E. A. Poe, qouth the publisher "nevermore" (Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe)

Member Name: derpigeon

Product:	Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allan Poe - Edgar Allan Poe
Date:	21/11/00 (99 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: fascinating and unique, (though often copied)

Disadvantages: complex and somewhat disturbing

Edgar Allen Poe is, without doubt, one of my favourite authors. His stories have been used in as wide a diversity of medias as NYPD blue to being the premise for some direction for new Shakespeare productions.
Based on his “tales of mystery and imagination” this re-release of America’s most underrated poet and author is a welcome sign to his fans. Reading Poe’s tales is journeying on a “deliberate suspension of disbelief” his tales are fuelled invariably by opium, and you frequently venture into an almost Kafkaesque landscape, where bizzarity is the norm.
Yet far from the acerbic challenge that Kafka represents Poe is more like Rex Warner in his purity of linearity. His plots while convoluted are predictable, but enjoyably so. His poem “the raven” is both chilling and engrossing, Poe forces us to face, accept and eventually embrace our own morbid, moribund fascinations.
His tales are excitably filled with the depressing story of men being torn apart by themselves, Poe is fascinated not really with the supernatural, but rather with what mankind is capable of submitting himself too, crimes are in Poe’s world challenged not through law and order but through the unbearable trial of being.
Through reading the works of Poe one is better able to consider human reaction to extremes, fear, hate and love can be better understood, and dissected through the intensity of his work.

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