I’ve lost track of two of the novels I’m halfway through reading, one by William Dean Howells and the other by Poul Anderson. Both are likely in my office, which I guess I’ll have to tidy up soon. So here I am well into the night and approaching morning, still wide awake, but tired, looking at a Poe collection, an elegant miniature hardcover from Könemann. I’m thinking of embarking on a formal essay on Nabokov’s Lolita, so Poe not surprisingly came to mind. There is a mystery behind Lolita, one uncovered a decade or so ago, and most of what has been written about it has been pishposh. And here it is, half after the beginning of the new day’s fifth hour, and I cannot remember having read Poe’s longest detective story. I know I read “The Gold Bug” in my teen years. But the others? I forsook Poe’s crime and horror fiction for his comedies, “The Imp of the Perverse” and “Never Bet the Devil Your Head.” Now it is time, perhaps, to return to my reading roots. 

Or finish this whiskey. I am not awake because of missing books, but because of pain. There is no position of recumbency that evades pain, tonight, so every position prevents sleep. So how to sleep? The whiskey may help. 

Or maybe Poe’s prose’ll do it.

twv