Tag: Edgar Allan Poe

  • Sinbad

    Extraordinary Adventure
    72

    The name Sinbad has so much intrigue surrounding it that the actual legend itself has become a bit nebulous. There are so many different versions that it is hard to pin down just exactly what the story actually is. As far as we can figure it is of Persian origin. This is not extremely helpful, however, because as of now, no Persian rendition of the story exists. Instead, The 7 Voyages of Sinbad the Sailor are recounted by a woman named Scheherazade in a collection called 1001 Arabian Nights.

    This random comedian (whose name escapes me) has been kind enough to have all seven voyages embroidered onto his shirt.

    The premise of Arabian Nights is that the king of Bagdad executes a new bride every night as sort of a tax on beauty. In modern times this would make the king a serial killer, but back then it was considered romantic I guess. Scheherazade, in order to postpone her inevitable death, begins to tell the king various different tales. She always stops these tales at critical points so that the king has to delay her execution another night if he desires to know the outcome. Arabian Nights is the source for both Ali Baba, and Aladdin, as well as the phrase “Open Sesame” and therefore also the source of Sesame Street.

    Also it inspired a dinner show in Orlando which has something to do with Unicorns. Nothing says adventure like cold salisbury steak!

    When Scheherazade got to the Sinbad part of her stories though, she must’ve become a tad confused because Sinbad’s seven voyages borrow heavily from other classic myths, especially Greek ones. For instance, consider that both Sinbad and Odysseus battle a Cyclops and they both eat a magical plant that relieves them of their senses. This may have caused screenwriter John Logan to set the hugely unpopular DreamWorks version in Greece instead of Arabia. Initially this caused Arab interest groups to cry foul because Sinbad was no longer depicted as an Arab. While I agree that it was a tad cowardly of DreamWorks to do this, Scheherazade clearly stole from Homer, so turnabout is fair play.

    In attempt to atone for stealing from the Greeks, all other versions of Sinbad are required to steal from somewhere else. Here the hindu goddess Kali shows up for some odd reason.

    Aside from the actual Arabian Nights version, there are several different versions of the Sinbad legend. Most of them are not bad. The aforementioned DreamWorks animated version with Brad Pitt is actually ok, but it is known for bringing about the end of 2D Animation at DreamWorks, so it may not be everyone’s cup of tea. There are quite a few scenes that actually come straight from Scheherazade such as the island that is actually a giant whale, and the battle against the Roc, a giant bird of prey.

    This aaaaalmost works

    Animator Ray Harryhausen also produced an extremely good version in the 1950s. It was his first color film and a huge popular success, with music by Bernard Hermann that many rank among the composer’s finest. The story doesn’t really match up with the Arabian version either, but it’s action barrels along at a breakneck pace. It even features an animated skeleton swordfight, which Harryhausen later stole from himself and used in Jason and the Argonauts. It also includes a scene near the end whereby a genie is freed from slavery to his lamp. This idea also cropped up in the 90s when another of Scheherazade’s stories from Arabian Nights was adapted. It’s further ahead in our countdown, so I’ll let you wait and see what I’m referring to, though most of you could probably guess it.

    No. It's not this.

    Because of its reliance and close scrapes, surprising reversals and the cyclical nature of its narrative the titular Seven Voyages, remain timeless story nuggets that many authors have flirted with through the years. There’s even an inscrutable parody of Sinbad stories written by none other than Edgar Allan Poe. You can find it here, if you dare.

    Next up … 71

  • The Gold Bug

    Extraordinary
    Adventure
    80

    Edgar Allan Poe is famous for many things, including marrying his 13-year-old cousin, contracting mysterious diseases, and dying young while in the midst of insanity.  He also sometimes wrote stuff.  He is best known for sappy chick-lit tales featuring disembodied hearts, black cats, ravens, mummies, and Usher.

    Usher
    Poe was very into R&B

    Occasionally, he would confound his critics with unexpected bursts of grand adventure, full of mind-boggling puzzles, exotic locations, long-dead pirates, and buried treasure.  Then he would go back to writing about handsome strangers with smoldering eyes and luscious hair.  The Gold Bug is one such departure.

    Nowadays we think of buried pirate treasure as an old fashioned sort of adventure plot, since all the pirates have been dead for more than 100 years.  In Poe’s day, piracy was on the wane, but still relevant to its audience, sort of like how everyone still likes Die Hard.

    Die Hard
    Next Century's Classic Literature

    What makes The Gold Bug so much fun is the way in which its hero finds the last stash of Captain Kidd.  Basically he stumbles across an invisible treasure map while beachcombing.  If you think it is difficult to stumble across something invisible, you’d be right, unless there was also a gold scarab beetle sitting nearby.

    I have read the story many times and it is still unclear to me whether the scarab is a real beetle or a gold artifact. The characters in the story talk about it as if it is an actual insect with a strange coloration, which they capture by wrapping it in a scrap of parchment that they conveniently find nearby.  It is only later, while studying the bug near the fire, that invisible ink on the paper is revealed.

    Golden scarab beetle
    Easily mistaken for a real insect

    In fact, the Gold Bug itself plays virtually no role in the plot, other than that it also allows them to find the treasure map.  Perhaps the title is one of those “symbolic” things that English teachers are so obsessed with.  “Bug” as in “sickness.”  The Virus of Greed and all that stuff.

    The map contains a fiendish cryptogram, which the characters dissect in riveting fashion, while basically schooling the reader on how to solve those word puzzles in the newspaper.  It translates to a riddle, which involves a trip to the seaside cliffs, the discovery of a particular tree, which happens to have a skull nailed to one of the branches high up.

    Here they must solve one more puzzle in order to find the treasure’s location, and as to whether or not they succeed, I will leave to you to discover.  It’s a short story and readily available online, so stop your complaining.  It is best if you don’t think about the fact that trees tend to grow over time, so maybe Captain Kidd wasn’t as clever as he thought.

    The story is oft-imitated.  One can see its influence in dozens of works from popular culture, of which The DaVinci Code and National Treasure may be the most recent examples.  It is also fascinating for its discussion of cryptography, which was a relatively new art to the literary public of Poe’s day, who up to that point had been sending secret messages using the Ovaltine decoder ring.

    Poe himself seemed to have an obsession with cryptograms.  He possessed an almost supernatural ability to decipher them.  He once challenged a magazine’s readership to stump him with a code in any language with any character set, and despite many insane, complex submissions, not a single one could best him.

    Edgar Allan Poe
    But he stunk at Sudoku

    The story’s one deficiency is its glaring and blatant racism.  It is definitely a product of its time, and it treats the lone black character as a ridiculous fool, complete with phonetically rendered speech and derogatory names.  Were Hollywood ever to make The Gold Bug into a movie, I foresee a great many rewrites in which this character is changed to a bumbling robot played by Robin Williams.

    Jar Jar Binks
    Or something.

    Next up, #79.