Hello,

Growing up in Boston, I heard years ago that “The Cask of Amontillado” was based on a true crime story that supposedly took place among soldiers based at one of the Boston harbor island forts.

Can you please let me know if this is correct?

thanks!

Shelly (in Cambridge, MA)

I just introduced my boys, ages 11 and 13, to Poe via books on tape on a road trip (Tell-tale heart and Black Cat). Despite their fascination with CSI and the ilk, and their familiarity with the Raven, and playing World of Warcraft with their dad, they were startled and had the deer in the headlights look. The next day, they reported nightmares. Now they think their mother is also crazy! I think we’ll wait a couple more years before trying again.

Does anyone remember the wonderful Charles Addams cartoon
published in the New Yorker perhaps 40 years ago which depicts Poe, sitting a his table, a raven on a perch nearby, quill between his lips, looking up at the ceiling and the balloons have the following words: Ever More,
Shut the Door, sit on the floor. I still have the cartoon, somewhere. Charlotte Zerof, Fort Myers FL

I recently re-read the “Murders in the Rue Morgue.” I had not read it since I was 15 and in high school (many decades ago.) Our teacher was a real fan of Poe, but his emphasis was on his poetry. His poetry was an example of modernism and his technique emphasized sound and used what my teacher called “liquiod vowels.” The 3 poets that were presented as the greatest American poets were Poe, Whitman and Emily Dickinson. All of them stand the test of time. They were all originals of their type, probably icons, and at the same time also stereotypes. Contemporary and ageless.

I will be brief, and won’t add anymore comments about the stories and novels. (The Age of Anxiety, anyone?)

In response to Shelly, re: “The Cask of Amontillado” – there is no reason to believe that rumor. Over twenty years elapsed between Poe’s time at Fort Independence and the publication of his story. The likelihood that he was inspired by it after all that time is slim, the story apocryphal, yet the legend persists. Ultimately, I say, “No. It’s not correct.” Look it up on Wikipedia, nonetheless.

In “Problems of Dostoevsky’s Poetics” (Caryl Emerson translation, U. Minnesota Press), Mikhail Bakhtin mentions that Dostoevsky translated three of Poe’s tales for publication in his literary journal “Vremia” in January 1861. One of these tales was Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart”. Reading this years ago confirmed my suspicion that Dostoevsky’s subsequent novel “Crime and Punishment” was an elaboration of Poe’s story, with other resonances from Poe stories Dostoevsky may have been familiar with (such as the feature of a gruesome double murder, a la “Murders in the Rue Morgue”, and the theme of “the double” [Raskolnikov and Svidrigailov] that Dostoevsky seems to have arrived at independently much earlier in his career). Later still did I read in Joseph Frank’s volume “The Stir of Liberation” passing mention of the same three tales Dostoevsky translated, citing a 1973 study by Jane D. Grossman (which may be available to specialists but not to general readers). Perhaps possibly maybe a fresh appraisal is forthcoming?

The word is “ratiocination” (Rat-Ee-O-Si-Na’-Shun) and, pace the guest, is not difficult to define. It means, quite simply, “the process or method of reasoning”. Nice to know that Lincoln read and re-read Poe to keep himself sharp, would that other occupants of “a casa branca” had done likewise.

Poe has been one of my favorite authors since childhood (six decades ago!). It has been claimed that he was the first to provide a correct account of Olbers’ Paradox (Why is it dark at night?) in his prose poem “Eureka”. Unfortunately I found that poem almost unreadable!

[...] of our patrons who loves adventure classics heard about this book on a radio show about Edgar Allen Poe. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym was the only novel that Poe ever wrote. [...]