DIY History | Transcribe | Hevelin Fanzines | Horizons, v. 6, issue 2, whole no. 21, December 1944

Transcribe
Translate

Horizons, v. 6, issue 2, whole no. 21, December 1944

Page 8

8
HORIZONS

forth yet the denouement depends upon a couple of factors -- principally that of the broken sashnail -- that no one not on the scene could possibly have discerned. "The Purloined Letter", even if the psychological point is granted, of the best hiding place being the most obvious, is simply not logical. The minister was frequently absent from his lodgings all night, yet the letter's importance rendered it necessary for the letter to be in a place where it could be produced "At a moment's notice". It is a bald non sequitur to say that the letter therefore had to be in the lodgings; the minister could have hidden it anywhere in Paris and been equally able to obtain it promptly.

Poe's excessive precision in the use of words and scrupulous attention to detail are present in almost everything he wrote: yet this sort of fakery is to be found all the way through the book. It ranges from absurdities such as that on which "The Sphinx" rests down to even more curious if less important matters in the "Narrative of A. Gordon Pym". (Specifically, the incident in which the letter Pym receives while hidden in the ship's hold deludes him when he finds one side blank; later, we are told that Augustus wrote the letter on the reverse side of a first draft of another epistle. Again, in the middle of page 783 of the Modern Library Poe, Pym implies that at some indefinite time, years in the future from the time of the narrative, he learned certain details about Augustus' actions; yet Augustus is killed off only a few days later while adrift at sea. These two items struck me upon the first reading; I dare not estimate how many more incongruities or absurdities would turn up from a careful study!)

Despite all this, "A. Gordon Pym" seems to me to be Poe's finest work. He knew when to stop; in too many of his other, shorter tales, he didn't. Of the celebrated terror and horror stories, several are thoroughly impressive to me -- Usher, the two mesmerism stories, "The Assignation", "MS Found in a Bottle", and above all "The Cask of Amontillado". Others, like "The Black Cat", simply read like bad fiction; a cat can be a most sinister thing, properly treated, but Poe's feline is only slightly amusing to me, and the final scene in which it sits on its dead mistress' cranium provoked no horror, only a smile.

It can be argued, of course, that the actual worth of Poe's writings lie in their originality, their effect on the future of the short story and weird fiction, not upon their effect upon the person reading them today. This is tommyrot. By this reasoning, one Ignaz Franz Mosel is one of the greatest of all musicians. Ever hear of him? Neither did I, until recently, when I learned that he published -- in the same year of Wagner's birth -- a book on music and the opera in which he outlined and advocated almost all of the things Wagner later did for music and opera. By the same token, it would seem probable that the work of most great innovators would be dull to me; but it isn't. I shudder to think how many novels I have read in my checkered career, yet upon reading "Madame Bovary" for the first time a couple of months ago, I instantly understood what Flaubert did for writing and at the same time enjoyed the reading tremendously.

On the credit side is Poe's humor. Not having read much of the critical commentary on his work, I'm unaware of just how it's regarded today, but it strikes me as being remarkably fresh, remarkably funny, even though so much of it is based on transient things whose associations of a hundred years ago are absent from the mind of man today. "The Devil in the Belfry" amused me as much as anything I read or saw in 1944, and "Hans Pfaall" is the only good example I've ever run across of a hoax readable and apparently logical when presented as fact; the final pages are unbeatable.

For the poems, I can't say very much that is good. Browning was a piker, when it came to being senselessly obscure, compared with Poe; the poems that are lucid are for the most part pleasant or pretentious doggeral. "For Annie" and "The Raven", with all their faults, I love still, most of the others I have no intention of ever reading again, and am beginning to realize that "To Helen" is almost as bad a poem as the music to which I set it in a mad hour a couple of years ago.

Lovecraft wasn't perfect, either -- but he wrote better weird fiction than Poe.

Saving...

8 HORIZONS forth yet the denouement depends upon a couple of factors -- principally that of the broken sashnail -- that no one not on the scene could possibly have discerned. "The Purloined Letter", even if the psychological point is granted, of the best hiding place being the most obvious, is simply not logical. The minister was frequently absent from his lodgings all night, yet the letter's importance rendered it necessary for the letter to be in a place where it could be produced "At a moment's notice". It is a bald non sequitur to say that the letter therefore had to be in the lodgings; the minister could have hidden it anywhere in Paris and been equally able to obtain it promptly. Poe's excessive precision in the use of words and scrupulous attention to detail are present in almost everything he wrote: yet this sort of fakery is to be found all the way through the book. It ranges from absurdities such as that on which "The Sphinx" rests down to even more curious if less important matters in the "Narrative of A. Gordon Pym". (Specifically, the incident in which the letter Pym receives while hidden in the ship's hold deludes him when he finds one side blank; later, we are told that Augustus wrote the letter on the reverse side of a first draft of another epistle. Again, in the middle of page 783 of the Modern Library Poe, Pym implies that at some indefinite time, years in the future from the time of the narrative, he learned certain details about Augustus' actions; yet Augustus is killed off only a few days later while adrift at sea. These two items struck me upon the first reading; I dare not estimate how many more incongruities or absurdities would turn up from a careful study!) Despite all this, "A. Gordon Pym" seems to me to be Poe's finest work. He knew when to stop; in too many of his other, shorter tales, he didn't. Of the celebrated terror and horror stories, several are thoroughly impressive to me -- Usher, the two mesmerism stories, "The Assignation", "MS Found in a Bottle", and above all "The Cask of Amontillado". Others, like "The Black Cat", simply read like bad fiction; a cat can be a most sinister thing, properly treated, but Poe's feline is only slightly amusing to me, and the final scene in which it sits on its dead mistress' cranium provoked no horror, only a smile. It can be argued, of course, that the actual worth of Poe's writings lie in their originality, their effect on the future of the short story and weird fiction, not upon their effect upon the person reading them today. This is tommyrot. By this reasoning, one Ignaz Franz Mosel is one of the greatest of all musicians. Ever hear of him? Neither did I, until recently, when I learned that he published -- in the same year of Wagner's birth -- a book on music and the opera in which he outlined and advocated almost all of the things Wagner later did for music and opera. By the same token, it would seem probable that the work of most great innovators would be dull to me; but it isn't. I shudder to think how many novels I have read in my checkered career, yet upon reading "Madame Bovary" for the first time a couple of months ago, I instantly understood what Flaubert did for writing and at the same time enjoyed the reading tremendously. On the credit side is Poe's humor. Not having read much of the critical commentary on his work, I'm unaware of just how it's regarded today, but it strikes me as being remarkably fresh, remarkably funny, even though so much of it is based on transient things whose associations of a hundred years ago are absent from the mind of man today. "The Devil in the Belfry" amused me as much as anything I read or saw in 1944, and "Hans Pfaall" is the only good example I've ever run across of a hoax readable and apparently logical when presented as fact; the final pages are unbeatable. For the poems, I can't say very much that is good. Browning was a piker, when it came to being senselessly obscure, compared with Poe; the poems that are lucid are for the most part pleasant or pretentious doggeral. "For Annie" and "The Raven", with all their faults, I love still, most of the others I have no intention of ever reading again, and am beginning to realize that "To Helen" is almost as bad a poem as the music to which I set it in a mad hour a couple of years ago. Lovecraft wasn't perfect, either -- but he wrote better weird fiction than Poe.