When Borders was closing—a sad day in the annals of American readers—things were marked down. On one venture to a remaining store somewhere in New Jersey, where the checkout line snaked like one of those around a Times Square theater before the doors open, I picked up Edgar Allan Poe Complete Tales and Poems. Poe has, of course, been in the public domain for many decades so anybody can publish his works. I did attempt to sit down and read through this behemoth that contains 73 short stories, but stumbled at “Hans Pfaall,” the first. This story is really a novelette, in today’s measure, coming in at nearly 19,000 words. (It took Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque to get me through it.) So I’ve been content to dip into it now and again to read one of Poe’s stories. In print. When the mood hits.
I read “The Oblong Box” in preparation for watching the movie. I had never encountered this story before, and I prefer to read the base before attempting the latter adaptations (particularly by AIP). The problem with reading Poe from this remove—in the light of his reputation—is that even the title tells us the box is a coffin. How it is to be used in Poe’s tale may be unknown at first. Here Poe divides his characteristic obsessiveness between the narrator and Mr. Wyatt, his temperamental artist friend who is newly married. Wyatt, the owner of said oblong box, takes it on a voyage by boat from Charleston to New York. The narrator obsesses over what might be in the box, being kept in a cramped stateroom rather than in the hold. A storm leads to a shipwreck and rather than be rescued, Wyatt binds himself to the box and leaps into the ocean. I won’t put the reveal here, but you get the idea. Today the title gives away Poe’s original twist.
There are still many of Poe’s stories that I haven’t read. I’ve had enough of a head start, however, that I may eventually make it through those he published. I’m aware that some of them may be funny, and some are tales of ratiocination. Some may be completely unexpected. Like many writers, Poe’s reputation is based on certain of his most well-known tales. But also like most writers, his interest ranged fairly widely. And he had that sense of “what if” that tends to drive those of us who write in a similar vein. But these days we know that if we see an oblong box we’ll already have a pretty good idea of what’s inside.
Photo by Tom Oates, 2013; This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Attribution: Nabokov at English Wikipedia
