Reading Group #27 ('King Pest')

Poe. A 'tale containing an allegory,' so it says...let's discuss that!

Hmmm... none of my paperback collections of Poe with notes in the back include this story, so I'm going to have to look further afield for help with the allegory - and I will need help!

I have to say that the 'allegory' escapes me at first reading.

This story isn't in either of my Poe collections and, if I hadn't known it was, I'm not sure I would have recognised it as Poe. It struck me as more Twain- or Bierce-like - I get both a strongly humorous element and that uneasy feeling that there are humorous bits in there that I'm missing.

Wish he hadn't mentioned the schooner, though - quite anachronistic (I thought at first that it was meant to be humorously so).

I struggled a bit with the allegorical. Legs says (allegorically says Poe) of the long run of dirty weather before them that they are to "clew up all sail, and scud before the wind", which is indeed what they do, blown out of control into the forbidden zone and transported helplessly into the maelstrom of petty tyranny. I enjoyed the description of the plague ridden dead area of the city, less so the grotesque of King Pest's party. The self-referntial aspect of the internal allegory was nicely echoed I thought in the Matisse like 'No chalk' joke.

That was one weird ass story. Never have read it, so didn't know what to expect. I found it funny - with the two main characters seemingly like proto-versions of Laurel and Hardy. I have no idea what it would be an allegory of, but I suspect it must be political in nature, but what that is I wouldn't know. I'm left slightly confused and amused by it. It just comes out of nowhere and if one is not privy to the allegorical connections it is making, then I'm left feeling a little uncertain what was the point. Though I did like it.

>4 starkimarki: Explain to me what you mean by your last sentence. I didn't miss the "No Chalk" sign, but my reading skills are failing me this morning.

Does Poe mean us to see any significance in the fact that our two heroes are - not to put too fine a point on it - physically grotesque, but then meet up with with even more grotesque characters and, thus, become the normal guys?

>5 brother_salvatore: Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
It is not a story, per se, but containing an allegory, is itself an allegory.

I believe this story was first collected in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque. In his 1992 introduction to the Everyman Complete Stories, John Seelye writes “most of the ‘grotesques’ are slight, pitiable tours de force of wit and scrapbook erudition, spiced with French epithets and Latin epigrams.” With even less scrapbook erudition and no French or Latin I was in no position to pass judgement in this way, but there are certainly Poe stories that I came away from, not clear about what had just happened (in the story), but not having particularly enjoyed the experience of reading it.

My first reading of this story (not that many years ago, actually) was broadly in line with Seelye’s view: I was disorientated by the tone of voice (is it an attempt at “heartiness”, like the ghost story M. R. James wrote for a troop of Boy Scouts; or is he mocking his own Gothic sensibilities here?), and by the grotesqueries of the physical characteristics/deformities of all the characters, and the grotesque violence of the action (much of which was reminiscent - to me, at any rate - of early ‘30s, rather creepy, cartoons). Then there’s the tone of voice being at odds with the action, and the plot superficially being as bad as any Hollywood B movie (‘the heroes have a big fight with the baddies, win, and run off with the girls. The End.”)

However, the subtitle to the story is of course ‘A Tale Containing an Allegory’. Would finding out the allegorical meaning of the story explain the apparent inconsistencies and inconsequentialities?

When I said (in > 2) that I would need help in working out the allegory, it was because I had flipped through the story and saw the name Ana-Pest. I was thinking that the reference to ‘anapest‘ meant that the allegory might relate to Poe’s theories of poetic composition. Thankfully this doesn’t appear to be the case. I have looked at various online suggestions.

For example, it’s been suggested that King Pest is a caricature of George III (or perhaps hereditary Monarchy as an institution) and the War of Independence was fresh in Poe’s mind when he wrote this story (over 50 years later - although Britain and the US were at war in 1812). There’s also a suggestion that the King and each member of his court represent, with their particular deformity, a morbid overdevelopment of a particular trait or faculty at the expense of a healthy whole.

The two sailors are similarly grotesque, but the tall thin one and short fat one act together and complement one another (and, at the end of the story, run off with their complementary ladies).

The best that I can come up with, is that Poe is obliquely (maybe even unconsciously) linking republicanism with a disavowal of his own morbid tendencies.

#8 - I haven't got round to a more thorough, second read of this yet, but I wouldn't disagree with anything you are saying here.

However, I have to look very warily at Mr Seelye. I'd be loath to take seriously the literary criticism of anyone who could a perpetrate a crashing oxymoron like "slight, pitiable tours de force".

9

Paul, I may just be quoting this on my page HAHAHA. I don't know why it made me laugh so hard...

'I'd be loath to take seriously the literary criticism of anyone who could a perpetrate a crashing oxymoron like "slight, pitiable tours de force".'

Okay, I have to put my hands up and admit that this one has defeated me.

