new weird

Edgar Allen Poe's works are all perfect examples of "The New Weird," which is a genre I had never really considered to be "my thing." After finally deciding on reading A Tell-Tale Heart by Poe, I came to the conclusion that I really love the genre. 

The short story is from the perspective of a crazy man who can't stand the eye of the old man who lives with him. I imagine the old man being a distant relative of the crazy man's- possibly the only family member who volunteered to take care of his insane relative. I also imagine that the crazy man is narrating the entire story from the inside of an insane asylum. The story is very ambiguous, so a lot of the imagery is left to the imagination. I think the ambiguity of the story works to its advantage. In many cases, the imagination can conjure up much more frightening things than any visual ever could. I think this is why, in many cases, books and short stories have the potential to be much more frightening than any movie ever could be, because the contents of the deepest and darkest parts of our mind bear more disturbing and personal terrors than what can be fed to us through a screen.

The whole story revolves around the old man's blue eye, which is somehow the only thing about the old man that makes the insane main character want to do him in. I love how simple the overall story is, yet so ridiculously eerie. I think that's what this genre is really all about.