A review by korrick
The Complete Tales and Poems by Edgar Allan Poe

4.0

3.5/5

There are moments when, even to the sober eye of Reason, the world of our sad Humanity may assume the semblance of a Hell—but the intellect of man is no Carathis, to explore with impunity its every cavern. Alas! The grim legion of sepulchral terrors cannot be regarded as altogether fanciful—but, like the Demons in whose company Afrasiab made his voyage down the Oxus, they must sleep, or they will devour us—they must be suffered to slumber, or we perish.

What the world be like without Edgar Allan Poe? I would have had a different readily available name to recommend to aspiring SAT-acers back in my tutoring days, my experiences with various horror video games would not have rolled out as they did, and early engagements with Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Tim Burton, and a number of other spooooky white boys may not have happened at all. Science fiction, mysteries, the singular detective, poetry, plays, philosophical dialogues à la Socrates and Plato, metaphysical hypothesis, imperialist navigations, futuristic parodies, settler state adventures, astronautical conjectures, obsessions with early death, mistaken death, diabolical death, torturous death, marauding reveries, cursed suppositions, and every so often an essay or satire on interior decorating, landscaping aesthetics, cats, literary magazines, space, and writing itself. Also married his thirteen-year-old first cousin, was so obvious about not rising much, if any, above the bigotries of his time (it certainly explains why a number of stories have fallen by the wayside)that Lovecraft lovingly cited him as influence, and was quite the elitist prig when he wasn't embodying characters in various states of delirium or murderous intent. After so many years imbibing various bits and bobs through both classroom assignments and genuine interest, I marked down one of the multiple iterations of 'complete' works of Poe to read, only to spend so long getting around to it that I had two or three editions to choose from. I ended up settling on [b:The Unabridged Edgar Allan Poe|1827522|The Unabridged Edgar Allan Poe|Edgar Allan Poe|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1188904876l/1827522._SY75_.jpg|26573364] due to the slightly increased page length and the shininess of the binding, but I keep my review here for the sake of keeping my reading record in one piece.

Nor were the lower limbs less marvelously superb. These were, indeed, the new plus ultra of good legs. Every connoisseur in such matters admitted the legs to be good. There was neither too much flesh, nor too little,—neither rudeness nor fragility. I could not imagine a more graceful curve than that of the os femoris, and there was just that due gentle prominence in the rear of the fibula which goes to the conformation of a properly proportioned calf. I wish to God my young and talented friend Chiponchipino, the sculptor, had but seen the legs of Brevet Brigadier General John A.B.C. Smith.

And all I lov'd—I, lov'd alone—

The result? Some very good pieces here and there, amongst which a few are deservedly rendered immortal, but a favorite or a five star for the whole? Perhaps if Poe had spent more time being so delightfully queer in his tales of male companionship, or if his narratives as a whole had tended more towards the lean complexities of 'The Gold Bug' or the delightful absurdities of 'Mellonta Tauta'. Still, there is many a writer in the canon whose fame was made on the back of a single work, and the fatuous tendency of certain people to mark every single work other than that of "Arthur Gordon Pym" as a separate piece doesn't cancel out the fact that there's around six to a full dozen compositions whose originating power is practically impossible to gauge due to how thoroughly they saturate the US creative landscape through successive imitations, celebrations, and degradations. Such unfortunately tends to dilute the original staying power of a creation, and I imagine the faint refrains I can recall from pieces such as "Hop Frog" and "House of Usher" did as much to interfere with the impact of the novelty as it did to incentivize me to read this collection in its entirety. At any rate, I'm glad that I went the unabridged route, as the weirdness of "Desultory Notes on Cats" and a number of satirical pieces on writers being at the mercy of editorial grotesqueries, insubstantial copyright laws, and carrot-on-the-stick state of US publishing made for a more human portrait of their half man, half myth creator. I will admit, though, that I'm also glad that, now that I've read all this, I won't have to read much of it every again.

The gods do bear and well allow in kings
The things which they abhor in rascal routes.
-Buckhurst's Tragedy of Ferrex and Porrex

Should you ever be drowned or hung, be sure and make a note of your sensations—they will be worth to you ten guineas a sheet.

Poe's the type of author with whom I have a kind of Flannery O'Connor kind of relationship: I have little interest in pursuing more of the fiction (in Poe's case, though, all that is left would be a reread), but the life and opinions of the author were so singular in nature that I wouldn't mine perusing some more autobiographical material. I don't believe there is any sort of self-authored holism out there, and what records of collections of letters I found don't look promising when it comes to inclusion of necessary contextualizing details or general quality. So, at this stage, it's best that I simply rest on my laurels of completing this near 1200 page compilation of densely packed (500 printed words a page, at least) and intensely convoluted syntax, vocabulary, thoughts, and all sorts of other verbiages that, I am rather thankful Poe saw fit to invent the word 'phantasmagoria', else I wouldn't have quite as easy a time as describing them. He came, he saw, he had no qualms of taking the viewpoint of many a 'problematic' character, and went out with such a bang as to match the best of the eeriness and tragedy that he himself composed. In light of refreshing my memory on just which works of his contain a tad too much of the n-word, I'll be better fit to make recommendations to those younger folk of more tender dispositions. Other than that, I don't think at all that everyone should read this particular compilation, but if a reader makes their way through their readerly life without partaking of at least one that especially suits their fancy, their bookish gestalt would be all the poorer for it.

Out—out are the lights—out all!
And, over each dying form,
The curtain, a funeral pall,
Comes down with the rush of a storm,
And the seraphs, all haggard and wan,
Uprising, unveiling, affirm
That the play is the tragedy, "Man,"
And its hero the Conqueror Worm.