Welcome to the new iteration of Books & Booze! We’re now on Substack. I typically like to feature recent books, but if you’ll indulge me, we’re going to dip back to the classics this month, because I’ve got Edgar Allan Poe on the mind.
Ah, Poe: our Gothic icon, our Byronic hero, purveyor of all that is dark and macabre. Why are we still so fascinated with him? Is it the immediately recognizable daguerreotype? The mysterious circumstances of his death? Or maybe we all just watched the Treehouse of Horror back in the day? Whatever the case, people are still adapting Poe’s works, reimagining them, writing fiction in which Poe himself is a character, and otherwise riffing on our continued obsession with him. (See: recent slow-burn mystery The Pale Blue Eye, John Cusack as Poe in The Raven, and as a bonus, I’ll throw in the show The Following, where alcoholic FBI agent Kevin Bacon gets caught up in a Poe cult led by a serial killer.) Not to mention the writers putting their own spins on Poe’s works, such as T. Kingfisher’s What Moves the Dead, which takes on “The Fall of the House of Usher” by way of fungus.
In short: Poe’s popularity is alive… even if he isn’t.
(Or is he? I’m getting some Weekend at Bernie’s vibes here)
I also spend a bit of time on Poe in the Gothic Literature class that I teach, because—well, how could I not? My students read “The Raven,” “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and “The Masque of the Red Death,” though in the past I’ve had them read “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Cask of Amontillado.” It’s exceptionally fun to see students work through their interpretations of these pieces, those lightbulb moments as they pick through at times unfamiliar language to recognize the emotion beneath.
Sidebar: have you ever heard James Earl Jones’ reading of “The Raven?” If not, stop what you’re doing and listen to the video below. It’s just… *chef’s kiss*
“The Raven” is such a classic that just about everyone will recognize it, even if they’ve never actually read the poem for themselves. (At least, I hope that’s the case, or my wedding guests might have been confused, as I wrote my vows in the form and style of “The Raven”—yes, I’m talking the exact meter, rhythm, and rhyme scheme, including a repeated refrain of “forevermore”)
I actually use “The Raven” to teach meter and rhyme in my class. I impress upon them that we’re not learning the difference between dactylic tetrameter and trochaic heptameter just for the sake of throwing these technical terms at unsuspecting newsletter readers (ahem), but because they allow us to discuss why a poem sounds the way it does, and how that sound reflects, amplifies, or contradicts content and meaning. “The Raven” has this crazy repetitive and intricate rhyme scheme that really makes you marvel at how he sustained it through a full 18 stanzas, which we might mark as ABCBBB, but to actually incorporate the full range of internal rhyme as well as end-rhyme, we might instead use aABcCcBBB, which is, frankly, ridiculous even to look at. I mean, just take a look: I’ve put all the A’s and C’s in bold and the B’s in italics:
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary,
Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore—
While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,
As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
This rhyme scheme is intricate and repetitive, hypnotic in its repetitions.
Then, consider the meter: trochaic octameter (or rather, 6-line stanzas with 5 lines of trochaic octameter and one final line of trochaic tetrameter). This means we have metrical feet that have a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable (the opposite of iambic), with 8 of these feet per line (except the last line). You can check this by marking stressed syllables and delineating feet: “While I | nodded, | nearly | napping, | sudden|ly there | came a | tapping,” and so on.
This rhythmic pattern is just as intricate as the rhyme scheme. The use of long lines and trochees give the poem a plodding sort of feel. A trochee feels heavier than, say, an iamb, because it puts that heavy emphasis at the beginning, leaving the unstressed syllables more like echoes. It’s also interesting that the last line is half the length of the others. It’s as if the whole line is an echo which dies away, leaving a space of emptiness at the end of each stanza, and this lets “nothing more” and, later, “Nevermore” echo in the silence that follows. The missing second half of the last line of each stanza is both a silence and an echo, and these lines themselves are about emptiness (“nothing more,” “Nevermore”). Particularly resonant in a poem about loss and the experience of plodding forward in spite of it.
So there you are. A bit of Poe-tic analysis (hah) to show how fruitful it can be to parse out these technical elements of writing. Poe was a master of form and knew exactly how to utilize it to achieve his intended effect. This could also be why his poems still resonate: we feel that effect, even if we don’t have the vocabulary to explain the technical aspects of it.
Okay, that’s all very educational, so let’s dull our brains a little with a drink befitting one of Poe’s most famous short stories.
