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The Cask Of Amontillado - Edgar Allen Poe - Halloween Special!

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Hi, I\\u2019m Christy Shriver. We\\u2019re here to talk about books that have changed us and changed the world.

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I\\u2019m Garry Shriver and this is the How to Love Lit Podcast.\\xa0 If you\\u2019re listening to us for the first time or have been listening for a while, please take a second and scroll down to the bottom of your podcast app and hit the five stars- that helps us move up in the world!!

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And if you\\u2019re thinking, I don\\u2019t know if I want to give them five stars- rest assured- we\\u2019ve got a great discussion for your on a great poet and short story writer.\\xa0 You\\u2019re going to love it.\\xa0 \\xa0He\\u2019s a fan favorite- even though, I have to be honest, he\\u2019s not my favorite- no fault of his, it\\u2019s on me. Today and next week we\\u2019re talking about the one and only Edgar Alan Poe.

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Christy, I like Edgar Alan Poe.\\xa0 I remember reading his stories in class as a teenager- one of the few things I actually remember from my high school English classes, and they were entertaining.\\xa0

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I know, and he\\u2019s still super-popular.\\xa0 All of my kids really like him \\u2013 even if he is incredibly hard to read, \\xa0but as you know and I brought this up when we went through Mary Shelley\\u2019s Frankenstein= being scared is just not my thing, and Poe is very scary- his writings even find humor in the grotesque and that\\u2019s what people like.\\xa0 There\\u2019s such a range from gothic horror, to true evil, to the struggle between the rational and the crazy- there is even sadness- all of that- it can be truly frightening.\\xa0 That\\u2019s his contribution really- and totally not my genre although I respect the art, so \\xa0I tried to pick a couple of his less creepy pieces for this series- for myself really- I can\\u2019t go down the road of burying people alive- although I know all you Stephen King fans feel the adrenaline rush of the faux-terror!!!.

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In that case, Christy- thanks for taking one for the team there for this \\xa0special holiday series- if you\\u2019re listening to this in real time \\xa0we are doing Edgar Alan Poe this week and again next week because here in the United States it\\u2019s Halloween and in most of Latin America just south of us it\\u2019s followed up by the Day of the Dead, so it is all in the spirit of community- which in Memphis, to be honest- Halloween is more about community than anything else.\\xa0 Even in the year of Covid- houses are decorated, candy has been purchased and everyone is in the spirit of getting outside and seeing your neighbors that you really don\\u2019t see much doing the year.\\xa0 My son, Ben, \\xa0and his wife, Rachel, who live on a street where decorations and trick or treating is particularly serious business have made a special Covid candy shoot, so kids won\\u2019t have to come all the way to the door this year.\\xa0 They are going to send candy down a shoot they made out of plumbing pipes into the buckets of the trick or treater children, true innovation and effort for the season.\\xa0 So, Christy, think of that instead of the gore as This week, we highlight the popular short story \\u201cThe Cask of Amontillado\\u201d and next week the very popular poem, \\u201cThe Raven\\u201d.\\xa0 And, per our usual, let\\u2019s start with the life and times of Edgar Alan Poe.\\xa0

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Yes- and I know we could talk for an entire episode just on his life, but the Cask of Amontillado is so interesting, we\\u2019re just going hit a few big highlights of Poe\\u2019s life this week- and then we\\u2019ll talk about his mysterious death next week- maybe we\\u2019ll circle back around next year for Halloween and hit him again with an even creepier tale if I have the nerve, but in summary- Poe\\u2019s life very much mirrors the chaos and gore that so often characterized his writing.\\xa0 Poe\\u2019s life had so many self-sabotaging events, lots of people have questioned whether he was mentally ill.\\xa0 Garry, do you have any thoughts on that before we start to illustrate what I\\u2019m talking about.

