"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe

"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe (1841, 16 pages)

The First Detective Story

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Featuring an Author

Edgar Allan Poe on The Reading Life



Before CSI, Law and Order, and  Bones or Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown, there was "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" by Edgar Allan Poe.    "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is considered the very first "detective story".    The influence of Poe (1809 to-1849 USA-there is background information on him in my three prior posts on his short stories) is just huge.    Numerous horror style movies have been made based on his stories.   His short stories are canon status works.   They are also a lot of fun to read.   All of his work can easily be found online.


"The Murders in the Rue Morgue" is about using deductive reasoning, acute observational skills and the willingness to follow the evidence to whatever conclusion, improbable as it may seem, it leads to.   Just like in the Sherlock Holme's stories,  the lead figure is a brilliant detective called into solve a crime that baffles the  authorities.   The story is narrated by a friend of the detective.   


As the story opens we are allowed to visualize  what those on the scene find when they come on the murder scene of an elderly woman and her adult daughter.   They lived as near recluses in a quiet Paris neighborhood.    The detective, Auguste Dupin, starts out by questioning the neighbors as well as the tradesmen in the area to try to find out about the life style of the two women.   Everyone says they are very quiet and had no visitors and no men in their lives.  The mother had her throat so badly slashed that her head is barely attached and the body of the daughter is found stuffed up the chimney.    It appears a very powerful maniac has committed the crime.   There is gold left behind in the house so it was not a robbery.   There also appears to be no way inside the house, there seems no evidence of a break in.    Everyone is baffled by this seemingly senseless and motiveless crime. 


Neighbors all report they heard wild screams in the house.   In a very funny scene a French man insists the  screams were in German, a Russian that they were in English and an Italian that the screams were made by someone speaking Romanian.  


Dupin, of course, comes up with the only logical solution for the crime by a process of elimination.    You can read this story in just a few minutes so I will not tell anymore of the plot.    


You can read this (and much more of Poe's work) HERE.


I think Poe had fun writing this story and I know I did reading it.   


Do you have a favorite Poe short story?

Mel u

Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster

Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster (1905, 124 pages)

At His BBC Job

E. M. Forster's First Novel

" For fools rush in where angels fear to tread"   Alexander Pope 1711

I have wanted to read a novel by E. M. Forster (Edward Morgan-1879 - 1970-UK) for a long time now.    I checked on one of my favorite online reading sources, Dailylit.com.   They did not have the work I actually most wanted to read, A Passage to India but they did have a few others (he wrote six novels) available.   I decided to keep it simple and I subscribed to the shortest one (64 installments-installments are normally about 2.5 or so pages long)  Where Angels Fear to Tread.   This is also his first novel so that was another reason in my mind to select it.   


In February I read and very much enjoyed Forster's short story "The Story of a Panic.

I knew that Forster was associated with the Bloomsbury group loosely.   He inherited enough money at an early age to support himself.    He attended Cambridge.

I enjoyed Where Angels Fear to Tread a lot.   The plot is not hard to follow at all.   The characters are drawn from the English upper classes.   It is a gentle satire centered on the Herriton family.   The family is concerned about Lilia Herriton, staying in Italy for a year to calm her nerves, when they hear she has fallen in love with an Italian man, and just an ordinary one at that.   Lilia had been married to one of the sons of the family.   The family is very upset to hear this and they send her brother in law to Italy to break up the relationship.   He arrives to late she has already married that man.   I do not wish to tell more of the plot action but there are some exciting and surprising developments.    The ending is quite tragic.  

For me the fun in this novel was in the characterizations of the Herriton's, the comments on the beauty of the Italian countryside and the wonderfully done conversations.    I also got a good feel for what Italy meant to the English.   There is considerable xenophobia in the actions of the Herritons.

Over all, I would say this is a good book, well written with a lot of wonderful lines.   I will, I hope go on to read his other novels and some of his short stories.   

Please share your experience with Forster with us.

