DARK SHADOWS FORUMS
General Discussions => Current Talk '25 I => Topic started by: Philippe Cordier on September 17, 2023, 05:04:33 PM
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The other day I picked up a paperback collection of 10 stories by Poe and noticed that there was one I've been meaning to read for several years, "Thou Art the Man." A couple of years ago I made a study of Poe's three detective short stories, a genre he created, but I hadn't gotten to this one which is sometimes also said to fall into the detective category, a story of what Poe called "ratiocination." This one is rather lightweight from a literary standpoint, especially compared to "The Purloined Letter," which I think is a masterpiece of literary perfection. The tone of "Thou Art the Man" is quite humorous and, along with its small-town Americana setting, reminded me of Mark Twain (who wrote a few detective stories himself).
Imagine my surprise when I found that one of the characters, an older gentleman who disappears and is believed (correctly) to have been murdered, is named "Barnabas." I had never come across that information in any Dark Shadows discussions or books that I can recall.
While the story bears no resemblance to "Dark Shadows," it still could be the source for Barnabas's name, unless we know that the name "Barnabas" was definitely picked up from a New England tombstone, which I think I read years ago.
"Thou Art the Man" is a rather quick read and I would recommend it as a "Saturday Evening Post" type of story and not one of Poe's masterpieces of terror. In a paragraph introducing the story in my old Scholastic copy (which somehow I had at hand), it's said that this story introduced a new aspect to detective fiction, that of the (amateur) detective narrator, a fact I had read nowhere else despite my extensive reading into the history of detective fiction.
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Coincidence or not that’s still really interesting.
I’ve really only ever read the most famous two of Poe’s stories.
I didn’t know he or Twain ever made detective stories.
Those will definitely be worth finding. I imagine Project Gutenberg might have them and I could even use text to speech on my phone and listen if I wanted.
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I'm guessing that the two "most famous" Poe stories you have read are probably "The Tell-Tale Heart" and "The Pit and the Pendulum" . . . Those are the first two I remember reading. I remember reading Poe's first tale of detection ("ratiocination" is the term he uses), "The Murders in the Rue Morgue," in my junior high school library. There's also "The Mystery of Marie Roget" and "The Purloined Letter." Some would include "The Gold-Bug" and others include "Thou Art the Man" among Poe's detective works.
It's harder to find complete information about Mark Twain's forays into detective fiction. There are a couple with a faux-medieval setting, but the best of Twain's that I've read is the rather dark "A Thumb-Print and What Came of It," which is the first work of fiction in which a fingerprint is used in solving a crime.
Here are two links you may find helpful:
http://www.telelib.com/authors/T/TwainMark/prose/lifeonmississippi/lifeonmississippi31.html (http://www.telelib.com/authors/T/TwainMark/prose/lifeonmississippi/lifeonmississippi31.html)
"A Thumb-Print and What Came of It" (Mark Twain)
https://www.eapoe.org/works/stedwood/sw0305.htm
(https://www.eapoe.org/works/stedwood/sw0305.htm)
"Thou Art the Man" (Edgar Allan Poe) (The murder of Barnabas Shuttleworthy)
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How interesting! I don't think I've ever heard of that one -- I'll have to look it up.
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This is off-topic, but I wanted to followup on my post about E.A. Poe's "Thou Art the Man." This story is rarely mentioned by the critics, and if it is mentioned, it's in an off-hand, throw-away manner - a comic detective story of no consequence, a trifle of Poe's hardly worth mentioning. Then I stumbled on a ground-breaking article published in 2021 by a Japanese scholar called "A Hidden Murder in Poe's 'Thou Art the Man.'" It's a densely written study which takes its cue, I believe (though mentioned only in a footnote) by a deductive mystery story of Jorge Luis Borges in which the solution provided is undercut in the last paragraph, forcing the reader to go back to the story from the beginning to try to solve it. Did Poe beat Borges to this innovation by more than 100 years? The article is quite convincing ... there definitely IS something odd about Poe's narrator ... though the article doesn't seem quite definitive to me. In other words, although I'm sure the scholar has uncovered something overlooked for 180 years, I'm not sure he has totally solved the mystery, either.
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Philippe Cordier . . . The Raven and the The Tell-Tale Heart so half right on your guess.
Sorry for the late reply I had a browse tab open for a while and forgot to get back to it.
Pretty facing about the thumbprint story.
I appreciate the links.
Intriguing about the other post too. I’m not a big of a mystery reader (though I’ve read some), but that sounds like a neat experience to feel like everything is wrapped up and then realized maybe it wasn’t.
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I’m not a big of a mystery reader (though I’ve read some), but that sounds like a neat experience to feel like everything is wrapped up and then realized maybe it wasn’t.
I'm fairly limited in what I read in the mystery or detective genre. I usually like a story, novel, whatever, that has other things going on and has an emphasis on character, where the mystery is just part of it (for example, Daphne du Maurier). Two filmed adaptations of mystery novels I've really liked in the past decade are "No Night Is Too Long" and "The Girl on the Train."
Another great example more relevant here are the mystery elements in some of the DS storylines, especially 1897 and 1840. That medallion that was made by the jeweler and found in the child's coffin, and what's purpose was, was fantastic!
My favorite contemporary novel of the last 10 years or so is "The Shadow of the Wind," a Spanish novel that has echoes of Poe and Gothicism, which is also about a young man with a deep love of books and an obsession for a mysterious author.
As far as actual "detective" stories, the main ones I like are those by Poe, G.K. Chesterton, and Jorge Luis Borges (who, like Poe, only wrote about four of these). Chesterton and Borges also fall into a specialized category of the metaphysical mystery.
Cheers!
Philippe
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Character really does make mystery more fun for me as well. Most of the mystery stuff I’ve enjoyed on TV has a heavy emphasis on the characters involved.
Probably part of the reason why I don’t like watching lot’s of real crime stories in a row. There’s not a lot distracting a person from the morbid reality.
After watching a sudo documentary about Agatha Christie I’m tempted to read one of her books.
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I've never heard of "Thou Art the Man".
How long is it? I may head to my library tomorrow.
Thanks!
Patti
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Did you find and read the story, Patti? I did provide a link above to the story online at the estimable website of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore:
https://www.eapoe.org/works/stedwood/sw0305.htm (https://www.eapoe.org/works/stedwood/sw0305.htm)
"Thou Art the Man" by Edgar Allan Poe
A couple of days ago, I stumbled upon yet another scholarly article, available on academia.edu, presenting the case that Poe's pastiche on Lord Byron, "The Assignation," also conceals a murder mystery. I'm just getting into the article now.