Humor and Satire

The System of Doctor Tar and Professor Fether

Patients at an asylum think they’re chickens, donkeys, a tea pot, etc. The lunatics end up taking over the asylum and tar and feather the employees. The narrator takes too long to figure out what’s happening. I didn’t find it funny, but your milage may vary.

The Literary Life of Thingum Bob, Esq.

Narcissistic writer tells his life story. He started his career by plagiarizing Dante, Homer, etc. Humorously, editors declare the writing drivel. He then writes a bad two line poem and everyone praises him, although the editor won’t pay him. He goes on to become a famous editor himself.

Continue reading →

I’m a big fan of Mike Flanagan. His next series on Netflix is The Fall of the House of Usher, coming some time later this year. It will be based on the work of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe is having a bit of a moment on Netflix right now with Wednesday and The Pale Blue Eye also invoking him, so now seems like a good time to revisit Poe’s work.

Poe sometimes quotes other languages without providing English translations, so it’s a good idea to have your phone handy while reading to translate for you. He sometimes blanks out the year or character names for some reason. I also noticed he uses lots of adverbs. (Supposedly, good writers don’t use a lot of adverbs, but I’m not convinced that’s true.)

The narrators of his stories often go unnamed. I wonder if this is because the reader is supposed to think Poe is the viewpoint character? This seems especially likely in stories where the narrator’s name is given as P. or P__. Some of his narrators marry their cousins, like Poe himself did.

Continue reading →

When an short story anthology calls itself “the best” without specifying which genres it is (e.g., horror, fantasy, romance, western, etc.), you know it’s got to be literary fiction, which doesn’t consider itself a genre, even though it is.

Continue reading →