Mel u

"Bains Turcs" by Katherine Mansfield

" Bains Turcs" by Katherine Mansfield (1912, 3 pages)

A Neglected Early Mansfield Story

A Turkish Bath in Paris-Ladies Only Day

The Reading Life Katherine Mansfield Project

There are about 15 or so short stories by Katherine Mansfield that were not included in any of the four collections edited by Mansfield or her husband John Middleton Murry.   Sometime ago I completed what I called Phase One of my Katherine Mansfield Reading Project in which I posted on all 85 or so of her collected short stories.    Last week with my posting on "At The Club", a delightful satirical pass through of an upper class social club, I began to start posting on the uncollected stories.   Most of these stories are quite short and one can assume that Mansfield and her husband in most cases did not deem them worthy of inclusion in a collection.

That being said, inferior work by Katherine Mansfield is not just a curiosity for those very into her work, it can well be a beautiful work superior to today's prize winning stories.    I will keep my posts brief and will supply a link where you can read the stories.  The total body of these stories is not more than 50 pages.

"Bains Turcs" (Turkish Bath) is told in the first person through the eyes of a young woman going into the bathing rooms at a Turkish Bath in Paris.   This is a kind of autobiographical story in that Katherine Mansfield's mother attempted to cure her of a sexual attraction to women by sending her to treatment at baths.   I know that sounds really odd but it was a common practice at the time to think bad impulses could be sweated out of people.   The story is very like "At The Club".   We listen in as various women say nasty things about each other.   It is really very well done and quite funny.   The women, in various stages of undress at the bath, are sizing up each other's bodies and style in a very unmerciful way.

You can read this story HERE

Mel u 

The Stranger by Albert Camus

The Stranger by Albert Camus (1942, 144 pages, translated by Stewart Gilbert)

Why is The Stranger Important

Camus and the Japanese Novel

I recently posted on a short story by Albert Camus, "The Guest".    I am slightly embarrassed to admit that this story was my first Camus.     I knew Camus was a super influential figure and after reading "The Guest" I decided to read both of his two most famous novels, The Stranger and The Plague.


Albert Camus (1913 to 1960-Algiers) is French as a result of colonial conquest.  He won the Nobel Prize in 1957 and died three years later in a car accident.  Much of his work and life was fighting what he saw as the wretched rule of the French in Algeria.    He is considered a core Existential novelist but he totally repudiated this label.  You can learn more about him here.  


The plot of The Stranger is pretty simple and easy to follow.   It is set in Algeria in the 1940s.   A young French-Algerian man is drifting through life.   He seems to have no strong values, no real roots in society or among people, no goals and strong loves or hates.    He has a mother who dies.   He goes to her funeral (he supported her the best he could on his wage-he works as an office clerk) but he shows no outward remorse or sadness at her death.   He does not cry or to  seem to feel much of anything.  He has a girl friend that he likes having sex with but does not care much about.   it is not that he is uncaring to her, he just does not have it within him to care.   


One day he gets into a petty dispute with a local pimp and for the pettiest of reasons shots and kills a man, described as "An Arab".   (I guess the idea is that that is different legally from killing a French person.)    


He is placed in prison and after a few months his trial begins.   He does not seem to find prison all that bad perhaps as he did not find life all that good anyway.   The trial is a crazy farce with most of the time being spent talking about the fact he did  not show remorse at all when his mother died.   There is a great deal made over the fact that right after the funeral he went to a comedy movie.   (This does sound like the fuss made world wide in the media over the reaction of a woman accused of murdering her child after the funeral of the child.)    His attorney is a complete idiot.


Why is The Stranger an enduring classic still on college reading lists world wide?     Partially it may be it echos the emotional attitudes often found in intellectual/bookish people in their late teens and twenties when they sense there are no fixed values and react against their old belief structures by saying then all life must be absurd and meaningless.   In part, The Stranger is about finding a way to live in a world where you must decide for yourself what is right or wrong-when the old Gods have been destroyed.


The Stranger is a very influential book in Japanese literature.   It is not hard to see why.   One of the dominant themes of Post WWII Japanese literature is finding a way to live ethically while achieving maximum self-actualization in a world in which all of the creeds that held sway in your culture for 1000+ years have been shattered and exposed as baseless lies.   This is not ultimately a negative theme at all-it is about freedom.


I was also pleased to note that The Stranger is part of Clifton Fadiman's  Life Time Reading Plan, along with The Plague, which I plan to read very soon.


