Tales of Mystery and Imagination

The fourth book in my collection of Worth Literary Classics is Edgar Allan Poe's Tales of Mystery and Imagination. Unlike the previous Poe book I read (Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque), this one is packed with all of his classics: "The Fall of the House of Usher", "The Tell-Tale Heart", "The Cask of Amontillado", "The Pit and the Pendulum", "The Masque of the Red Death", "The Murders in the Rue Morgue", and more. The first five of those are famous thrillers that I may have come across in general collections years ago but only vaguely remembered. They hold up well in re-reading, though they're much shorter than you might think given how well-known they are ("The Tell-Tale Heart", for example, is only five pages long).

What I found most interesting in the collection was "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and its two sequels, "The Mystery of Marie Roget" and "The Purloined Letter". These three stories each feature what literary historians say is the first detective in fiction: Auguste Dupin. Dupin is very much an armchair detective--through his sheer power of "ratiocination" he is able to solve terrible crimes simply by hearing and seeing all the available evidence. He's aided in these endeavours by a colleague who is always impressed by Dupin's intellectual powers, and who provides a convenient excuse for Dupin to explain how his deductive processes work. The influence on Doyle's creation of Sherlock Holmes and Watson are very clear.

Along with these well-known stories, there are some that were far more famous in Poe's day than they are now: "The Gold Bug" (a curious sort of treasure hunt story) and "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" (having to do with what happens if someone dies while being hypnotized). Both are quite good. The collection doesn't have any of Poe's poetry, but I'm more than okay with that (poetry: an artform I've never managed to gain an interest in--just say what you mean, damn it!).

The book also has three essays by modern Poe scholars. Kevin Hayes' Introduction provides a brief and readable account of Poe's life and some of his literary devices, while Scott Peeples writes a really interesting essay on Poe's reputation both before and after his death. Louis Renza writes an essay on "Poe and Identity", but it was full of academic jargon and unconvincing.

Next: Jane Austen's Emma