“The Cask of Amontillado”
One of Poe’s most chilling tales of human cruelty and revenge, “The Cask of Amontillado” asks us to follow the remorseless scheming and deliberate evil of Montresor’s revenge against Fortunato—whose “thousand injuries” he claims to have “borne as best I could, but when he ventured upon insult I vowed revenge.” The narration is dispassionate, almost clinical in its enumeration of Montresor’s actions, and it is this very lack of emotion that makes it particularly chilling. This isn’t a fit of passion, fury, or sorrow; we do not even know what Fortunato’s “injuries” really amount to (though one might suspect they may be minor annoyances that a sociopath like Montresor simply finds unbearable). This is the story of someone who has decided to commit murder by way of burying his opponent alive.
The simplicity and steady pacing of the story—as if to mimic the deliberateness with which Montresor goes about his task—makes the story seem, at first pass, somewhat banal. But it is within that very banality that we glimpse true evil. Montresor is unhurried because he knows, as soon as he has Fortunato in the catacombs, that he has won. Fortunato will never turn back before tasting the promised drink, and by then it is far too late.
No one will ever hear him screaming.
A succession of loud and shrill screams, bursting suddenly from the throat of the chained form, seemed to thrust me violently back. For a brief moment I hesitated, I trembled. Unsheathing my rapier, I began to grope with it about the recess; but the thought of an instant reassured me. I placed my hand upon the solid fabric of the catacombs, and felt satisfied. I reapproached the wall. I replied to the yells of him who clamoured. I re-echoed — I aided — I surpassed them in volume and in strength. I did this, and the clamourer grew still.
Poor Fortunato.
I do have to make one final comment about this story, and it is this: it contains perhaps my favorite Poe quote (for reasons of sheer ridiculousness). Fortunato has a bit of a cough, you see:
“Ugh! ugh! ugh! — ugh! ugh! ugh! — ugh! ugh! ugh! — ugh! ugh! ugh! — ugh! ugh! ugh!”
Pairs best with…
Amontillado, obviously.
I discovered a bottle of Amontillado at Total Wine recently and couldn’t pass up the chance to try it.
The only other sherry I’ve ever had is cream sherry, so I was expecting something a bit sweet. This is not particularly sweet, though it does have a sweet aroma and a distinctive sherry flavor. At first sip it is bright and dry, mellowing into a nutty aftertaste with notes of almond and hazelnut. All in all, a nice palate cleanser, though hardly worth getting walled up alive in some catacombs.
Writing Update
Here’s the work I’ve got coming out this year (plus one I can’t announce yet):
“Something Is Rotten.” Shakespeare Unleashed, Monstrous Books, 2023. Short Story.
“Where the Monsters Live.” Under Her Eye: A Women in Horror Poetry Collection, Black Spot Books, 2023. Poem.
“The Feed.” Cosmic Horror Monthly, 2023. Short Story.
“Where All the Streets Lead.” A Darkness Visible, Ontology Books, 2023. Short Story.
“To Dust You Shall Return.” Tales from the Clergy: Stories Inspired by Ghost, October Nights Press, 2023. Short Story.
Freebies
I wrote this (rather cynical) piece at some point during 2020—if you’re still pandemic-fatigued, you might want to skip it. But it was a fun exercise during an otherwise harrowing time. With this Poe-centric issue, I figured I’d share it with you all.
The Mask of the Red State Deaths
by Jo Kaplan
The pandemic had long devastated the country—if months of quarantine could be described as long. No pestilence had ever run so rampant, nor proliferated so freely. Its impenetrable mystery was is signature, and it masqueraded as the specter of varied diseases, by turns crushing the lungs, ravaging the heart, or twisting the bowels. It was invisible, and therefore hideous, for it could sneak up like a wraith, and its symptoms came on by insidious degrees.
But Pete Huntington was skeptical and undaunted. Because he did not trust whatever he could not see with his own eyes, he invited as many healthy and carefree friends as would fit in his Tudor home for a party. His house was a source of pride, with its high pitched roof, elaborate stone fireplace, and exposed timber. It bore the dignity Pete thought fitting of a successful up-and-comer in real estate, and reflected his lofty tastes.
A thumping sound system and a cascade of bottled liquor accompanied the festivities. Each room was carefully ornamented with its own flair: one bedecked in the patriotic regalia of red, white, and blue; another gilded with gold; a third, that nautical theme common to many Florida homes, cast in pale robin’s egg; another with the rustic hues evoking the Old West; and at the end of the hall, the darkroom where Pete developed his landscape photographs, a hobby of his, its darkness perfected and deepened by a bloody red light. One of his photos, in line with the theme, stamped each of the previous rooms with his signature art.
Huntington invited his guests, many of whom he did not know, or at least did not know well, to admire his exquisite abode and his tasteful, if amateurish, photographs. Of distance, there was none; the revelers crowded every corner of the house, packing themselves into the various rooms with wide open faces, nary a mask in sight. All were young and emboldened by their own fearlessness. Caution, they believed, though importunate for the elderly, had no place among the jollity of youth.
