stories were easily taken as the dominant focus of the moment for the characters involved. people had less guidance in the form of pressure from family, society, and the media and any topic could hold their attention for far longer with genuine interest.
a guy in the other thread asked " what perceived slight caused Montressor to decide to murder Fortunato? " and this is a good point for a reader of that era; what would motivate anyone to murder? psychology was not an established study at the time and no human behavior was well understood from the roots of the motives. people did crazy things and no one was in any position to criticize them; no one knew any better, as if we somehow do now.

>>23114051
Are you a PHD?

>>23115411
Read it. It's informative
Nothing wrong with a Sunday /lit/ blog post
It's kinda comfy

>>23115428
Ironic given they named the genre after him

>>23115800
What the fuck are you talking about?
I got into reading by devouring the works of Ronald Dahl as a child. He was a master storyteller and his short stories were fully formed.

Read Saki or O. Henry or even Chekhov and you'll find fully formed stories. You'll find a clear premise and excellent characters and interesting things happen to those characters and there's a resolution in the end.

How retarded are you that you think the 3-act structure is some kind of a goyslop invention? Read Arabian Nights or Aesop Fables and you'll find the 3-act structure. Read the Panchtantra tales from India. How far back do you want me to go, you stupid fuck?

A couple of disjointed scenes does not make a story.

>>23116402
Roald*

>>23113919
I don't remember much Poe--he's a high school read here, but try reading The Fall of the House of Usher. I remember liking it. The Tell-Tale Heart is one of his too, I think. And of course, The Raven.

>>23115784
Has it always been like this?

>>23116402
What's your opinion on that ,Baby Shoes, story
or flash fiction in general.

>>23116446
The baby shoes story literally has a 3-act structure.

For sale: sets up the act one. You can picture the garage sale. Knick knacks and tchotchkes that must go. People browsing the wares on display.

Baby shoes: here's the act two. The focus of the story. Cute little thing that attract a probable buyer's attention. The buyer goes, "aww, look!" It's all bubblegum and candyfloss until now.

Never worn: here's the gut wrenching finale. The 3rd act. The disclosure that the child was a stillborn. Like a magician the writer has pulled you into this world and now he's pulling the rug from underneath you, so you keel over and sob for 15 minutes. Peak tragedy.

>>23116501
The plot? The theme of this story?
No characters?
What are your opinions on the above?

I definitely see your three act diagram of the story and it makes sense.

>>23116588
It has a plot (anon tries to sell stuff) and a theme (anon's tragic past) and characters too (anon and his deceased child).

Despite being a gimmick tale it still adheres to the ethos of classic storytelling. Take any of those 3 lines out and it will stop being a a story. It's the 3-act structure distilled and crystallized.

>>23116614
Got it and Check

>>23113919
Nigger, Poe invented the detective story. The end.

>>23113919
>THIS DOESN’T HAVE LE HECKIN PLOT TWIST, IT’S LE GARBAGE!
genuinely kys

>>23113919
when you get a legion of highly competent simps outside of the bounds of your cunt, especially if French, will cement your literary reputation posthumously.

Furthermore, he wrote one of the foundational works of literary criticism, “The Philosophy of Composition.” This document heavily influenced the “New Criticism” 100 years later.

The Cask of Amontillado is the greatest short story I’ve ever read. Not a single wasted word. It’s like a bach piece in how well it works structurally and in its economic use of pacing

>>23117174
>“The Philosophy of Composition.”
How is it? Will reading it make me a better writer?

>>23117174
>Poe believed that all literary works should be short. He writes, "[...] there is a distinct limit, as regards length, to all works of literary art — the limit of a single sitting [...]" He especially emphasized this "rule" with regard to poetry, but also noted that the short story is superior to the novel for this reason.
fucking based

>>23117181
That’s a great question. I was once an aspiring writer, and it didn’t help me.

(But I’ve become quite adept at academic writing.)

>>23117176
It's now in the que due to your concise
yet, unironically forceful, review of the work.

>>23113919
Someone here should become the new Poe-toaster. He hasn’t made an appearance in years, right?

>>23113919
>Poe is a bad poet, a poor critic, and a dreadful prose stylist in his celebrated tales.
>Almost anyone can retell the "Fall of the House of Usher" more effectively than Poe does, because Poe's diction in uniquely abominable. As for the most famous Poe lyrics--"The Raven," "The Bells," "Annabel Lee" and the astonishingly dreadful "Ulalume,"--you can abandon yourself to them if you want to, but what is it that Poe gives you?"
>In Poe's art of sinking poetry every deep conceals a lower deep, a bathos more profound.

>>23117214
Who the fuck is "Harold Bloom"?

>>23117217
Poldy's cousin.

>>23117217
some 21st century burger academic. hasn't written anything literary worthy of appreciation nor notice. he has a lot to say about the literary works of others however. did you know shakespeare invented the human? quite remarkable.

>>23117220
>literary critic has a lot to say about the literary works of others
you don't say

>>23117222
>talk shit about Poe
>no one even knows who you are
k keep me posted

>>23117220
>shakespeare invented the human
I got a funny feeling, hold on let me check something
>Bloom was born in New York City on July 11, 1930,[7] to Paula (née Lev) and William Bloom. He lived in the Bronx at 1410 Grand Concourse.[9][10] He was raised as an Orthodox Jew in a Yiddish-speaking household, where he learned literary Hebrew;[11]
THERE IT IS

>>23117217
>>23117222
>>23117223
this is now a BLOOD MERIDIAN thread

Based Bloom

>>23117214
>yeah I could beat up Mike Tyson
>easy peasy
>dude's a fuckin' pussy

Bloom was a typical jew critic of the late twentieth century . . . so not good. However, he did get Blood Meridian right.

>>23117223
you're clearly a /lit/ tourist if you really don't know who harold bloom is
>>23117226
>muh early life
yet he was a staunch defender of the Western literary canon against encroachments from libtards who wanted to shoehorn in "diverse" authors without respect to quality

>>23117226
So Bloom is Portnoy?

>>23117232
Reminds me of the hidden Gem "Hecklers" by Jamie Kennedy, where they show that footage of Uwe Boll beating the shit out of his critics in a boxing ring.

>>23117235
>muh based kike
Your nose is showing.

>>23117244
Yeah, I have a big Slav nose so I'm equally untermensch.

>>23117244
He was a defender of the Canon, this is absolutely true.
He even cried about it on an interview, could have had something to do with the meds, nevertheless he was about that Canon.
Look it up

>>23117253
Who's defending the Canon now? Or is that
fight over since Floyd and the BLM non profit
movement?

>>23117235
>yet he was a staunch defender of the Western literary canon
by Jove! this man must have something interesting to say. it makes you feel good because it is beautiful? Oh. >>23117226

>>23115411
I read all of it, get fucked

>>23113932
Poe invented the detective story (Sherlock Holmes and all that is based on Poe)

Poe was one of the first major science fiction writers and inspired a bunch of that

Then there's the gothic and horror stuff that he's most known for.

As for canon, I don't know which of his works would be considered canon. From his poetry, probably the Raven ("Once upon a midnight dreary") as they have the Raven on his tombstone

Of his short stories, I know we had to study The Cask of Amontillado, so that's probably one

>>23117235
It is so much easier to crash the gate when you own the hands on both sides of it, neither trying to keep it shut.

>>23117217
Bro, you lost?

>>23119077
No. I just don't give a fuck about the opinions of "professional reviewers", I read books and form my own opinions.

>Night's Plutonian shore

Bump