Halloween Display: Spotlight on Poe

Halloween approaches.  Time for pumpkin carving, costume making, scary movies, and more candy than you can ever eat in one night (though many try).  In the literary world, there are many dark, spooky stories that will help add to the spirit of the day.  In particular the works of Edgar Allan Poe, master of the macabre.

Edgar Poe was the 2nd son of two actors.  At two years old, after the departure of his father and death of his mother, Poe became the foster-child of John Allan.  Though Allan never adopted him, Poe chose to take Allan as his middle name.  After these early tragedies life continued to be turbulent for Poe.  He quarreled with his foster-father over money and his chosen vocation, and was eventually kicked out of the University of Virginia because of gambling debts.  Later, he was court martialed and kick out of West Point.  His love life was also difficult, his first love married another, and his second love and wife, Virginia Clem, died after a long illness.  Fear of poverty and the loss of his wife lead Poe to drink excessively, which some argue ultimately led to his death.

Poe’s diverse body of work includes poetry, criticism, short stories, dark love stories, and the invention of the detective novel.  Many people are familiar with The Raven, which has made it’s way into popular culture through television shows like The Simpsons and Gilmore Girls, and The Tell-Tale Heart, the story of a man haunted by the beating heart of his murder victim.  Other important achievements include The Murders in the Rue Morgue (the first detective novel), the development of the short story genre, and considerable contribution to science fiction.

Come check out the Halloween Book Display in the library.  In addition to some great works by Poe, we have detective novels, thrillers, horror stories, vampire tales, and spooky short stories. Or if you would like to check out some more Halloween tales check out last year’s post The Origins of Halloween: Terror on Display at the Library.

 

The Great Apostle of Criollismo: Jorge Luis Borges at the Library

“He more than anyone, renovated the language of fiction and thus opened the way to a remarkable generation of Spanish American novelists.”
– J.M. Coetzee

Born in Buenos Aires in 1899, Jorge Luis Borges was an Argentine short story writer, essayist, and poet would become during the 1940s one of the premier fore-runners of ushering the world of Latin American literature into the realm of magical realism. Prior to Borges (during the 1940s) and Gabriel García Márquez (during the 1960s), Latin American writers tended to be primarily concerned with painting realistic and detailed portrayals of the reality they existed in. However, when Borges released Ficciones and The Aleph in the 1940s he presented to other artists, worlds where themes such as of dreams, labyrinths, religions, the supernatural, and metaphysics could be injected into realism. Rather than using fiction as a way to document reality, Borges used it to create new realities that toyed with philosophical concepts (in fact, he was so into the toying with reality that while he worked as a book reviewer for a Argentine Newspaper, he would make up and add facts to the author’s biography). The act of writing to Borges was intellectual play; in it he was free to try out new storytelling techniques, or he fram elaborate puzzles for his readers to figure out.

One of my favorite story by Borges, “Death and the Compass” (Collected Fictions, p. 147), is one of the best examples of how good he was at taking the tricks of a particular genre (in this case detective story) and flipping it on its head. The plot of the story is that detective Erik Lönnrot, is attempting to solve a series of murders which seems to add up to the Kabbalist pattern of the Tetragrammaton (the unspeakable name of god). Inside the plot and structure Borges combines some of his favorite themes like religious symbols and rituals, a main character who succumbs to hubris, conspiracy theories, and an ironic conclusion, to craft a story that is magically clever, with an ending that is best left unspoiled.

You can check out “Death and the Compass” or find your own favorite Borges short story in Collected Fictions (FIC BORGES).

You can also continue reading for more information on Borges including the books he wrote and those that he inspired.

Reference:
Brower, K. H. (2001). Jorge luis borges. Critical Survey of Short Fiction, Second Revised Edition, 1-7. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.