BOOKBROODER

My eyes are heavy. I am trying to sleep. Sleep is evading me. Restlessness is here. This is a new place. I have come here for some time. It’s an outskirt of a small town in northern India. I will stay here for some days. It’s night. It’s almost 11 o clock at night. Here is silence everywhere. Complete tranquility. Just beyond there is a concrete factory. Some machine is still working there. A faint grinding sound is reaching my room. There is no other sound outside. It’s dark. Dead dark. ….No… Wait… There is one more sound… tick …tick.. tick…it’s a clock on the wall. The needle of the second is making a noise every second. I am trying to sleep. It’s not coming.

Though, I am tired. Mr. EDGAR ALLAN POE is coming to my mind. I don’t know why? I wish to read him. It’s a perfect ambiance. Though I know my brain is not focused. I am exhausted. I still long to read him. I am rolling over his titles on my iPad. I want something short. Here it is. This one is just 12-pages. I have opened it. It is THE CASK OF AMONTILLADO. I am reading this. I have finished it. It is really short. In a few pages, only dialogues. A quick read. I think I have sensed the story. This is not that great. Just OK! Now sleep is overcoming me. I am sleeping. GOOD NIGHT!

This is the next morning. I have woken up early. I am leaving the bed. The story is flashing in my mind. But it is blurred. It is very filmy, unclear. My mind is fresh. I want to write a short review on GR. I will give it three-star. Not more than that. I am thinking. I am ready to write, first on paper but I am not getting anything. I remember an avenger had taken revenge. But I am feeling nothing. What was the story? I knew that at night. But I want to visualize! I am not able to. Did I read it in delirium? I decide I will read it again after the bath. I read it again. This time I am keeping a lexicon alongside. I am jotting down these words arrowing them like an uninteresting baby, on a paper.

VAULT—> VINTAGE—> PALAZZO—> SCONCES—> FLAMBEAUX—> CATACOMB—> PUNCHEON—> FLAGON—> MASON—> TROWEL—> CRYPT—> STAPLES—> PADLOCK—> A RAPIER

Can you see the sequence of these words is hinting at the storyline? I am minting them one by one in my mind. It is over. OK. Now I know how it was happening there. I can now visualize. I was missing the Italian flavor. A VAULT was something else for me at night. It is a true Italian word. It is clear now… Same with VINTAGE… It was something else at night. In the morning it became wine, an Italic wine. I had forgotten the story was based in Italy. In the same way, I know all of them now, the Italian way! While re-reading the story, this quote is becoming more and more clear to me now.

“I must not only punish but punish with impunity. A wrong is unredressed when retribution overtakes its redresser. It is equally unredressed when the avenger fails to make himself felt as such to him who has done the wrong.”
CASK OF AMONTILLADO

I am ready for the review now. Here I am writing it. IT’S NOT A THREE-STAR. IT’S A FIVE-STAR NOW. I think this story is not only about horror. This story did not terrify me at all. I read it twice. I was not affrighted both times. It looked lyrical. It was all jest until the last. It was like a drama. I think I should not call it a story. It is just an act. I think the quote mentioned above in the very first part of this story settles the purport of the story.

The tale is something like this.

Two men, one mortifies, the other disparaged, both moving on, side by side, unaware of each other’s intentions, their arms intertwined as if of two best buddies. One is drunk in Italian vintage wine. Other is also drunk but in vengeance. Both smiling, making jokes, concerning each other, the disparaged one taking all subtle cares of the mortifier, slowly and willingly both reaching to the remotest part of a crypt of a catacomb, and among all this merriment, an act of retribution is performed by the avenger, in such a way that it could only be perceived 50 years later. The perfect execution!

In my comprehension, this is not just about horror or a tale of retribution. It’s is something else. I am lacking the exact word on how to define it. I think this is a FARRAGO. This is an interfusion of the art of narration of Poe with the subtlety of a perfect crime execution. Perhaps this story is a mélange of horror, retribution, and psychoanalysis. But whatever it is…It is something unprecedented!

THANK YOU, MR. EDGAR ALLAN POE!

I will read to you again after going back to my place!

I was not aware of the author; I got attracted to the title. But reading it was quite a refreshing experience for me. I read it to know this girl’s point of view. She has put forward her views with an earnest conviction. Her approach is interesting and hilarious. I would call it a nutty and peckish approach of a girl. Most of the time, she has first taken a fractious route, to put forward her conviction on various issues and then immediately has tried to defend herself by identifying a specific category of people for her views. She has been able to create lots of light moments for the readers in doing that.

There are some very interesting views on many things, a girl can have that I tried and enjoyed through this book. She has talked about the untrained men under- thirty-five, about a girl’s view on clothes she wears, about woman’s rights in love, about men as lovers, about lovemaking as fine art. She has willfully touched the topics of ‘girls with other girls and ‘subject of husband’ as well.

She says that every woman, at some time in her life experiences a man in the raw. A raw man is someone for her who has not been earlier trained by a woman. She talks about a man who is under thirty-five and is still untrained…

“You can do little to help him If you are the first girl to take a hand at him. You can but prepare him to be a little more amenable to the next girl. His mind is not on you. It is centered on himself. You are only an entity to him, not an individual. He cares nothing for your likes and dislikes, your cares or hopes or fears. He only wishes you to be pretty and well dressed.”

She, in a very witty manner, gives her detailed opinion on clothing …

When a man praises your clothes, he always is praising you in them. You will never hear a man praise even the good dressing of a woman he dislikes; while girls who positively hate another girl often will add, “But she certainly does know how to dress.”

She says men seldom make perfect lovers…

“Men seldom make perfect lovers, I deeply regret being obliged to say this. I do not pretend to say why this is so. I suppose because a man never dwells upon the sentimental side of the life, nor understands the emotions, unless he is either a poet or a Miss Nancy, and it is almost equally dangerous to marry either of those.”

In the latter part of the book, she has discussed various categories of men. She has her views on the self-made man, the dyspeptic man, the too-accurate man, the irresistible man, and the stupid man.Explaining an account of a dyspeptic man, she writes…

“Of course every woman knows that a sick man is sicker than the thousand sicker women, each of whom is twice as sick as he is. We all know that he can groan louder and roll his eyes higher and keep more people flying about, and all this just a plain pain, than his wife would do with seven fatal ailments.”

Finally, she talks about the new woman…

“Why have men always possessed an exclusive right to the sense of humor? I believe because they live out of the door more. Humor is an out-of-door virtue. It requires ozone and the light of the sun and when the new women came out of the doors and mingled with men and newer women, she saw funny things and her sense of humor began to grow and thrive.”

This is interesting to know that this book was written in the 1890s. Its humorous and jolly approach in expressing a girl’s point of view of that time is making it a light and fun read even today.

What was Edgar Allan Poe’s most famous story? My restlessness and The Cask of Amontillado

What was this Girl’s Point of View?