Their bodies, lithe and robust and slicked with the gleam of alcohol-sweat, danced and caroused and writhed in grotesque contortions, beating on with the frantic agitations of strobe lights. There was much of the scandalous and intoxicating which might, in the sober light of day, invite disgust—when, hungover, memories of their drunken gyrations might appall the senses. But in the present moment, they were in the very fever pitch of life.
It was a party for the ages, in a time when much of the country had elected to remain isolated in their homes, for fear of the invisible contagion. Would many think Pete Huntington mad? Perhaps. Obviously the partygoers did not.
As frequently occurs during raucous affairs, midnight came all too swiftly. At the downbeat of this hour, the electricity faltered; lights flickered off and on again with the swiftness of a camera’s shutter, and the music paused for an abrupt breath of silence. When the shortage resolved itself, an uneasy chuckle passed through the house, and those nearest the foyer had occasion to notice a Stranger who had arrived in that very blink. This Stranger drew the notice of the revelers, for unlike anyone else at the party, he wore a mask: not the kind one expected to see at the grocery store, used to cover the nose and mouth, but a full mask which bore a face with a ghastly grin, frozen in a parody of merriment. Word spread of this new arrival, inviting judgment, condemnation, and even revulsion, for this was not one of Huntington’s friends or acquaintances, but an intruder, come to shame them for daring to gather.
When Huntington laid eyes upon the Stranger (who moved slowly and easily, for the crowd parted readily around him, as if in contradiction to their own defiance of social distancing), his face showed anger. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded from the top of the staircase. The music was turned low so that his voice might be heard throughout the house. “One of those masked sheep? Someone grab him and take it off!”
None drew close enough to remove the Stranger’s mask, but they needn’t have tried, for the Stranger himself reached up and removed it with his own hands. Yet when he did, it only revealed yet another mask underneath, this face with similar proportions but which now wore a troubled frown. He passed through the crowd into the varied rooms, and in each one he paused briefly as if for an invisible cameraman, then removed his mask and cast it aside only to reveal another one just beneath, still shrouding his true countenance, each one with a slightly different expression: from the first wild grin succeeded by the frown, there came then a sneer of contemptible rage; a look of grimmest solemnity; a visage expressing unutterable horror; and a twisted look so like the stiffened corpse one might easily have mistaken the Stranger for the very picture of Death Incarnate.
With the music lowered, the partygoers noticed a peculiar sound emanating from the mysterious figure. With each successive mask he peeled from his face, it grew more audible: a bone-rattling, unnatural wheeze, as if his breathing grew more labored with each step, or with each discarded facial expression. It was a sound like blood sucked through a straw, a sound so horrible it made each guest, despite being in the vigor and prime of life, keenly aware of his own mortality. It was the sound imminently preceding the terminal hush of the ventilator, which had seemed ‘til then an impossibility.
Enraged by the audacity of the Stranger, and by his own shame, Huntington pursued the masked figure all the way to the darkroom, where the black was somehow intensified by the red hue, as if the color exposed the very nature of darkness. Huntington raised his meaty fist to the Stranger, whose belabored breaths rasped like sandpaper in his ears, and from the unmoving lips of his mask the Stranger’s voice came: “Remember, you’re only a man.”
Pete Huntington opened his fist and took hold of the mask to tear it from the Stranger’s face, but what he saw there made him cry out and let go, frantically rubbing his hands like the Lady Macbeth. In his panic he knocked over the red light, which shattered on the floor, allowing the room to retreat into a more natural darkness. The revelers hurried into the room and saw the Stranger, only this time they found not another mask waiting beneath the one Pete had ripped away, nor even a face, but the blankness of a shadow, these many masks unoccupied by human face at all. Whatever hideous visage the red light had developed of the Stranger’s form had been seen by Pete alone.
It was not until two weeks later that they all finally acknowledged the presence that had entered their midst, after they had already gone about their lives and continued to spread the contagion that Huntington alone had abruptly been able to see spreading over his hands, and which had sent him into a mad rage through the house, shrieking and dashing his head against his framed photos and stained-glass windows until he lay dead. The Stranger had come without invitation or announcement, and one by one the partygoers wheezed their last breaths. And easily-averted Misfortune and needless Suffering and the Stupidity of the masses held misbegotten reign over the U.S. of A.
About Me
Jo Kaplan is the author of the horror novels IT WILL JUST BE US and WHEN THE NIGHT BELLS RING. Her short stories have appeared in Fireside Quarterly, Black Static, Nightmare Magazine, Vastarien, Horror Library, Nightscript, and a variety of award-nominated anthologies (sometimes as Joanna Parypinski). Find her at jo-kaplan.com.
Great Newsletter! Loved the story; perfect description of the pandemic. Long live Poe!