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Well, let me just say that it goes without saying that you cannot and I haven\\u2019t seen any articles from any real legitimate sources that medically diagnose a person who is not alive- and since Poe died in 1849, this is nothing but speculation.\\xa0 At that time people used the expression that someone was \\u201cmad\\u2019.\\xa0 But science has evolved significantly since those days, and we do understand a lot about what haunts us as humans- and from his writings we can see a lot of this reflected.\\xa0 Today there are treatments that can truly change the course of people\\u2019s lives who back then would be condemned to feeling lonely, estranged and depressed- things Poe powerfully illustrates.\\xa0 Also, I will say, that genius and insanity, some would say is often entwined.\\xa0 There are many many examples in history of amazing people who stood out in their generation by being great artists \\xa0but who likely truly struggled with some shadow of mental illness.\\xa0 We obviously think of Van Gogh, but Mark Twain, Hermann Hesse, Ernest Hemingway, Virginia Wolfe and Sylvia Plath are just a few writers that pop out immediately.\\xa0 Poe seems to fall in this category.\\xa0 Heck, Poe himself once said when asked if he was crazy, \\u201cThe question is not yet settled whether madness is or is not the loftiest intelligence-whether much that is glorious- whether all that is profound- does not spring from disease of thought- from moods of mind exalted at the expense of the general intellect.\\u201d

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Wow- that\\u2019s pretty insightful for a guy that predates modern psychology.

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True, and let me be very clear, there is no one that claims that mental illness promotes artistic talent.\\xa0 That\\u2019s a very simplistic notion and a generalization that trivializes serious medical conditions.\\xa0 It also discredits artistic genius that is innate to any artist.\\xa0 Having said that, there does seem to be some correlation between some disorders and the ability to create incredible art, especially in artists who suffer from bipolar depression and hypomania.\\xa0 There is reason to believe that these artists because of their hypomania experience enhanced rates of original thought.\\xa0 They can experience unusual creative thinking and increased productivity.\\xa0 There is evidence to suggest that these artists also experience increased fluency and frequency of thoughts.\\xa0 They often tend to rhyme and use other sound associations such as alliteration, musical things like that.\\xa0 It seems that for some creative people who are already gifted manic-depressive illness provides opportunity to produce art because during these times they don\\u2019t require very much sleep and can focus intensely with vigor and even with great confidence of thought on their art.\\xa0 I read one researcher who concluded that contradictory mood swings when they are harnessed enhance the artists already innate ability to accurately see and reflect truth in nature and humanity in a way that those without these biological issues simply cannot even detect or feel, much less put into words.\\xa0

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So, are you saying, IF you already are an artistic genius, this disorder could actually help you create genius works you otherwise could never pull off.

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Possibly, that is one way of thinking about it.\\xa0 Of course, it goes without saying that any mental illness naturally comes with a lot of struggle, and Edgar Alan Poe, whether he suffered as some suggest from bipolar depression or not, reflects great struggle- so much internal both internal and external- lots of it he created himself, but a lot of it he did not- he was victimized, especially as a child.

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His life truly was difficult- under any circumstances, no matter how his brain chemistry worked.\\xa0 Everyone would struggle with real life traumas- if this were your set of circumstances.\\xa0 What\\u2019s remarkable is these struggles were honed into art from artists \\xa0from the day he was born.\\xa0 He was born in 1809 in Boston to nactors: apparently his mother was fabulous, his father not awesome both on and off the stage.\\xa0 His dad abandoned them, and his mother died before he turned 3- a death he remembered always and spoke about her vomiting blood and being carried away forever by horrible men dressed in black.\\xa0 Most scholars agree that this death, she died of tuberculosis, really changed him and in many ways informs his a great bit of his work.\\xa0 Lots of his stories carry with them this idea burial and loss and return, living versus dead.\\xa0 He had an idealized image of who his mother was, and this idealized woman who is lost is also something that we see.

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She was the first woman he lost, but loss characterized every relationship with a woman that he loved for the rest of his life.

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You\\u2019re exactly right, he had a close friend, who\\u2019s mother died when he was a teenager.\\xa0 His step-mother (Francis and John Alan were a very wealthy couple who took him in as a child to raised him although they never adopted him- he and the dad were at odds to the day the dad died and left him nothing in the will- but Francis, his stepmom, he loved and she died tragically- and then of course, his wife died which we\\u2019ll talk about next week.\\xa0

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When his real mother died and he was taken in by the Alan\\u2019s, Poe went to live in England with the Alan\\u2019s and they sent him to boarding school- a very lonely place it seems for Poe, but he did hit the British literary scene at a great time.\\xa0 During his education there, he was exposed to the great Romantic writers, Byron and the Shelley\\u2019s\\xa0 are the two we\\u2019ve talked about, but he likely read a lot of romantic writers.

