The Ushers' modern-day fall.

 

Stolen from the internet

I've been a big fan of Edgar Allan Poe's writing since I was a little kid. I thought I'd told this story here before, but I couldn't find it just now in a search, so here goes: When I was in elementary school, a collection of Poe's short stories was among the paperbacks my mom bought me. I loved a whole bunch of those stories, but "The Masque of the Red Death" was my favorite. I actually read it aloud one day to a bunch of my friends from the neighborhood in our backyard. (They were all younger than me. I had to kind of explain the part about how there was nobody in the costume.)

So when I heard that Netflix was doing "The Fall of the House of Usher", I was psyched. And I'm here to tell you that this show is definitely worth watching.

This production is not a modern-day retelling of the short story; it's more of an homage to all of Poe's work. There is a "house of Usher", but it's not a mansion -- it's the crumbling two-story house with a basement where Roderick and Madeline Usher grew up. In this version, the siblings are twins; their single mother was impregnated by her boss, an utter asshole who lives in a real mansion down the street and who never claims the kids as his own. Dad owns a company called Fortunato Pharmaceuticals. Eventually -- the turn of events is laid out in detail in the series -- their sperm donor dies and they gain control of the company. Then they proceed to manufacture an opiod painkiller that supposedly isn't addictive -- except, of course, it is, and lots of patients die. When the company -- and the Ushers -- are finally put on trial for their part in those deaths, they also start dying, and Roderick's six offspring are the first to go. Each one dies in a different way -- all gruesome, all with a reference to one of Poe's stories, and all orchestrated by a mysterious woman named Verna. We don't find out who she is until the last of the eight episodes, and even then, her exact identity is shrouded in mystery. Suffice it to say that the Usher twins sold their souls to some kind of demon to gain their success, and the bill has now come due.

Apparently the director, Mike Flanagan, is well known for turning out creepy stuff. I'm not much of a fan of modern-day horror, either movies or TV shows (I realize that's a weird admission, coming from someone who has written horror in her time), and so I don't think I've seen anything else he's done. But I may have to check out some of his other work now, because I really liked this series. It's a little gorier than I prefer, but none of the gore seemed gratuitous. It all made sense, given the plot.

Judging by a couple of reviews I've read of this series, I guess Flanagan uses a stable of actors in his work. I only recognized two in this show: Mary McDonnell, from the Battlestar Galactica reboot, and Mark Hamill. And I can't say I actually recognized Hamill. His portrayal of Arthur Gordon Pym, Esq. -- aka the Pym Reaper, the Usher family's lawyer -- was astonishing. If I hadn't known, going in, that it was him, I wouldn't have known who it was. That's how far from Luke Skywalker this character is.

Anyway, regardless of whether you're a fan of Poe, if you like creepy stuff, I highly recommend that you check out The Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix. And if you are a fan of Poe, have fun noting all the names and situations that have been borrowed from Poe's work. Either way, you won't be disappointed.

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These moments of creepy blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe! Blessed Samhain and happy Halloween!

Too Poe to be true.

Before I get into this week's main topic, I'm going to revisit a thing that has consumed this blog (pardon the pun) for the past couple of weeks: bread. This isn't about low-carb bread, though -- it's more of a news-you-can-use thing.

I was looking at low-carb breads at the grocery store today as an employee stocked the shelves. We fell to talking (this would never happen in DC!) and he told me that some of the "fresh" bread they sell is actually shipped to the store frozen. As an example, he showed me the best-by date on a loaf of ThinSlim bread: it was sometime in October. I am not even kidding. So the bread was baked who-knows-when, then frozen and put on a truck. Somewhere along the line it thawed. Then it got put on the shelf. 

But it's not fresh. Fresh bread has a shelf life of about a week before it starts getting moldy. If the bread you're buying has a best-by date that's farther out than about a week, you're buying stale bread. He said some of the stuff they sell in the in-store bakery as fresh comes frozen, too.

So a word to the wise: Check the best-by date on your bread. Now if you've got some at home that's more than a week old and it's not, y'know, green yet, I wouldn't throw it out. (I'm famous for ignoring best-by dates anyway.) But just be aware that something you're buying that's supposed to be fresh might not be.

And I'm gonna stick to making my own bread.

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A few nights ago, I watched The Pale Blue Eye on Netflix. The plot, if you haven't seen it: it's the 1830s, and the officials running the brand-new Army officer's academy at West Point hire a retired police detective, Augustus Landor, to solve the gruesome murder of one of their cadets. Another cadet makes himself so useful to Landor that he takes him on as an informal partner in his investigation. The name of this invaluable inside man? Why, Edgar Allan Poe. 

Public Domain

The movie gets pretty fanciful from there. More murders ensue; Poe falls for a pretty young thing and earnestly tells her that she's the subject of his poem "Lenore"; and the wholly implausible denouement has echoes of his short story "The Pit and the Pendulum." 

But...Poe at West Point? Really?

That much, at least, is true.

Not only did Poe undergo officer training, he enlisted before that, and he did pretty well for himself. That's according to Dave Kindy, a freelance journalist who wrote an article about it for the Washington Post. Poe was 18 when he enlisted in 1827, and he quickly rose through the ranks, becoming promoted to sergeant major -- the highest enlisted rank. He was supposed to serve for five years, but the Army released him early, in 1829, so he could undergo officer training at West Point.

Poe thought he'd have to spend only six months at West Point before receiving a commission -- but once he got there, he found out he'd have to undergo the regular four-year program. At that point, he applied himself to the task of getting kicked out; as legend has it, he was once told to show up for a drill "with cross belts and under arms" -- and he did, wearing that and nothing else. 

He got what he wanted. He was court-martialed for disobeying orders and neglecting his duties, and was dismissed from West Point in March 1831. 

