September 8, 2004

The Project Gutenberg eBook The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe

The Project Gutenberg eBook The Fall of the House of Usher, by Edgar Allan Poe

In case anyone wants to read Poe and 'The Fall of the House of Usher'. A gloomy story from a strange author. Poe was described as (see link preceding):

"With the aid of his psychological stories, critics have proclaimed him necrophilic, dipsomanic, paranoid, impotent, neurotic, oversexed, a habitual taker of drugs, until all that is left in the public eye is an unstable creature sitting gloomily in a dim room, the raven over the door, the bottle on the table, the opium in the pipe, scribbling mad verses."

Why is it that acclaimed writers often have sordid and disrupted lives? Is it this very disruption that provides the fodder for their writing? Is it the black side of genius? Am I too judgmental?

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