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For sure- and really when you read his things- there is a lot of obvious gothic influence.\\xa0

In fact, lots of critics almost make fun of him for his overblown romantic style.\\xa0 And I will say, he does kind of go out of control at times- you can tell in the Raven immediately that= the man loves him some good alliteration and rhyme.\\xa0 Ezra Pound said he never used a noun without coupling it with an adjective, preferably vague and suggestive of horror, gloom, vastness, strangeness and indefiniteness- which is all true.\\xa0

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After this we\\u2019re going to read a real British gothic tale with Wuthering Heights, and we can see for ourselves- the comparisons.\\xa0

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True- And I know I\\u2019m getting ahead of myself talking about the unusual and really iconic style of Poe, but he does have a real style that is uniquely his=whether you like it or not.\\xa0 He refers to bold colors- black, white, red, he uses long words on purpose where he could use short words.\\xa0 For example instead of being sick, Poe would have you experience a malady.\\xa0 Stuff like that.\\xa0

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Well, contrived writing or not, he was clearly extremely bright, and when it came time Poe managed to get admitted into the University of Virginia where he studied French, Italian, Spanish, Latin.\\xa0 And was doing really well, until he self-sabotaged himself.\\xa0 He got mad because Mr. Alan wouldn\\u2019t give him enough money to live off of, so by way of getting back\\u2026he took up gambling, ran up debts of over $2000, got himself repeatedly drunk to the point that he got thrown out of school.\\xa0

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Yes- that was his first mess but not his last- his relationship with alcohol was particularly bad- he couldn\\u2019t handle it- after leaving Richmond, he goes to the army- and again did really well, he moved up to the rank to Regimental Sargeant Major, which is as high as an enlisted person could go.\\xa0 He even got Mr. Alan to help him leverage that into an appointment at the very prestigious West Point Military Academy.

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But of course, he does well until he self-sabotages again.\\xa0 He starts skipping classes and got himself court-martialed for \\u201cgross neglect of duties.\\u201d

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Poor Poe, to me he seems just lost- he can\\u2019t even find a place to call home- he just moves around from city to city for the rest of his life.\\xa0 He moves to New York, cannot find a job at all and remember-this is back in the days when no work- no eat.\\xa0 There is no such thing as public assistance.\\xa0 He reaches out to Mr. Allan, his step=father- but nothing.\\xa0 I should mention, btw, that he has published a couple of books of poems during all of this time, but again- back in those days- nobody was making a living as a writer.\\xa0 Eventually, he moves to yet another city, Baltimore, to live with a relative, an Aunt named Mrs. Clemm.\\xa0 He also gains a little bit of luck as a writer because when he gets some of his short stories published, he attracts the attention from a recognized novelist, a MRs. Jphn P. Kennedy, who gets him a gig as an assistant editor at this really impressive literary magazine called the Southern Literary Messenger.\\xa0 This is a fantastic break, so he moves again, to Richmond to take this job.\\xa0 This time he brings MRs. Clemm and her daughter Virginia with him- they are his new family. He truly loves them, and it isn\\u2019t but a few years later he marries Mrs. Clemm\\u2019s daughter.

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Which is one of thing things people know about him that really grosses them out.\\xa0 There really is not a satisfactory explanation why a 27 year old man would marry a 13 year old girl.\\xa0

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True- there is a yuck factor that has crossed the ages- they actually tried to lie and say she was 21, but reports say no one believed that.\\xa0 I\\u2019ve read some things that say she didn\\u2019t even look 13.\\xa0 But, if it\\u2019s any consolation, most people doubt they actually consummated the marriage.\\xa0 And if that wasn\\u2019t bad enough to make him a bit unlikeable, it seems he was a true jerk as a person. \\xa0He was extremely arrogant, mean-spirited and was always making enemies in the publishing business.\\xa0 He lied about his job at the magazine he worked for claiming to be more important than he was.\\xa0 He would lambast popular writers and even insulted the readers of his magazine.\\xa0 Here\\u2019s a funny Poe quote, one time he chided American readers for \\u201cliking a stupid book the better, because sure enough, it\\u2019s stupidity is American.\\u201d\\xa0 He also published short stories that were so horrifying they were insulting- like the story Berenice where a man preparing to marry his cousin actually ends up burying her alive and then later digging her up again- it\\u2019s weird and shocking- on purpose.\\xa0

