My last day of a long weekend is here. As expected I didn't really accomplish much--just the usual sorts of weekend things. I have started on my R.I.P. Challenge book, however. I think I am going to enjoy Ann Radcliffe's The Mysteries of Udolpho! Already just one chapter into the book I have met the heroine, Emily St. Aubert. She must be youngish as she lives with her parents (16 maybe?--is it ever stated?). It is 1584 (I had expected the book to be set in the 1700s for some reason). And Emily lives in Gascony on the banks of the Garonne (I expected this also to be set in England--shows you how off my initial perceptions were!!).
Radcliffe spends a lot of time setting the scene-talking about the lovely views that Emily and her father enjoy. There is already some sort of a mystery man who has "shown himself"--or not really. Emily finds in her favorite spot, a little fishing-house, a poem penciled in the wainscoting. She finds her lute has been moved from its normal place. Lastly, her bracelet goes missing. Our mystery man is a poet, a musician and a thief. I expect to hear more from him. I know Emily is going to be orphaned, and already her mother has died. All this in just the first chapter! This is a long book and I think it will easily take me the full two months to read it.
(Possible spoilers--I'm not sure how to talk about a short story without giving away details).
As I am not sure I will get any other books read for this challenge, I had planned on reading some short stories as well. I hope to read one or two each weekend. This weekend I have started with a couple of short stories by Edgar Allen Poe. I'm sure I must have read "The Tell-Tale Heart" in high school. It's a very short story and probably one of his more famous ones. The story takes place entirely in the confines of an old house. The narrator tells us he is not crazy, yet he murders the old man living there. His only motive seems to be that the old man's eye vexes him--it appears like that of a vulture with a film over it. He can't bear to look at it. He waits every night watching the old man, but it isn't until he catches the eye open that he rolls the bed over on top of the old man killing him. He then dismembers the body and buries it under the wood planks of the floor, taking extreme caution not to splatter blood anywhere. He is so confident of getting away with his crime that he allows the police to not only search the house but invites them to sit in the very room where the man is buried. Unfortunately for our narrator there is a thumping in his head much like the beating heart of the now dead man. It's so loud he screams out his guilt in the crime. So much for not being mad.
I also read Poe's, "The Black Cat", which was quite good. There was a twist at the end that I should have seen coming, but I didn't. I read that Poe actually owned a cat himself. The narrator of his story, however, should never have been allowed a pet! The story begins with our narrator awaiting execution. He pens his narrative as a way to "unburthen his soul". As a young man he was a great animal lover. He married and he and his wife had many pets. He took to drink, however, and as his addiction to alcohol grew so did he become more abusive. He even cut out the eye of his favorite black cat, Pluto. Unsurprisingly Pluto grew weary of our narrator, which angered him to the point of hanging the cat from the tree outside his house. That evening a fiery conflagration will reduce all but one wall of the house to ash. On that wall, ingrained in the plaster is the outline of poor Pluto hung from the tree. The narrator and his wife lose everything and must take refuge in a basement--all they can afford. You'd think a lesson would have been learned by now, but the narrator comes across a stray cat that looks much like his long lost Pluto and brings him home. In yet another fit of anger he will takes a swing at the cat with an axe but is stopped by his wife. Instead he wallops her with the axe. It's convenient that he lives in a basement--he buries her within the brick wall. Again in this story the police are alerted to possible foul play, but the narrator is so convinced that he has gotten away with his crime. In a show of bravado he even taps with his cane upon the very wall where his wife is entombed and a wailing cry is let loose. I'll stop here, you'll probably guess what happens next!
I was reading up a bit on Poe, and I thought this was interesting:
"The power of truly great literature transcends its creator, and sometimes even the intention the creator had in mind for it. Since Poe's death, his art has attracted interpretations and appreciation from the most unlikely readership. For example, his poetry ("The Raven", and "The Bells" are specific favorites) is memorized by Russian school children, while in Japan, Poe was a major inspiration for imagery and themes used in the Japanese manga (comics) and computer game industry in the 1970s and 1980s. Poe has become like Shakespeare and Van Gogh, a figure who transcends his time, place, and nationality; he no longer belongs to America, but to the world." (Student Companion to Edgar Allen Poe, by Tony Magistrale, Greenwood Press).
I have a paperback anthology of Poe's work and I plan on coming back to it and reading more, but I think next week I will dig out my copy of Daphne Du Maurier's Don't Look Now and Other Stories and read the title story, which is supposed to be very frightening.