“The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839)

[spoilers] I have to admit Edgar Allan Poe can be a chore for me and here is a sterling example. The action, such as it is, is molecular, the language is dense and requires parsing—practically every sentence in every brick-wall monolith paragraph. Not much in this story makes sense except perhaps as some fever dream of the afterlife. Editor David G. Hartwell in The Dark Descent anthology sees the story as a foundational transition from haunted castle to haunted house, but that’s splitting hairs pretty fine considering this house feels like a castle or at least a mansion. The Ushers live in it, a brother and sister. Maybe I should use the scare quotes, “live” in it. The narrator was college chums with the brother. The chum has come in response to a strange, unexpected, and urgent letter from him. The sister is dying of disease unspecified, and in fact dies while the narrator is there. The narrator and brother transfer the body to some room in the basement. This being a Poe story, it’s little surprise that she is not actually dead but buried prematurely. Furthermore, the brother kinda sorta knew it (parsing the murk) when he enlisted the help interring her. The brother and narrator otherwise appear to spend most of their time reading aloud to one another from great works of fantasy (in the name-checking paragraph I recognized one of them, and suspect they’re all real) or reciting poetry and singing songs while whaling on a guitar. I should have stuck with that Netflix series a little longer to see how they treated these scenes but I was already struggling with the TV gloss. The story itself erupts into a poem of six stanzas at one point. Then the sister escapes her entombment and shows up just in time to die with her brother. The narrator discreetly departs the premises, at which point the house cracks in half and sinks into the lake it was built on. This is all accompanied by extensive excerpts from a fictional Romance tale involving Ethelred the knight. It’s no wonder Hammer Films (and Netflix) felt like they could do whatever they wanted with some of these stories (“The Pit and the Pendulum” another great example). I might have liked “Usher” more on previous readings, but not lately. It’s ridiculously extravagant with the collapsing house. Nothing with the sister makes sense. We find out later they are twins but that is not particularly helpful. It’s not like one of them ate the other in the womb. Yes, it is admirably thick with a good mood of dread and gothic atmosphere but that is almost all it is. Trade-offs: it can also be boring and impossible to believe. The language takes considerable getting used to and was slow, slow going for me. I do get a kick out of Poe’s obsession with premature burial. It shows up a lot in his stuff, like Mr. Mxyzptlk in the Superman comics. Me, my policy is not to think about being buried alive. Not always easy, I must admit.

The Dark Descent, ed. David G. Hartwell
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"Schalken the Painter" (1839)

With a story as old as this one by Sheridan Le Fanu there are always going to be problems of antiquated writing, but this is not bad overall—well conceived and with some very effective scenes. The original title, "Strange Event in the Life of Schalken the Painter," has a 19th-century wordiness. But the edit (as it appears in The Dark Descent and elsewhere) brings its own distortions because Godfrey Schalken is a fairly minor character here, more of a witness for whom we have sympathies. He's not even really "the painter" in this story. That's his master Gerard Douw. Schalken is merely a student, and haplessly in love with Douw's niece. Both Douw and Schalken are actual historical figures, by the way, but there's no word about Douw's niece in the Wikipedia article. In the long perspective of this story, as in life, Schalken eventually becomes a great painter in his own right, noted for his use of candlelight. In the 17th century, when this story takes place, arranged marriages were very much the norm. Douw cannot offer much of a dowry for his niece so he hopes for a man of means for her, although Schalken with his raw talent still might have a chance if love has anything to do with it. But then the mysterious man of means shows up. He comes by night. His hat is pulled down over his face and he has a box of gold whose value is to be verified by a nearby Jew (note clonking antisemitism). He's also in a huge hurry to close this deal—it has to be tonight or never. This is not going to turn out well for Rose, obviously (yes, as happens remarkably often, the woman gets it), but aside from that the story has a lot of surprises and effective moments. The marriage takes place, in all its haste, and then bride and groom disappear entirely. It turns out the groom is not from Rotterdam, as he had said. No one there has ever heard of him. Then, one night, Rose shows up in a terrible state—bedraggled, starving, frightened out of her mind. She keeps saying things like "The dead and the living cannot be one: God has forbidden it" and "Rest to the wakeful—sleep to the sleep-walkers." Real spooky shit. It's obvious what's happening, but still ambiguous enough to leave gaps where the imagination can dwell and fester. So, right, the guy is dead all along. There's a curious detail here about how he doesn't breathe. I wonder if I would notice that about someone because I don't think I particularly notice people are breathing—hard to test that one. As a kind of ghost our dead guy is an interesting conception, a dark shape that speaks but does not breathe, is fabulously wealthy, and wants a bride. Pretty good story all around.

The Dark Descent, ed. David G. Hartwell
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