Story

October 10, 2009

A Fitting Funeral for Edgar Allan Poe

Edgar Allan Poe

This Sunday, October 11th 2009, a life-size simulation of Edgar Allen Poe will be carried on a horse-driven carriage from his Baltimore home to the burial ground in memorial of the poet’s life and literary contributions to the world. This will be done in celebration of the 160th anniversary of the death of the literary great.

I still remember being in a 8th grade classroom and reading Poe’s The Raven.

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.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December,
And each separate dying ember wrought its ghost upon the floor.
Eagerly I wished the morrow; vainly I had sought to borrow
From my books surcease of sorrow – sorrow for the lost Lenore
For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore
Nameless here for evermore.

I’ve read a lot of literary works in my life. There are very, very, very few that have struck me as Poe’s Raven has struck me. There are even fewer works that I can recall so, so vividly. I not only recall this poem’s content, mind you; I actually recall the entire experience that accompanied and surrounded our 8th grade class’s reading of The Raven. The experience was unlike experiences of other class readings in ways that I can’t quite communicate. The poem was weird. It was darkly odd, but appealing in some sort of strange way. It was fascinating and sort of repulsive all at the same time. Like I said, it’s hard to communicate the experience of reading Poe in 8th grade, but whatever the experience was, it travels well and has stayed with me to this very day and moment. Read more…

July 3, 2009

The Catcher in the Rye

J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye is as classic a novel as it is controversial. Catcher’s literary value is almost totally invested in the symbology that is Holden Caulfield. Holden’s seemingly misguided adventures and expressed apathy with unavoidable phonies points towards a much larger human condition that all readers can appreciate in varying degrees. The character is a familiar one, especially to young adults who are only just beginning to experience a so-called real world and the difficult quest for authentic individuality. This sort of appreciation practically guarantees future relevancy to a novel that has already been deemed a treasure in an original context that can best be described as bland industrialized-american, prosperity-minded, and heavy on assumed social codes/norms. Catcher in the Rye – and more importantly Holden Caulfield – is a biting indictment of the American social context of the 1940s and 1950s. The counter-cultural revolt of the 1960s was an unavoidable reaction to the context created by previous generations, as was Catcher. This, and other events, led to much controversy. The novel was granted much critical acclaim, but more than a few critics characterized it as less-than-serious literature largely in part to the style/tone in which it was written. The book was of course banned by groups and schools because it contained cuss words and sexual themes and situations that everyone experiences but none talk about openly. Controversy also followed the novel because of the connection between it and John Lennon’s assassin, Mark David Chapman. The attempted assassination President Ronald Reagan by John Hinckley, Jr. also has been connected to Catcher, as was the murder of an actress committed by Robert John Bardo. Read more…

July 2, 2007

Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange

A Clockwork Orange

Anthony Burgess’s A Clockwork Orange is so much more than an entertaining novel; it is a philosophical and theological fable built upon a conceptual struggle between good, evil, and our God-given and human ability to choose one over the other freely. It is a satirical treatise railing against the dangers of overextended government and its vain penchant for social solutions predicated on the contextual removal of individual free choice in moral decisions. It’s a nightmarish tale of sex and violence set in a dystopian world no sharp person would ever volunteer to live in, never mind confessions of actual and real-time occupancy. Yet, we all do go on living in that very world in spite of our best intentions, and everyday too! Read more…