Day 21: The Oblong Box
Thoughts: I was really enjoying this story for a while. The whole thing about the narrator being shocked at how ugly his friend's wife was provided some rare Poe comedy, and about halfway through I assumed the wife was a vampire, which was cool to me as I'm finishing up reading Dracula today. Though on the other hand I was annoyed that Poe described what obviously was a coffin while pretending it never occurred to the narrator that it indeed was a coffin, which was rather insulting. I even made it through the shipwreck part fully confident he wouldn't return to his whole "and then a giant vortex appeared and we descended into the abyss of the sea" nonsense. My enjoying the story only made it worse when on the very last page HE DID THE SAME BULLSHIT AS PREVIOUS TALES by suddenly spilling what had happened as if reading out a diner breakfast order. I don't understand the appeal of instead of simply rolling out the story and showing us what happened as a narration, he insists on just filling up a bunch of pages with whatever and then at the very end saying "okay, here's everything that happened without you even remotely knowing any of it so that I may now call this a mystery of sorts."
Memorable Line: "The truth is, I could not help regarding Mrs. Wyatt as a decidedly
plain-looking woman. If not positively ugly, she was not, I think, very
far from it."
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