From there, of course, he went on to become an icon of American literature, authoring numerous poems and short stories, inventing the detective story, and building a reputation as a well-regarded literary critic. He also warred with his foster father, John Allan -- his parents died when he was a child -- and married his 13-year-old cousin, who later died of tuberculosis. He was likely an alcoholic and chronically broke, and he died under mysterious circumstances in Baltimore in 1849, just 40 years old.

Anyway, Poe was indeed at West Point during the time period in which the movie was set -- but the rest of the story is made up. Some of Poe's fans may be bothered that the plot didn't stick closer to the truth of Poe's life. But as much of a fan as I am, it didn't bother me; Poe's persona, as it has come down to us, is so wrapped up in the macabre that it would be surprising if a story about him did stick to dreary reality.

As to the movie: Christian Bale plays Landor, the retired detective. RogerEbert.com gives the film three stars and concentrates in its review on Bale's performance, which seems weird to me, given how much of the early part of the film is given over to Poe's part of the story. Harry Melling plays Poe. Apparently I've seen him in a bunch of stuff -- he played Dudley Dursley in the Harry Potter movies, and he was one of the chess players in The Queen's Gambit -- but he did a credible enough job in this film that never for a moment did I wonder where I'd seen him before.

The denouement, as I said earlier, is implausible, reeking as it does of the usual satanic tropes, and I wasn't totally sold on the twist at the end. But The Pale Blue Eye is worth a watch -- if only to see how many Poe-related Easter eggs you can spot (I had four of six).

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These moments of critical blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell. Stay safe!

A tale of two authors.

The girls and I just got home from a weekend trip to Philadelphia. In all the years I've lived in the DC area, I've never been to Philly until now. Which is crazy -- it's closer than New York City, which I've visited several times. So when a great hotel rate came together with an Amtrak sale, I figured it was time.

Philadelphia is known more as the birthplace of the United States than as a hub of literary activity. The Second Continental Congress was held there, after all, at which the Declaration of Independence was approved in July 1776. And the Constitution was adopted there as well, in 1787.

Present for both events, though, was Philly's homeboy -- a well-known and well-respected printmaker named Benjamin Franklin. Franklin is known best nowadays, perhaps, for flying a kite in a thunderstorm. But he started life in Boston as the youngest son of Josiah Franklin, a candle-maker and soap-maker, and his second wife Abiah Folger. Franklin the elder fathered 17 children by his two wives. That's a lot of mouths to feed -- and so young Ben was apprenticed to his brother James, a printer in Boston.

He hated working for his brother. At 17, he ran away to Philadelphia and worked for printers there. Eventually, he set up his own print shop and published, among other things, the Pennsylvania Gazette newspaper and Poor Richard's Almanack.

In Franklin Court, not far from Independence Hall, the National Park Service runs a museum devoted to Franklin. There's a cool archaeological exhibit outside where you can view the foundations of Franklin's house (the house itself is long gone). And the NPS has also set up a printmaking shop, so you can see how Ben plied his trade. The most time-consuming part of printing is setting the type; once that's done, a printer who knows what he's doing can print a page using this printing press in maybe 20 seconds.

Later in life, of course, Ben Franklin got into politics. Besides signing all those founding documents, he was the first Postmaster General of the United States, and he also served as ambassador to France. In addition, he became well known for his witty sayings -- and for more practical inventions. If you wear bifocals, for example, you can thank Ben Franklin for inventing them.

But publishing was in his blood to the last. His last will and testament begins: "I, Benjamin Franklin, of Philadelphia, printer..."

And now we fast-forward about fifty years to another famous writer who called Philadelphia home: Edgar Allan Poe. Poe was also born in Boston, but his parents were actors; his father abandoned the family and his mother died the next year. John Allan and his wife in Richmond, Virginia, took the boy in and raised him, but eventually John and Edgar had a falling-out over money; Poe attended the University of Virginia for a year, until the family ran out of money to keep him there, and then joined the Army. Eventually he entered West Point, but he abandoned his military career to become a writer full-time.

He married his first cousin Virginia before she'd turned 14, and her mother moved in with them to run the household. In 1838, the family moved to Philadelphia, and there Poe wrote and published many of his best-known short stories: "The Fall of the House of Usher," "The Masque of the Red Death," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "The Tell-Tale Heart," and "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," the first detective story ever published. He also worked as editor of several literary magazines -- and he battled melancholy, in part due to his wife's ill health (she died of tuberculosis in 1847). He also had a problem with drinking.


The Poes moved several times while they lived in Philadelphia, but only one of those houses survives. Today the National Park Service runs it as the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site. The part on the right in this photo was a later addition, and now houses a small gift shop, some exhibits, and a room where visitors can watch an introductory video. The Poes' rooms are only partially restored, with wall murals standing in for how things might have looked in Edgar's time. The overall effect is somewhat creepy -- in keeping, perhaps, with Poe's writings.

Today, we'd put most of Poe's tales in the horror category, and shunt him off as a genre writer. But he worked for literary magazines, and his fondest professional dream was to publish his own literary journal -- which he did, briefly, before it failed. Financial problems were a recurring theme in his life; even then, it was hard to make a full-time living at writing. But Poe found acclaim for his poetry and literary criticism as well as his prose, and many authors have cited him as an influence on their work (Yours Truly included).

In early October 1849, Poe turned up, ill and incoherent, on a street in Baltimore. He was hospitalized that night and died a few days later, at the age of 40. No one knows why he was in Baltimore. His medical records and his death certificate are missing. In the end, his death was as mysterious as his works.

The Poe National Historic Site is away from the typical tourist trail in Philly, but it's within walking distance of the Liberty Bell, and it's well worth a visit if you're a Poe fan.

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These moments of historical blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.