The Surprising Comedy of Poe

I've been rather busy this past week, as you can see from the general scarcity of posts. I'm in a musical with my sister and father, and we've had rehearsals every evening since the 22nd, and opening night last Friday. I get a little break for the next couple days, and then it's back on the stage! The show runs for two more weekends, if anyone in the Glenview neighborhood is interested.
Here's a post I wrote a while ago and then forgot to publish. Enjoy!

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Poe is known for his horror. The Raven. The Telltale Heart. The Fall of the House of Usher. The Cask of Amontillado. The Pit and the Pendulum.

Quoth the raven - "Nevermore!"

I don't like horror. One bit.
Because of this, I have avoided Poe, even when my mother bought The Complete Works. I waited at least two years to pull it off the shelf and venture a peek.

My first story was The Telltale Heart, which we had listened to on Books-On-Tape a few years back, so I was fine with it. Then I tried the Dupin trio, which you can read about here. Finally, I picked a random story and plunged in.

Turns out, though Poe is most famous for his horror, I found a lot of his stories to be rather humorous. Take Xing the Paragrab, for example. With a name like that, how can that be anything other than comedy? It tells of two competing newspapers, and how one makes fun of the other for using "O!" so much, and how the other threatens to print an article so full of "o's" that it will burst, and how the one sneakily steals all the "o"-blocks from the other's printers, and how the other has to replace all the "o's" with the conventional "x," thus "x-ing the paragraph." (Paragraph is pronounced "paragrab" by the fellow who's job it is to X it.) The resulting publication is rather unreadable, to say the least.

Who would have though that story was written by Poe? Not a hint of anything terrible or horrible in it.
And there are many other examples. But what I found unites all of Poe's short stories is his love for all things utterly weird. The Man Who Was Used Up is an example of one that's just a head-scratcher. Not horrifyingly weird, just strange in a non-creepy way. Another example is The Angel of the Odd. It's just a weird, weird story. I don't want to give anything away - you're going to have to read them for yourself, which you could probably do in less than an hour, they're all rather short.

I must say, I do sort of like this funny side of Poe. He is, of course an excellent writer, and reading excellent writing is always nice. After viewing Poe as a dark, gloomy, creepy author, it was a pleasant surprise to find these funny short stories in the collection.

You may be wondering what my opinion on Poe's horror is now, being a little biased against the genre. (A little? That's an understatement.)
Well, I did end up reading a bunch of horror in addition to the others, and I must say that I absolutely adore them. They are so spectacular. They are frightening and yet not at the same time. Somehow, Poe manages to write in such a way that nothing is all despair or that the reader is left with some semblance of hope in the end. Usually (as in Telltale Heart or Cask of Amontillado) he does it by writing from the point of view of the murderer. We are so used to seeing it from the victims eyes, that this twist gives it so fresh a perspective that we almost sympathize with the murderer, before realizing sense and talking ourselves out of it..

Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde // An Unknown Genre

When I got back from the library with this book, my mom glanced at the title and said, "Is this that horrible book...?"

No, this is Shades of Grey by Jasper Fforde, where the amount of shades is not specified in the title. :-)

I recently discovered Jasper Fforde through his book The Eyre Affair, and wanted to read more of his work. Though The Eyre Affair is part of the Thursday Next series (which I will read in due course), I ended up reading Shades of Grey first - completely unrelated to the Thursday Next books. It is about an alternate universe where your station in life and rank in society is determined by the colors that you can see. I am always intrigued by imaginative plots and situation such as this one, so I was very excited to read this book. And after reading The Eyre Affair, I had already fallen in love with Fforde's descriptive, humorous, and simple style of writing. 

While we're on the topic of writing style, I would like to make a side note. This book (as are any of Fforde's) is definitely PG rated, if not almost on the R border. This is mainly for language, as the F-word pops up a few times, and in The Eyre Affair, there is a fellow named Mr. Schitt (This is joked about numerous times, as you may guess). There is some "questionable content," including the whole "sleeping with someone before you are married" thing, but it's pardonable, because Fforde doesn't make any statements about values or principles or morality. He's not glorifying situations nor condemning them. It's just part of the plot, which is intended for more mature audiences. He writes candidly, without unnecessary detail. 

Alright. Onward.

I really enjoyed how Fforde managed to weave in the culture of the land of Cromatacia (an alternate UK) without stating it outright. The oft-referenced writer's maxim states, "Show, don't tell," and Fforde does this with glorious results. As I said, the best description of his writing is candid. It's just so clear and straightforward.

There is one thing that really, really bugged me about this book - the ending. Since The Eyre Affair ended rather satisfactorily, despite having a sequel, I thought that Shades of Grey would, too. 

Nope.

It's a decent ending, but not satisfactory at all. There is promise of two more books in the series (Shades of Grey 2: Painting by Numbers, and Shades of Grey 3: The Gordini Protocols), but they aren't published yet. So I suppose my one problem with the book isn't really a problem, but proof of the quality of the book. If Shades of Grey weren't as good as it is, I wouldn't be so antsy to read the next one. Because I generally read so many classics, I am unused to having to wait for a book to come out. A few years back, I thought I'd like to write a letter to one of my favorite authors, but I realized - all my favorite authors were dead. So I take for granted that when I finish one book in a series, the next will be right there for me at the library. I guess I'm going to have to get used to waiting if I'm going to be reading more contemporary books.

An interesting mental exercise is trying to classify this book in a particular genre. Is it fantasy? It does have some fantastical elements, but I wouldn't call it straight-out fantasy. Perhaps it's more satire. Again, it does have elements of satire, but it isn't completely satire. At first I thought to call it that new pseudo-genre of "Apocalyptica" that is sweeping young-adult literature (think Hunger Games, and Divergent). But it's not exactly that either, perhaps for the reason that it's definitely not "teen" reading. The only way to classify the Shades of Grey (or any of Fforde's work, as a matter of fact) is as "un-classable." It's a melding of various genres, and doesn't conform to any one in particular. I've never really come across anything quite like it.

All in all, I really enjoyed the book, and I do recommend it - but only to a certain sort of reader. Someone who doesn't mind a bit of fantasy melded with a bit of satire melded with a bit of romance melded with a bit of mystery.

And somewhat on topic, here is an interesting quote:

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Post Script: There is a nice little "following" button on  the right sidebar.
Somewhere that way -------------------------------------->
There's lots of interesting posts coming up, so it would be to your benefit to follow this blog! You'll read a lot of interesting stuff!

~Sophia