Edgar Allan Poe

Poe’s “Masque”

Classic Pop

Everyone is talking about it so we thought we’d post it– one of the best short stories ever written, “Masque of the Red Death” by that master of pop writing, Edgar Allan Poe. 

The abbey was amply provisioned. With such precautions the courtiers might bid defiance to contagion. The external world could take care of itself. In the meantime it was folly to grieve or to think. 

Strangely enough, our previous feature story, “Cracks“ by Wilson Koewing, was about masks (at Mardis Gras), and our next feature– due next week, by Philip Charter— is about partying. A different sort of partying– or is it? 

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(Painting: “Soldier at a Game of Chess” by Jean Metzinger.)

A Pop Canon?

All-Time American Writers Tournament

Did pop literature exist in the past?

Absolutely! Our latest bracket selections for the big Tournament include two of the most famous, hugely popular, world-renowned writers ever— both American– in the persons of Jack London and Edgar Allan Poe. From the days when the most fascinating, charismatic, or crazy persons in society became writers. (Which made for fascinating reading.)

Another selectee, Emily Dickinson, could be called a pop poet. The fourth, Tennessee Williams, a pop playwright? That’s stretching it.

Does their work hold up?

Read Jack London’s terrific story “Lost Face” and find out.

–in the foundations of the world was graved this end for him– for him, who was so fine and sensitive, whose nerves scarcely sheltered under his skin, who was a dreamer, and a poet, and an artist. Before he was dreamed of, it had been determined that the quivering bundle of sensitiveness that constituted him should be doomed to live in raw and howling savagery–