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The Murders In The Rue Morgue And Other Tales (1901)

by Edgar Allan Poe(Favorite Author)

4.05 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0141198974 (ISBN13: 9780141198972)

languge

English

genre

Horror

publisher

Penguin Books

review 1: La première fois que j'ai lu ce livre, j'étais au collège. Alors évidemment ma relecture à plus de 40 ans n'a pas été tout à fait la même ! Qu'est-ce qui a changé ? Le fait de ne pas attendre des conclusions toutes simples et toutes prêtes à chaque nouvelle, et de laisser la place au mystère, encore plus. Se laisser aller à la beauté de la langue sans attendre autre chose que ce plaisir là, très abouti chez Poe. Alors il y a bien des nouvelles que j'ai trouvé accessoires et anecdotiques, mais je ne laisse de place dans mes souvenirs qu'à celles dont je raffole maintenant : La chute de la maison Usher, Le chat noir, Le masque de la Mort rouge, Le diable dans le beffroi, et Bérénice, ah Bérénice ! encore un effet de l'âge, j'étais complètement pass�... more�e à côté de cette nouvelle à ma douzaine d'années, n'ayant pu appréhender que la nouvelle plus "policière" du double assassinat dans la rue Morgue.Désormais Bérénice restera mon meilleur souvenir de Poe...
review 2: The reasons I picked this were, 1) the fact that Poe used the word 'Tintinnabulation' in one of his poems, and 2) the back of the book blurb. "Horror, madness, violence and the dark forces hidden in humanity abound in this collection of Poe's brilliant tales, including - amongst others - the bloody, brutal and baffling murder of a mother and daughter in Paris in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue', the creeping insanity of 'The Tell-Tale Heart', the Gothic nightmare of 'The Masque of the Red Death', and the terrible doom of 'The Fall of the House of Usher'."It all sounds so promising, doesn't it? Murder, madness, blood and brutality. In reality it all fell rather flat.I am sure that when these stories were written in the 1840s, they probably were quite shocking and disturbing, but I didn't find them as grisly as I expected them to be. This could be for a number of reasons.A) I think that, generally, we are less sensitized to violence these days. For example, I watched 'An Interview with a Vampire' for the first time the other week (I know, where have I been). It is rated as an 18, but to be honest the violence (a bit of blood trickling from a bite and the odd decapitation) is no worse than that seen on 'Itchy and Scratchy' on 'The Simpsons'. In fact the film 'Hansel and Gretel : Witch Hunters' which is rated 15 has considerably more squelch, squish, splat, splattering and head exploding moments. It is a veritable gore-fest in comparison.B) I was left with the feeling that Poe is a little bit of a lazy writer. Every single story fizzled out and there are loads of blanks where it appears he simply couldn't be bothered to think of a date or even a character's name. For example: ". . . Soon afterward we turned to go home, and on the way met Lieutenant G------"This happens loads of times. 18---, Mr D------. It seems names and dates were insignificant details to Poe. It's really disruptive to the flow of writing.C) For a man who can't be bothered to think of specific dates and times, he can't half waffle on about completely inconsequential matters. For example, in 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue' there are four pages of waffle about "the mental features discoursed of as the analytical." He illustrates said waffle with examples of chess and card players. We have four pages of this drivel before he even begins to vaguely start to touch on the actual story. More than once did I begin to lose the will to live.*Spoilers ahead*There were three stories that had the potential to be great.1) The title story - 'The Murders in the Rue Morgue'. Once you've trudged your way through the tedious beginning, it is quite an intriguing scenario. Two murdered women - one strangled and shoved upside down up a chimney breast, the other sat on a chair in the courtyard with half her body bruised and broken and her throat slit so throughly that when the police try to move her, her head falls off - all the doors and windows seemingly locked and a group of nosey parkers on the stairs so that there is no way for the perpetrator to get out unseen. It's almost like an episode of Jonathan Creek. Would you like to know who committed these terrible crimes? You'll never guess. It was someones escaped pet orangutan. Yep, a huge orange monkey that was in a fit because it's owner was going to whip it, ran away, climbed up some conveniently placed mast / post thingy, jumped in the window (which wasn't locked) and strangled one woman before killing the other with a razor. Now, I am all for fantasy and make-believe, but an orangutan? Really? Disappointing.2) 'The Tell-Tale Heart'. One of the shortest tales (thank goodness). The narrator, driven nuts by the filmy pale blue 'vulture' eye of the old man he looks after, comes up with a plot to kill him in his sleep. Having carried out the dirty deed, he proceeds to dismember the body and hide it under the floorboards of the old man's bedroom. The next door neighbours report hearing a disturbance and when the police come to investigate the narrator admits to the murder in an insanity riddled rant because he has spent the last few hours being driven mad by what he believes is the sound of the old man's heart beating loudly underneath the floor. This one is probably the best story of the lot because it is short, doesn't fizzle out, and is disturbed enough to satisfy.3) 'The Gold Bug' - when I started reading this one, I honestly thought it was going to be my favourite. For a start there is a character who isn't a well-to-do Englishman who speaks constantly in well-to-do ye olde English. Enter Jupiter, the old black servant to the friend of the narrator. It was such a breath of fresh air to read dialogue that was written with an accent and that was - to all intents and purposes - much easier to decipher. He gets some amazing lines, such as: ". . . de bug is a goole-bug, solid, ebery bit of him, inside and all, sep him wing - neber feel half so hebby a bug in my life." "No, massa, I bring dis her pissel."And my personal favourite: "Soon be to de end, massa - o-o-o-o-oh! Lor-gol-a-marcy! what is dis here 'pon de tree? . . . Why taint noffin but a skull - somebody bin left him head up de tree, and de crows done gobble ebery bit ob de meat off."The story is about a man who finds a gold beetle that leads him to a buried pile of pirate treasure. The discovery of the bug, the sending of Jupiter up the tree to find the skull which marks the spot from which the bug must be dropped, the landing point of which is where the treasure is buried, is all very entertaining and I was enjoying it immensely. But then. After having found the treasure and dividing it equally amongst themselves, the narrator - who up until this point thought his friend had lost his marbles - asks how he knew which tree and which branch the skull would be on etc to lead him to the treasure. And here begins a seventeen page explanation, including a minutely detailed description of how he deciphered a code full of symbols written in a heat-reactive substance on a piece of parchment. The end of this explanation is the end of the story. It all started so well before once again fizzling out into boring old waffle. Oh, Edgar Allen Poe, how thee disappointeth me.So to summarise. If you are feeling down in the dumps and looking for something to distract you or cheer you up, don't pick this book. If, however, you would like to be bored to tears, go ahead.Confession - I couldn't bring myself to read all the tales. From about half way through I started to pick the ones I thought might be the most interesting. I avoided 'The Pit and the Pendulum', 'The Black Cat', 'The Purloined Letter', The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar', 'The Cask of Amontillado' and 'Hop-Frog'. If anyone has read these and thinks they are better than the ones I did read, let me know, and I might give them a go. I'm off to recover with a modern-day grisly murder mystery. less

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