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Horizons, v. 6, issue 2, whole no. 21, December 1944
Page 7
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Horizons 21 Apoestasy Until a few months ago, I was in a most popular situation: a reader of fantasy for ten years, I knew next to nothing of the writings of Edgar Allen Poe or Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Lack of acquaintance with the former was just one of those inexplicable things, caused conceivably by my discovering prozines five years too early and as a result neglecting book fantasy during the period from, roughly, 1933 through 1940. The Lovecraft situation was more easily understandable: Weird Tales simply wasn't available at any of the newsstands I frequented, and I did not buy my first copy of it until around 1939, or possibly a little earlier -- after the great mass of Lovecraft manuscripts, in any event, had been published. Of late, through one means or another, I have managed to read a fair amount of Lovecraft's stuff, though hardly a major part of it. I might mention by way of a hint to anyone who has some stray copies of the Arkham House Lovecraft kicking around loose. More important, I received as a birthday gift the Modern Library edition of Poe. (More strictly speaking, I purchased it as a birthday gift for the sake of parties who knew of old my impatience with the kind of reading material that usually comes at Christmas or natal anniversary, and told me to get what I wanted and act surprised upon opening it.) Two nights ago, I finished the last page of "A. Gordon Pym", and must here report that I believe Lovecraft to have been a superior master of words, of the two, judging by incomplete acquaintance with HPL and a cover-to-cover reading of EAP. Further, I cannot understand on what Poe's claims to genius rest; this may quite obviously come from lack of appreciation of my part, but I can usually discern the reasons for the lauding of most of the other accepted great writers, from Moses through Joyce, even if I can't say that I enjoy their work. There is, to begin with, absolutely no excuse for inclusion of many of the items included in the Poe volume (which Modern Library, edition, I think, jibes pretty well with the "accepted" complete editions of the last couple of decades. Hervey Allen's introduction admits that "even the trivial" is in some cases included, which is a gross understatement; the publication of Philosophy of Furniture", "The Sphinx", and the review of "Astoria" are as inane as would be including in Mark Twain sets all the thousands of words (most of them fortunately lost) that he wrote during his journalistic period in the West. It is, incidentally, also most inexplicable why the first two items should be included under the "Tales" classification in this edition. Now, my past acquaintance with Poe, before going through this book during a period of several months in the late summer and fall, had been most skimpy; as noted above. I received when perhaps 10 a cheap edition of four or five stories, and read from it only "Hans Pfaall", which bored me dreadfully. I read, dutifully though unenthusiastically, the stories T. O'Conor Sloane reprinted in Amazing around 1934 and 1935, and "The Fall of the House of Usher" at a much later period, when it appeared in Weird Tales. That is about the size of it. Even less commentary and biographical information have come my way; a few platitudes in school textbooks and such places are to this day all I've seen of the former, I didn't go to the movie on Poe's life, and know only what I read in the Encyclopedia Brittanica when Raym Washington was desperately trying to find a come-back at some of his friends who were gossiping about Edgar Allen and his women. I hope soon to remedy these deficiencies of learning through perusal of a two-volume critical biography at the local library, but it is to be understood that I am unaware of what may have been written about Poe during the last hundred years. Today, I believe Poe is considered greater for his contribution to the art of the detective story than for his fantasies. I cannot discern any logical reason for this. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter" are both inferior detective fiction, even if they are forerunners of their genre. The former fails in this respect; the reader is obviously challenged to figure out how the murder was committed, he is led to understand that his powers of deduction are weak if he does not guess the answer after the choices have been put
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Horizons 21 Apoestasy Until a few months ago, I was in a most popular situation: a reader of fantasy for ten years, I knew next to nothing of the writings of Edgar Allen Poe or Howard Phillips Lovecraft. Lack of acquaintance with the former was just one of those inexplicable things, caused conceivably by my discovering prozines five years too early and as a result neglecting book fantasy during the period from, roughly, 1933 through 1940. The Lovecraft situation was more easily understandable: Weird Tales simply wasn't available at any of the newsstands I frequented, and I did not buy my first copy of it until around 1939, or possibly a little earlier -- after the great mass of Lovecraft manuscripts, in any event, had been published. Of late, through one means or another, I have managed to read a fair amount of Lovecraft's stuff, though hardly a major part of it. I might mention by way of a hint to anyone who has some stray copies of the Arkham House Lovecraft kicking around loose. More important, I received as a birthday gift the Modern Library edition of Poe. (More strictly speaking, I purchased it as a birthday gift for the sake of parties who knew of old my impatience with the kind of reading material that usually comes at Christmas or natal anniversary, and told me to get what I wanted and act surprised upon opening it.) Two nights ago, I finished the last page of "A. Gordon Pym", and must here report that I believe Lovecraft to have been a superior master of words, of the two, judging by incomplete acquaintance with HPL and a cover-to-cover reading of EAP. Further, I cannot understand on what Poe's claims to genius rest; this may quite obviously come from lack of appreciation of my part, but I can usually discern the reasons for the lauding of most of the other accepted great writers, from Moses through Joyce, even if I can't say that I enjoy their work. There is, to begin with, absolutely no excuse for inclusion of many of the items included in the Poe volume (which Modern Library, edition, I think, jibes pretty well with the "accepted" complete editions of the last couple of decades. Hervey Allen's introduction admits that "even the trivial" is in some cases included, which is a gross understatement; the publication of Philosophy of Furniture", "The Sphinx", and the review of "Astoria" are as inane as would be including in Mark Twain sets all the thousands of words (most of them fortunately lost) that he wrote during his journalistic period in the West. It is, incidentally, also most inexplicable why the first two items should be included under the "Tales" classification in this edition. Now, my past acquaintance with Poe, before going through this book during a period of several months in the late summer and fall, had been most skimpy; as noted above. I received when perhaps 10 a cheap edition of four or five stories, and read from it only "Hans Pfaall", which bored me dreadfully. I read, dutifully though unenthusiastically, the stories T. O'Conor Sloane reprinted in Amazing around 1934 and 1935, and "The Fall of the House of Usher" at a much later period, when it appeared in Weird Tales. That is about the size of it. Even less commentary and biographical information have come my way; a few platitudes in school textbooks and such places are to this day all I've seen of the former, I didn't go to the movie on Poe's life, and know only what I read in the Encyclopedia Brittanica when Raym Washington was desperately trying to find a come-back at some of his friends who were gossiping about Edgar Allen and his women. I hope soon to remedy these deficiencies of learning through perusal of a two-volume critical biography at the local library, but it is to be understood that I am unaware of what may have been written about Poe during the last hundred years. Today, I believe Poe is considered greater for his contribution to the art of the detective story than for his fantasies. I cannot discern any logical reason for this. "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and "The Purloined Letter" are both inferior detective fiction, even if they are forerunners of their genre. The former fails in this respect; the reader is obviously challenged to figure out how the murder was committed, he is led to understand that his powers of deduction are weak if he does not guess the answer after the choices have been put
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