THE PREMATURE BURIAL (1844)

Poe starts out this story with a serious tone, surveying the life of a man fearful of being buried alive due to his catalepsy. However, halfway through the story, Poe takes an antic turn, and the fellow actually gets his act together and overcomes his death-obsession.

It's a rare example of a Poe protagonist getting over his "psycho" nature. The 1962 film mostly adapted Poe's idea of the protagonist making a special crypt from which he could escape premature burial, and then added a "murder the husband" plotline.

THE PIT AND THE PENDULUM (1842)

PIT AND THE PENDULUM is another one of the Poe-stories that focuses almost entirely upon the setting in which the character finds himself. However, whereas a setting like the House of Usher has become monstrous simply by dint of absorbing the nature of the corrupt Usher family, the prison-cell that encloses both the Pit and the Pendulum has been designed to be monstrous by its creators, the torturers of the Inquisition.

As with many Poe narrators, the narrator remains a nugatory presence, even when he shows more cleverness than most Poe characters in escaping the peril of the descending pendulum.

THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF USHER (1839)

With USHER Poe reaches the zenith of his talent for creating bizarre buildings, inasmuch as "the House of Usher" is possibly the best known "haunted house" in literature, with the possible exception of Hawthorne's "House of the Seven Gables." Even the "Castle of Otranto," which began the Gothic genre in Europe, is not as well known to modern audiences.

In addition to the weird aspects of the house-- which the unnamed narrator sees as surrounded by unearthly vapors-- the story also deals with a "weird family" of a brother and sister who are the last of their line. It's debatable as to whether Madeleine and Usher share the incestuous heritage seen in other Poe couples, but this would IMO be an adequate explanation as to why Roderick allows his sister to be entombed, even though he knows she's a cataleptic.

I was amused by this section, in which Poe tries to invalidate Kant's theory of the Sublime:

 I know not how it was—but, with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom pervaded my spirit. I say insufferable; for the feeling was unrelieved by any of that half-pleasurable, because poetic, sentiment, with which the mind usually receives even the sternest natural images of the desolate or terrible. I looked upon the scene before me—upon the mere house, and the simple landscape features of the domain—upon the bleak walls—upon the vacant eye-like windows—upon a few rank sedges—and upon a few white trunks of decayed trees—with an utter depression of soul which I can compare to no earthly sensation more properly than to the after-dream of the reveller upon opium—the bitter lapse into every-day life—the hideous dropping off of the veil. There was an iciness, a sinking, a sickening of the heart—an unredeemed dreariness of thought which no goading of the imagination could torture into aught of the sublime.

All of which proves that Poe didn't read Kant's CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT with any real attention, or he would have recalled Kant's explicit determination that the Sublime can only rise in a viewer of mysterioso phenomena if he the viewer feels safe and removed from any possible consequence. The narrator doesn't feel safe, so why should he feel sublime? But then, Poe was not exactly in Kant's class as a philosopher, so no surprise there.

LITTLE FRENCHMAN..., HOW TO WRITE/BLACKWOOD, DEVIL/BELFRY, MAN WHO WAS USED UP (1837-1838)

As arranged in the Running Press book, the next four Poe tales are all pretty humdrum humor-stories from the author.

"Why the Little Frenchman Wears His Hand in a Sling" is little more than an excuse for Poe to indulge in dialect-humor, in which a boastful Irishman competes with a "little Frenchman" for a maiden's favor. Even if one didn't know the story's title, Poe telegraphs the story's "surprise" from a mile away.

"How to Write a Blackwood Article" is narrated by "Signora Psyche Zenobia," who gives a snarky account as to how a writer can sell short stories to the popular fiction magazine Blackwood's. In the original publication Poe this supposed instructional essay with one of the Signora's stories, "The Scythe of Time," in which Zenobia herself is beheaded by a giant clock-hand. Unlike the slightly later "Pit and the Pendulum" that contributed to Poe's notoreity, "Scythe" is presented as a tale that did not really take place, so that the paired narratives conform to the naturalistic phenomenality.

"The Devil in the Belfry" is a marvelous story in which a devilish being enters a Dutch community, one obsesses with orderliness, and upsets the citizens by causing a clock to strike thirteen o'clock. The satire probably worked better in 1838.

"The Man Who Was Used Up" is the only story with any substance. An unnamed narrator meets a famed war hero, A.B.C. Smith, at some party. The narrator is immediately fascinated with the man's physical comeliness-- indeed, in modern times readers would assume that the narrator has formed some sort of "man-crush," if not outright homosexual lust. But as the narrator hears strange rumors about Smith, he becomes consumed with curiosity. He finally seeks out Smith at the man's home, only to learn that the great war-hero has lost most of his natural body-parts to duels and battles with Indians. Smith's manservant has to put the "used up" hero together out of false legs, false arms, a false palate, etc. This too I rate as "naturalistic" even though it is certainly an exaggeration of what the prosthetics of the time could produce.

HANS PFAALL (1835)

This story begins with the titular character descending in his balloon into the town of his native Rotterdam. He drops off a manuscript of his incredible balloon-adventures, and then departs. The remainder of the story is the citation of everything Pfaall claims to have done in the manuscript, concluded by the authorities' verdict that it's a hoax.

In contrast to the later "Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym," which resembles "Hans Pfaall" in structure, there's no strong evidence that the balloonist's tale actually took place. The theme and content of Pfaall's story, in which he takes to the air to escape his creditors and gets close enough to the moon to view its native inhabitants, has more in common with similar moon-travelling japes by Cyrano de Bergerac. However, in its approach Poe's story looks forward to hard science fiction, in that Pfaall constantly buttresses his story with details about his progress, his methods for preserving the air in the balloon, and so on. Verne, whose debt to Poe is well attested, shows a similar mania for detail.

Another contrast to "Pym:" the detail in "Pfaall" is largely boring, in part because a modern reader can't for a moment entertain the idea of a balloonist flying to the moon. I judge the story to be "uncanny" because of the suggestion that, even if his narrative is a lie, Pfaall may have actually experienced something in the heights, given the singularity of his appearance. In addition, Poe's physical description of Pfall is the first of many times when the author portrayed characters as weird-looking freaks:

The balloon (for such no doubt it was) had now descended to within a hundred feet of the earth, allowing the crowd below a sufficiently distinct view of the person of its occupant. This was in truth a very droll little somebody. He could not have been more than two feet in height; but this altitude, little as it was, would have been sufficient to destroy his equilibrium, and tilt him over the edge of his tiny car, but for the intervention of a circular rim reaching as high as the breast, and rigged on to the cords of the balloon. The body of the little man was more than proportionately broad, giving to his entire figure a rotundity highly absurd. His feet, of course, could not be seen at all, although a horny substance of suspicious nature was occasionally protruded through a rent in the bottom of the car, or to speak more properly, in the top of the hat. His hands were enormously large. His hair was extremely gray, and collected in a cue behind. His nose was prodigiously long, crooked, and inflammatory; his eyes full, brilliant, and acute; his chin and cheeks, although wrinkled with age, were broad, puffy, and double; but of ears of any kind or character there was not a semblance to be discovered upon any portion of his head. This odd little gentleman was dressed in a loose surtout of sky-blue satin, with tight breeches to match, fastened with silver buckles at the knees. His vest was of some bright yellow material; a white taffety cap was set jauntily on one side of his head; and, to complete his equipment, a blood-red silk handkerchief enveloped his throat, and fell down, in a dainty manner, upon his bosom, in a fantastic bow-knot of super-eminent dimensions.