Listen Edgar Allan Poe’s Horror Tales Learn via Vincent Worth, Christopher Lee, James Earl Jones, William S. Burroughs & Others

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=playlist

Right here on Hal­loween of 2024, we’ve got a better vari­ety of frightening sto­ries — and arguably, a miles scari­er vari­ety of scari­er sto­ries — to make a choice from than ever earlier than. However what­ev­er their rel­e­vance to the spe­cif­ic lives we would possibly reside and the spe­cif­ic dreads we would possibly really feel these days, what number of such cur­hire works stand a possibility of being learn a cou­ple of cen­turies from now, with no longer simply his­tor­i­cal inter­est however gen­uine chills? With each and every Hal­loween that brings us close to­er to the two hundredth anniver­sary of Edgar Allan Poe’s lit­er­ary debut, the works of that Amer­i­can pio­neer of the ugly and the macabre develop best extra deeply trou­bling.

“The phrase that recurs maximum cru­cial­ly in Poe’s fictions is hor­ror,” writes Mar­i­lynne Robin­son within the New York Evaluation of Books. “His sto­ries are frequently formed to deliver the nar­ra­tor and the learn­er to a spot the place using the phrase is justified, the place the phrase and the expe­ri­ence it conjures up are explored or via impli­ca­tion defined. So crypts and entomb­ments and phys­i­cal mor­bid­i­ty figure in Poe’s writ­ing with a promi­nence that isn’t char­ac­ter­is­tic of primary lit­er­a­ture in gen­er­al. Transparent­ly Poe used to be fas­ci­nat­ed via pop­u­lar obses­sions, with crime, with pre­ma­ture bur­ial” — obses­sions that haven’t misplaced a lot pop­u­lar­i­ty since his day.

Examination­ined extra shut­ly, “the hor­ror that fas­ci­nat­ed him and gave such dread­ful uni­ty to his stories is frequently the inescapable con­fronta­tion of the self via a consistent with­fect jus­tice, the expo­certain of a responsible act in a kind that makes its rev­e­l. a.­tion a cringe of the thoughts in opposition to itself.” That is true, Robin­son writes, of such still-wide­ly-read works as “The Fall of the Area of Ush­er,” “The Masque of the Purple Dying,” “The Black Cat,” and “The Inform-Story Center.”

You’ll listen all of the ones sto­ries and extra in the Youtube playlist above, nar­rat­ed via a vari­ety of consistent with­shape­ers imme­di­ate­ly rec­og­niz­in a position via voice on my own: Christo­pher Lee, Vin­cent Worth, William S. Bur­roughs, Orson Welles, Bela Lugosi, Basil Rath­bone, and the past due James Earl Jones.

Whether or not learn aloud or at the web page, Robin­son notes, Poe “has at all times been reviled or cel­e­brat­ed for the absence of ethical con­tent in his paintings, even supposing those stories are all immediately­for­ward ethical para­bles. For a author so intrigued via the oper­a­tions of the thoughts as Poe used to be, an inter­est in con­science results in an inter­est in con­ceal­ment and self-decep­tion, issues which are secre­tive and top­ly indi­vid­ual and on the similar time so uni­ver­sal that they form civ­i­liza­tions.” Whilst there are civ­i­liza­tions, there shall be tell-tale hearts; and whilst there are tell-tale hearts, there shall be an audi­ence respon­sive to Edgar Allan Poe’s emblem of hor­ror, on Hal­loween or any oth­er night time.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Down­load The Com­plete Works of Edgar Allan Poe: Macabre Sto­ries as Loose eBooks & Audio Books

Why Will have to You Learn Edgar Allan Poe? An Ani­mat­ed Video Explains

7 Pointers from Edgar Allan Poe on Write Vibrant Sto­ries and Poems

Listen the 14-Hour “Essen­tial Edgar Allan Poe” Playlist: “The Raven,” “The Inform-Story Center” & A lot Extra

Listen Edgar Allan Poe Sto­ries Learn via Iggy Pop, Jeff Greenback­ley, Christo­pher Walken, Mar­i­anne Religion­ful & Extra

Watch a Peculiar Ani­ma­tion of Edgar Allan Poe’s “Inform-Story Center,” Vot­ed the twenty fourth Very best Automotive­toon of All Time (1953)

Primarily based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and huge­casts on towns, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His initiatives come with the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Towns and the ebook The State­much less Town: a Stroll thru Twenty first-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­ebook.