One of my friends and I were talking shop the other night(i.e. drinking wine and babbling about books) when she mentioned that she thought that Mr. Bradbury had written a story in which the characters are killed in ways mentioned in some of Poe's stories, such as "The Pit and the Pendulum."

If this is true, does someone perhaps know the title of the story, and where I might find a copy of it?

"Usher II" in "The Martian Chronicles." See also "The Exiles" in "The Illustrated Man."

And check out Pillar of Fire in "S Is for Space" (or in "A Medicine for Melancholy and Other Tales", Perennial)!

Bradbury has frequently cited Poe as an admired writer and an influence on him. As shown above, several of his stories are blatant in referencing him.

Interestingly, Poe was one of the first American writers Europe gave any creedence to -- along with Washington Irving, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Charles Brockden Brown. All four wrote psychologically rich stories with kind of ominous and otherworldly tones.

Thank you very much.

Also, Poe is considered by many to be the first "official" mystery author.

Imskippper and Mr. Dark: wasn't Mr. Poe also referred to as the "father of the modern short story?" So, that would make Mr. Bradbury, with his enormous production of s.s. over the past sixty years, the direct heir to Mr. Poe's structural genius.

(The Epilogue entitled "The Forever Orient Express" in Cat's Pajamas in a story-poem form is "a fond salute from Bradbury to his literary heroes Shaw, Chesterton, Dickens, Twain, POE, Wilde, Melville, and Kipling." I have read it a few times and enjoyed it more with each consideration. I recall Mr. Poe gets the greatest obeisance. Very interesting perspective in the narration.)

Also, reading over the index of RB's "unpublished and draft" works in the recently released "RB: A Life of Fiction" reveals literally hundreds of stories at various stages of development. (Can you image the two authors thumbing through that treasure chest of manuscript?)

And then, remember Poe was only 40 years old at his demise (1809-49). His complete edition is substantial and, no doubt, with more financial and personal stability, his best years may have been awaiting him. I believe he was a brilliant literary critic, also.

Ah, the "What if's" of the human experience...

If EA Poe and R Bradbury are not related in bloodline, then in quill ink.



[This message has been edited by fjpalumbo (edited 12-15-2004).]

I have not heard that about Poe, but that sounds very possible. I have not studied him extensively, but I hope to some day. I knew the part about mysteries only because of a mystery class I once took (fun!) and because I do a mystery unit at school.

[This message has been edited by lmskipper (edited 12-15-2004).]

[This message has been edited by lmskipper (edited 12-15-2004).]

A shame Thomas Wolfe wasn't on that train!

Thomas Wolfe's home in Asheville, North Carolina, has been lovingly preserved and restored. In contrast, only one home in which Poe ever lived still stands, as a museum in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Let's not let this happen to Ray. Some sort of preservation committee should swing into action!

Of course, Ray's living forever would obviate the necessity of any such efforts!

The more I study Poe and Hawthorne, the more I find there is to study. Another great early American writer -- worth far more study than he seems to get -- is Charles Brockden Brown. "Edgar Huntly, or Memoirs of a Sleep-Walker" and "Wieland, or The Transformation" are very rewarding reads. Brown has also been called the father of American Literature, and one of the first in America to make a living as a fiction writer.

Does anyone still bother with James Fenimore Cooper, even despite the sentiments of Mark Twain?

Amazon.com had this to say about Mr. Brown's three novels, Arthur Mervyn, Edgar Huntly, and Wieland.

O! What splendid fortune that the Library of America should be so generous as to rescue from the mists of oblivion such an author as Charles Brockden Brown (1771-1810). This son of Pennslyvania Quakers was sent forth to obtain an education in preparation for an eventual career in the law, but then he came upon the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Samuel Richardson, whose novels inspired Brown to embark upon a literary career of his own. Years of poverty and ill health--for young Brown was a consumptive--followed, and then, within a four-year period, he would produce seven novels, three of which have been gathered in this volume.
Here you will encounter a young man, newly arrived in the city of Philadelphia, caught in the grip of the yellow fever, whose employer is revealed as an adulterous, murderous fiend (Arthur Mervyn). You will be introduced to the protagonist of Edgar Huntly, whose efforts to unmask the killer of his best friend launch him into a somnabulent landscape drenched with the blood of cougars and Indians. And, in Wieland, you will confront, along with Clara, the dreadful threat posed by the master of ventriloquism! You may scoff at such terrors, O jaded reader, steeped in the demonic gore and Freudian underpinnings of contemporary horror and suspense, but know this--the outpourings of the fevered imagination of Charles Brockden Brown--who lived and wrote well before Poe, before Lovecraft--are a vital source of the power the Gothic continues to have over the American reader today. V.C. Andrews, Stephen King, Dean Koontz, James Patterson ... these and so many more (even, some whisper, Nobel laureate Toni Morrison) live under the gloomy shadow of Brown's melodramas. How long, reader, before you, too, have succumbed to their 18th-century charms?

Looks good Mr. Dark. I think I'll try to find these at my next turn in the used bookstores.

Imskipper, RE: Poe "father of ss" http://www.salempress.com/TitleDetail.asp?ID=223

As for his lack of finances and many social misunderstandings: His biographer, Rufus Griswold, did him no favors and actually may have played a key role in the turmoil that swirled around much of Mr. Poe's adult life. http://www.eapoe.org/geninfo/poegrisw.htm

[This message has been edited by fjpalumbo (edited 12-16-2004).]