I was given three Camus titles recently by a patron of my blog from New Delhi to whom I am very grateful.


What is your experience with Camus?




Mel u  

"At the Club" by Katherine Mansfield

"At the Club" by Katherine Mansfield (1912, 2 pages)

An Update on The Katherine Mansfield Project

"“The pursuit of experience is the refuge of the unimaginative.”

Katherine Mansfield

The Reading Life Katherine Mansfield Project


I have done by far more posts on Katherine Mansfield than I have on any other author.   When I first decided to post on all 85 or so of her stories, I posted on them in groups of four or five but then I decided as my tribute to Mansfield (whose work and person I have come to hold in very high regard) I would post on each of her stories individually.   When I first began the posting on these stories, about 1.5 years ago,  I thought well this is going to cost me most of my few readers but it turned out happily to be just the opposite.   The most viewed post ever on my blog (out of 670 now) is one I did on "Miss Brill".    By looking at my blog stats I can tell when a Mansfield story was assigned reading in a university anywhere in the world.

In the first phase of my reading of the Mansfield short stories I simply read all of the stories in the four collections put out either by Mansfield or her husband. I knew there were other early Mansfield stories that were not included in any of the four books.   I assumed that was because Mansfield or  John Middleton Murry did not think the stories were up to the standards they wanted in the collections.    I also did not yet know where to read the remainder of her stories online but now I do.


I will dedicate a brief post to each of these stories.   I have no sense or wish to "complete" my project as I will also be posting on new books on Mansfield as they come out in the future and may take second looks at some of her most famous stories.    There are 18 of these stories but I think the total page count would be under 50.

"At the Club" is self described by Mansfield as a pastiche.   "Pastiche" is open to a couple of readings as to what it meant 99 years ago.   It seems most logical to take it as meaning a hodge podge of events and episodes thrown together.  Basically this story, it has no plot, drama, or development, is a walk through an upper class club  with your ears and eyes very wide open.   It is a very funny social satire.   We get to hear some very biting conversations between women in the story concerning the men in their lives.  

"At the Club can be read online HERE

Mel u

"The Mauve Throw" by Sarah Hilary

"The Mauve Throw" by Sarah Hilary (2011, 8 pages)

The Short Story Thrives in the U.K.

A Great Story from Sarah Hilary

Today I want to post on an excellent short story by a new to me writer, Sarah Hilary (from Bristol in the U. K.)     Sarah and I have a common bond in that we are both tremendous admirers of the short stories of Katherine Mansfield.   My first knowledge of the work of Sarah Hilary came through Twitter when we became mutual followers.   A quick glance at her web page revealed that her short stories had won or been short listed for lots of prestigious awards, including the  very prestigious Sean O'Faolain award.

"The Mauve Throw" centers on a cancer patient, Helen, her husband Jimmy and her adult step daughter Gabrielle.   The beauty in this story is in the understated way the 
profound courage of Helen is shown to us.   The story covers several different days in Helen's life.    As it opens she is sitting in her car which has broken down by the highway.   Here we first begin to learn of the effects of the reconstructive surgery done on her face to repair the cancer damage.


"She experienced smells through her mouth now - rather than her nose".

Helen can taste the smell of the young policeman who helped her when her car was broken down.   This  made me wonder how this would feel and helped project me into the mind of Helen.


Seven years ago the doctors told her she had 24 months left.    She almost ceases to exist knowing or feeling she has no real future.   I really liked these lines about her attitude toward her life:


"A day was any ten hours which reasonably suggested movement, hygiene and social interaction.   A day could be constructed - you just had to go through the motions and it was there".


One of the most interesting aspects of this story concerns the relationship of Helen and her young adult daughter Gabrielle (Gabby).    We are left to ponder how living with a step mother basically under a death sentence has impinged on her life.   Gabby works in an animal shelter.    I could not help but wonder if spending her teen age years in a household necessarily preoccupied with medical issues  had lead her to a life spent caring for sick animals.    Maybe one pain can be carried and one cannot.


I do not want to tell too much of the plot of this very well written and skillfully wrought story.   In just a few pages Hilary creates the lives of three people.   There is much in this brilliant story I  have left out. 