I've carefully read through it several times; I've put in some heavy-duty pondering; I've hunted for info online; I've found that some people consider it a satire on the British monarchy and others on Andrew Jackson and his 'court' - and still I just don't get it.

Am I, perhaps, missing stuff because of my lack of knowledge of early 19thC, US politics?

I've been trying to write this post for about half an hour. Whatever I write about this story, I immediately change my mind on it.

I've been reading up on this online and found myself either going down blind alleys or round in circles, and I'm pretty sure that I now know less about it than I did when I started.

I suspect (though I'm not really that sure that it is a political satire) that to get to grips with it I'd have to do some heavy-duty reading (and I mean proper books) on both Poe and 19C, US politics and its personalities. I intend to get round to reading up on Poe at some point but I'm really not motivated enough to tackle the history in any depth (way outside my fields of interest).

If I just try to read it as a story on its own terms, I find it a bit puzzling and come back to the idea that there's some satire that I'm not seeing. It just doesn't seem to hold up in its own right - I'm constantly asking why he's writing this and why he's writing that. What are we supposed to think about them carrying off the two women? I come back to the idea that I'm missing some background. As I said, round in circles.

So I'm just giving up on this one. Sorry.

13

I've tried to think of something intelligent to say about 'King Pest,' as I quite like it as a story for story's sake, but I really just keep coming up at a loss. Perhaps it's the five papers I've written in as many days bogging down my brain...

Anyway, let's move on. A little Hawthorne, anyone?

New thread is up.

>11 alaudacorax:&12.

I understand both of your perspectives. It's such an odd story, that I too feel like I'm "missing" something. I wonder if it works within the context of the surrounding stories that Poe wrote at the time, or what has Poe said about the story itself - in letters, etc....

The fact that it keeps up struggling with the meaning, is a indicator that there's something there worth digging into. Not sure what yet, but I think I'll have to let this one lie fallow for now and come back after reading more Poe.

>13 veilofisis:
Hawthorne....nice.

#14 - I wonder if it works within the context of the surrounding stories that Poe wrote at the time, or what has Poe said about the story itself - in letters, etc....

You remind me of something I'd meant to mention and forgot. I've read that it was one of a group of stories that Poe had intended to publish as 'Tales of the Folio Club'. I've got the impression that there was some sort of connecting scheme for them but I haven't seriously looked into it and I was hoping that somebody here would be knowledgeable about it.

>15 alaudacorax:. Ah, now that you mention it, that did cross my mind briefly also about the Folio Club, but I failed to find anything. (And by "find anything", I mean nothing of worth in the first page of Google search results. Ha, maybe I need to do some digging in a actual library and see what I might come up with.)

It also occurs to me that maybe Poe was capturing some sort of drug-induced vision. Maybe how the story makes us "feel" is more important that what the story "means." Just thinking out loud...

I haven't added anything to my previous posts because I haven't come up with any clearer thoughts. However, the stuff I found online (I think it was an e-book edition of an annotated edition of Poe maintained by - and I can't check without losing this draft post - the Poe House in Baltimore?) confirmed that Poe worked on this story over a long period of time (and it was printed several times, in periodicals and in collections "between hard covers"). So it seems to have been important to him, in some way.

I can't shake the feeling that he sees the roistering, hard drinking (but beer, not wine or spirits), sailors as healthy and/or admirable in some ways - professional sailors, as well as pilgrims, must have been among the first European settlers of America (what would be the PC term?) - maybe that's a clue?

It's notable that Poe makes light of, or at least plays with, heavy drinking and Consumption, bearing in mind his problems with alcohol and his wife's suffering from, and death due to, TB.

I've been struggling to remember what 'black strap' was and I've just thought to look it up in the OED.

It says that in Britain it was cheap wine or port - which I don't think was what I was struggling for, but anyway ...

It says that in the US - and this, I imagine, is what Poe had in mind - it was a mixture of rum, molasses and beer. Oh ye gods. I'm glad that stuff wasn't around when I was a youngster.

#17 - I'm embarrassed to say that I'd completely overlooked Poe's drinking and his wife's TB. It makes the story even more of a challenge. I think I might have another go at this - but not tonight.

>14 brother_salvatore: - I wonder if it works within the context of the surrounding stories that Poe wrote at the time, or what has Poe said about the story itself - in letters, etc....

Just been reading through this old thread, and I found myself wondering whether anyone's ever published 'completes' in which all an author's written output is in chronological order and no other. So that you'd read a short story immediately followed by the letters he or she wrote the day after publication, for example. It might make instructive reading, but I imagine it might have limited sales potential. Oh well, just a whimsical thought ...

>19 alaudacorax:

I totally see why you'd be intrigued by such a presentation; I'd be too. The ultimate variorum, reaching for all the thoughts and commentary about a body of text/a theme/etc. that one could wish for.