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He was one of the first artists (of course this is the concept behind all of social media click bait but also all kinds of tv shows now)- but he understood- that shocking and insulting gets you noticed and you can\\u2019t be famous if no one knows who you are- Poe actually said that.\\xa0

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Yes, and as true as that is, Poe kept getting himself into so much trouble because he couldn\\u2019t moderate this stuff. He would get fired, go somewhere else, get another job, insult people again and so on- like I said, always self-sabotaging.\\xa0\\xa0

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He had such confidence that he was this amazing writer, and he had this incredible disdain for people who did not recognize his genius.- Of course, we can argue if he was right or wrong about his talents- history seems to agree with him, but regardless, he just couldn\\u2019t get along.

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\\xa0I want to stop here with his life and finish that crazy tale next week, but I did want to end with a very interesting insult that relates to the story we\\u2019re about to read, so in 1840, Poe is back in Philadelphia getting fired by yet another boss, well Poe is indignant, per his usual, with being fired and he fires off a letter to his boss in which he says this, \\u201cIf by accident you have taken it into you head that I am to be insulted with impunity I can only assume that you are an ass.\\xa0 Nemo me impune Lacessit- which is my poor attempt at reading latin \\u2013 this phrase in Latin means for No one insults me with impunity\\u2026.YIKES- Which of course is the inscription that we\\u2019re going to read in the story \\u201cThe Cask of Amontillado\\u201d\\u2026

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Well, it is also an ironic turn of phrase because it seems there was absolutely NO one in the literary world that Poe would not just blast and savage in review after review.\\xa0 He was a huge insulter.\\xa0 He even accuses Henry David Longfellow of plagiarism.\\xa0 Which from what I read Poe wasn\\u2019t above himself- he did it more than once.\\xa0 His whole professional\\xa0 life is picking one fight he can\\u2019t win after another- just professional derailment for no real apparent reason.\\xa0 He would get a break, work really hard to make something happen and then do something so deliberate and horrible it guaranteed failure.\\xa0 And a lot of this was peppered by alcoholic drinking binges that did him no good either.\\xa0

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Well as true as that is, Poe is a man that felt slighted humanity.\\xa0 He was robbed of many women he loved.\\xa0 He was robbed, at least in his own mind, although this doesn\\u2019t seem really factual to me, but in his mind he was robbed by the literary success that was his birthright because of his true brilliance.\\xa0 There were those who were far worse and less talented than him that were more fortunate than him. \\xa0\\xa0It is no wonder that by 1846, he would write what would become one of his most famous stories- and it is a story that really channels this feeling we\\u2019ve all experienced at one time or another who a person is who lesser than you- is more successful than you are- and who doesn\\u2019t recognize this.\\xa0 This person looks down on you, has an inflated sense of themselves- and this is the story of them getting what they deserve \\u2013 at least in Poe\\u2019s vision- they get - the Cask of Amontillado.

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Well, like I said, this is the first story of his I ever remember reading.\\xa0

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\\xa0It\\u2019s. great one- for a lot of reasons, and we\\u2019re going to read the whole thing, but before we do, I want to give you all the literary things to look for when you read it- because beyond channeling our desire for revenge- it\\u2019s very cleverly written.\\xa0 Poe had these rules of what constituted a great story and The Cask of Amontillado\\u201d follows them.\\xa0 His first rule for a short story is that you should be able to sit down and read the whole thing in one setting.\\xa0 The second rule is that it should have what he calls a \\u201cunity of impression\\u201d- in other words- really just one thing that the author is trying to do.\\xa0 He also thinks that a tale should be self-sufficient or in his words \\u201cshould contain within itself all that is required for its own comprehension.\\u201d\\xa0 And he really does this.\\xa0 He is going to pack it in from the beginning to end.\\xa0 Every word is intentional, every name is symbolic every piece of dialogue is ironic, and every action takes you deeper and deeper into this crazy reality.\\xa0

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To begin with let\\u2019s start with the title- it\\u2019s a pun