You can learn more and read part of the story HERE


 I will greatly look forward to following the writing career of Sarah Hilary.


Links to some of her short stories and more biographical detail can be found at her web page Crawl Space.



Additional information on "The Mauve Throw" can be found at the publisher's web  page  including a readable section and purchasing information.  



Mel u


I think Hilary has the potential to develop into an important short story writer and I felt my time spent in reading "The Mauve Throw" was well rewarded.   I read it three times.


Mel u

The Pinch Runner Memorandum by Kenzaburo Oe

The Pinch Runner Memorandum by Kenzaburo Oe ( 1976, 251 pages)
"Sometimes the Heart of a Turtle"  (1964, 8 pages-short story)
"The Atomic Bomb, Nuclear Energy, and Japan" (2011, two pages-essay)

Oe in French Surrealistic Mode

A Post Jarry Look at Oe

The Reading Life Kenzaburo Oe Project

Japanese Literature on The Reading Life

The Pinch Runner Memorandum by Kenzaburo Oe (translated by Michiko and Michael Wilson) is perhaps the most experimental of Oe's Novel(1935-Japan-Nobel prize 1994-there is background information on Oe in my prior posts on his works).  Recently I read for the first time Ubo Roi by Alfred Jarry, a founder of French Surrealism.    As I read The Pinch Runner Memorandrum (my 15th by Oe) I was struck by how much of it seems almost made possible by the artistic liberation brought about by Alfred Jarry and other French writers.   A lot of the book is about a character called "The Patron" who seems straight out of Ubo Roi.  Oe is perhaps the most "French" of contemporary Japanese writer.    There are two political peeks in Japanese literature, on the right is Mount Mishima and the left is Mount Oe.    I see much more than I did two years ago when I first began to read Japanese literature that these two writers react to each other in their works.   Much of Oe is a mocking of the cultural dictates of Mishima and his devotion to the Bushido code.   I think Oe can be perfectly well appreciated without knowing this but my realization of this has taken me, I think, deeper into both writers.   

The Pinch Runner Memorandum deals directly with the two central issues in Oe's work and his personal concerns.   Oe's personal life has been dominated by the birth of his learning impaired brain damaged son.   His political thinking was shaped by his reaction to the atomic bombs dropped on Japan during WWII.    In a chaotic blend of styles and techniques Oe blends these two themes into an absurd plot centering on a cult that plans to use nuclear terrorism to enforce their values on Tokyo.   Let us hope Oe is not a prophet.   

Here are some very French absurdest lines-(all from just one page-225)

"Simple.   They were basically scared.    They can't approach a man as terrifying as Big Papa without costumes, without painted faces...Able official turned to Dog Face and they both burst out laughing...But once they get going so that the merriment

can start percolating, they'll crack the audience up, so they will join in the laughter themselves..."

Like Jarry, Oe is letting us see the absurdity behind government.   Big Papa is Napoleon, he is The Emperor, General Hirohito or MacArthur, or Alexander.    Oe, I think, also is explicating the origins of religion.   

I really enjoyed The Pinch Runner Memorandum.   I do not see this as a good "starter" Oe.   Once you have read a few of his better known works then I think you will be in a better position to appreciate this novel.   

"Sometime the Heart of a Turtle" is a simple short story sort of on the plot lines of the Karate Kid movies.    If you are an Oe fan, you might as well read it online HERE.

"Atomic Power, Nuclear Energy, and Japan" (from The New Yorker) is the bare bones of Oe's opposition to Nuclear power and his reaction to the implications of the recent earth quake and Tsunami as it touches on these issues.    Many, maybe most people, will  not fully agree with his views but they are worth pondering.  

I have two Oe novels to go in my plans to read all of his translated works.   I think I will wait until 2012 to start them.   Somehow I do not look forward to completing this project.   

Do you see Jarry in Oe?    There is a reference in The Pinch Runner Memorandum to Jean Paul Sartre being a script writer for the movies of Luis Bunuel, which I take as a kind of tip off to us.   It does make me a bit nervous how obvious Oe is making all of this for us.   Probably there are deeper layers in Oe still to be reached.   

Mel u