Your Daily Poe (Or Edgar Allan If You're Nasty)

As it's officially October (BOO!), I will on every day be reading one short story written by the Master of the Macabre himself, and briefly commenting on it. Enjoy!

Day 20: The Gold-Bug

Thoughts: This is just a much, much inferior version of The Murders in the Rue Morgue. Once again, Poe gives the reader no details or evidence so they can put together the mystery themselves; upon offering the solution at the end there is no chance for an "aha, I remember that!" moment for the reader. It's merely a guy at the very ending winding us through what happened, which was all "offscreen" for the readers and to me seems pointless. It reads more like a corporation doing a case study than it does a mystery story. Yes he did the same thing for The Murders of the Rue Morgue, but at least that story was 1) interesting in the first place 2) interesting in what is revealed to be the perpetrator of the crime. I'm shocked to learn that this was the most popular Poe story during his lifetime, and has remained as one of the most popular ever since. Blech.

Memorable Line: "Why, to be frank, I felt somewhat annoyed by your evident suspicions touching my sanity, and so resolved to punish you quietly, in my own way, by a little bit of sober mystification."

Score from 1-10: 2