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Amontillado is a kind of Sherry (which is a kind of wine)- I\\u2019ve never heard of it before this story but it\\u2019s Spanish- and a cask would be a case.\\xa0 However, here, he\\u2019s making it a pun.\\xa0 Monte- is a form of the word mountain- cask is a shortened form of the word casket- so it\\u2019s also a mountain for a casket- see how clever

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Very clever-

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Well, everything in this story is clever like that and deliberate.\\xa0 The setting is kind of vague, but it seems like it\\u2019s Italy, maybe Rome, we\\u2019ll assume that, but it doesn\\u2019t really matter- some people think France, but it\\u2019s during Carnival.\\xa0 Being from Brazil, I know a little about Carnival.\\xa0 Carnival is a three day holiday= it\\u2019s a sort of religious holiday- you\\u2019re supposed to dress up, party really hard and act the fool the last three days before lent where in the Catholic tradition of Christianity you have to straighten up get be good for the 40 days before Easter, which is the most holy day in the Christiain faith.\\xa0 The year is more vague, he gives us a clue because Montressor, our main character is a mason which only began in Italy in the 1730s, and he\\u2019s wearing a roquelaire which was a fashion during the 1700s. There are a couple of other clues like that, but it\\u2019s sometime in the second half of the 1700s- not super-important to know.\\xa0

\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0\\xa0 The names are kind of coded- Fortunato means- fortunate- which this dude is quite UNFORTUNATE in what happens to him, but before that he seems to have been very fortunate which is part of the reason Montressor hates him so much.\\xa0 He apparently considers himself to be better than Montressor- a wine conneseeur, although he doesn\\u2019t know anything- we know this because he doesn\\u2019t know that amontillado is a sherry (which I wouldn\\u2019t know either, but than again, Im of noble Italian lineage either. And this is what I mean by every word is deliberate- he makes fun at one point of this third person, a guy named luchesi- and says over and over- this guy doesn\\u2019t know amontillado from sherry- but amontillado IS sherry- so in saying that he informs the reader that he\\u2019s stupid.\\xa0 Also, \\xa0He pretends he\\u2019s some blue-blooded aristocrat, but his crest isn\\u2019t very impressive.\\xa0 And he doesn\\u2019t know how to look dignified.\\xa0 He\\u2019s wearing a stupid jester\\u2019s costume which makes him look like a fool. And of course, Carnival is about dressing up- but we all know- there\\u2019s a bit of art involved there.\\xa0 If you\\u2019ve ever been to a Halloween party, you know there\\u2019s always the dufus who\\u2019s costume is just off.\\xa0 Fortunato is that guy.\\xa0 All the details seem to suggest that he had gotten really lucky in life but has mistaken this luck with talent and looks down on people that are better than him- namely Montressor- and that names is interesting to mon-tressor means= my treasure- because he\\u2019s the one with the nice heritage and real expertise in wine.\\xa0

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So, as we read are we look for all the hidden ironies. \\xa0

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Exactly that, I may stop and interrupt you to point them out when I can\\u2019t resist, but I\\u2019ll try to refrain, for me it\\u2019s really interesting- because the fun of this story is the irony.\\xa0 Like as they go down the stairs and Montressor keeps saying things like, \\u201cI woldn\\u2019t want you to die of a cold\\u201d= and you know he\\u2019s getting ready to kill this do- but as interesting as I find it, \\xa0it can also be annoying and disruptive.

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Even the very first sentence it something to notice- it\\u2019s kind of a thesis statement- the narrator is going to claim some sort of weird primitive honor code.\\xa0 The idea being if someone insults you bodly enough you should not only get them back- but you must do it without getting caught.\\xa0 Montressor is telling his story \\u201chalf a century\\u201d after he committed the murder.\\xa0 He\\u2019s not regretful- he\\u2019s proud.\\xa0 It\\u2019s an artful revenge.\\xa0 Fortunato is a fool who dared to condescend to someone better than him- montressor had put up with his arrogance for long enough- and when we get to the part where MNontressor points out his coat of arms notice that it is of a human foot crushing a snake.\\xa0 From Montressor\\u2019s perspective- this is a story of a man getting what\\u2019s coming- not for any specific bad thing- but for not knowing his place- the ultimate insult worthy of the ultimate punishment.\\xa0 Let\\u2019s begin\\u2026.

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