The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe – another look at this story is at https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-tell-tale-heart-by-edgar-allan-poe.html I have read the story ten years ago - 9 out of 10

 

The Tell Tale Heart by Edgar Allan Poe – another look at this story is at https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/02/the-tell-tale-heart-by-edgar-allan-poe.html I have read the story ten years ago

 

9 out of 10

 

 

Kingsley Amis is one of my three favorite writers, the other two are Somerset Maugham and Marcel Proust, through reading so much, I have become a polytheistic fellow, worshipping many more Gods, from Flannery O’Connor, to Bernard Malamud, to Anthony Powell, Barbara Pym, Penelope Lively, David Lodge, JL Carr,  Magnus Mills https://realini.blogspot.com/2021/05/elated-by-restraint-of-beasts-by-magnus.html

 

Magister Ludi Kingsley Amis has written about Edgar Allan Poe along the lines of ‘the first bad American author’ – it is probably a different line, but the quotes are there to indicate it is not really my contribution, albeit distorted as this might be, it could have nothing to do with Amis – and he is critical of Americans

The writers I mean, who act as ‘stricken deer, misfits, high on drugs, drunks, not drinkers’ – again, that is how my memory works, or it does not, and since we are ‘quoting’, there is this other say on memory, the things you keep in your mind, versus the ones you lose are not just about forgetting, they say a lot about you…

 

It was not a case of putting the whole of them in the same group https://realini.blogspot.com/2022/12/memoirs-by-kingsley-amis-author-of-take.html it was just a surprise at how many are over rated, Saul Below is mentioned, the notion that road trips, drug use become a recurring theme

Norman Mailer and his acclaimed The Naked and The Dead is also listed, however, King Kingsley Amis is careful to say (write actually) that he would probably feel differently, were he to spend more time in America – come to think of it, maybe he had written this passage before being invited at one university and he spent a long time there

 

The splendid, hilarious A Fat Englishman https://realini.blogspot.com/2022/08/one-fat-englishman-by-kingsley-amis.html is probably based on that experience – the Master wrote that an author has to use his life, Anthony Powell has said that ‘he does not know about in vino veritas, but certainly there is truth in the oeuvre

 

The Tell Tale Heart is iconic, part of popular culture, apparently, because by a strange coincidence, just as I took this tale – from the BBC Classics, The Ultimate Collection – 90 Unmissable Stories – there is this episode of Cheers, and Diane is telling the core of this story to Carla, to convince the latter to do the right thing

 

Carla is pregnant again, and since she already has four – maybe five with the next one – and she is just a waitress, with a small income, she thinks of a ruse, to get financial support for the next kid, and claims that he is the son of a better off man, enticing him to have sex, just once, and then pretending he is the parent…

Diane speaks of the heart, and the sound it keeps making, and how we get to feel the shame, the need to confess, and Carla cannot continue with this unfair, serious lie – it is very interesting that they put this in the context of a comedy, when it is actually a horror story, which was the specialty of Edgar Allan Poe, right?

 

I remember reading about Edgar Allan Poe and the fact that he suffered from epilepsy – if this is not another ‘fake news’ situation, where I think I remember something, only it is made up – it was probably more than forty years ago, when I was a teenager, and this gave credibility to the writing of the celebrated creator

For instance, when he writes about the feeling of getting trapped https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/05/the-man-that-was-used-up-by-edgar-allan.html you could see that Poe knew about it, there was the terror of waking up one day and finding that he was buried alive, in a coffin

 

Somehow, this notion was part of my shtick, I used to work in what today they call Hospitality Business, and back then was just tourism, and most of my clients wanted to see Dracula’s Castle – I live in Romania, where Vlad The Impaler was born, and it seems Bram Stoker  https://realini.blogspot.com/2014/07/dracula-by-bram-stoker.html based his invention on that real, special character

When taking clients to Bran, and other places, for the inspiration for Dracula is connected with Poienari, Snagov and more, I would get into the background, the stories with Vlad Tepes, and then the why do we have the vampire tales, and how people believed in strigoi, the undead, and how it works, the myth and the history

 

It is presumed that one explanation for the vampire legends would be connected with epilepsy and similar diseases, because after a fit, some of those who had that horrifying condition would get stiff, and seem dead – I have had my one experience with a woman who had that – since nobody reaches this far, I can share it

Although it is salacious…we had had sex, and then the woman is not moving, she is rigid and for some moments I say to myself ‘I have fucked her to death’, only she was in that state, for some moments, and she seemed to have passed away, only to come back from ‘the dead’

 

Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/02/unique-in-world.html?q=unique+in+the+world – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the befits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’

 

‚Parturiunt montes, nascetur ridiculus mus’

 

“From Monty Python - The Meaning of Life...Well, it's nothing very special...Try and be nice to people, avoid eating fat, read a good book every now and then, get some walking in, and try and live together in peace and harmony with people of all creeds and nations.”