Genre: Classic
Series: Standalone
Page Count: 170
Publication Year: The stories were written from 1819-1824. My edition was published 2008.
Publisher: Several different ones. My edition was published by Dover Publications.
Why does no one talk about Irving more? He wrote some good short stories.
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
I read an abridged version over a decade ago and didn’t really like it. But after experiencing the real thing, I like it a lot.
Ichabod’s introduction sealed it for me:
The cognomen of Crane was not inapplicable to his person. He was tall, but exceedingly lank, with narrow shoulders, long arms and legs, hands that dangled a mile out of his sleeves, feet that might have served for shovels, and his whole frame most loosely hung together. His head was small, and flat at top, with huge ears, large green glassy eyes, and a long snipe nose, so that it looked like a weathercock perched upon his spindle neck, to tell which way the wind blew. To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him for the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield.
That quote illustrates the biggest problem of this short story: the long sentences. Sometimes I’d get to the end of a sentence and not recall where it started. I had to be more careful and I still had to reread parts. The vocabulary also threw me for a loop, some of it because I’d never heard the word and other times because it’s archaic. And yet the images he creates are excellent, which is good since there’s very little dialogue.
I love when a book talks about food and this one has some tasty menus.
There was the doughty dough nut, the tenderer oly koek, and the crisp and crumbling cruller; sweet cakes and short cakes, ginger cakes and honey cakes, and the whole family of cakes. And then there were apple pies and peach pies and pumpkin pies; besides slices of ham and smoked beef; and moreover delectable dishes of preserved plums, and peaches, and pears, and quinces; not to mention broiled shad and roasted chickens; together with bowls of milk and cream, all mingled higgledy-piggledy, pretty much as I have enumerated them, with the motherly tea pot sending up its clouds of vapor from the midst…
There are a few off bits but overall he vividly paints the world. As a chicken owner, I know this quote to be marvelously true:
Before the barn door strutted the gallant cock, that pattern of a husband, a warrior, and a fine gentleman, clapping his burnished wings and crowing in the pride and gladness of his heart—sometimes tearing up the earth with his feet, and then generously calling his ever hungry family of wives and children to enjoy the rich morsel which he had discovered.
I wouldn’t have minded the story being longer.
I’d recommend reading it on a clear, crisp autumn afternoon, preferably with some sustenance.
Rip Van Winkle
Eh, not that great. The description is still good, but the terrible marriage at the center doesn’t make Rip a sympathetic protagonist.
I like the legend and mythic side of things but Sleepy Hollow is a better read.
The Spectre Bridegroom
I like this one too. It takes place in Germany. I like the twist at the end. The description maybe isn’t quite as good as the others, but it’s still decent.
The Mutability of Literature
I especially like this one because it talks about literature and its impact.
Instead of reading, however, I was beguiled by the solemn monastic air, and lifeless quiet of the place, into a train of musing. As I looked around upon the old volumes in their mouldering covers, thus ranged on the shelves, and apparently never disturbed in their repose, I could not but consider the library a kind of literary catacomb, where authors, like mummies, are piously entombed, and left to blacken and moulder in dusty oblivion.
How have their authors buried themselves in the solitude of cells and cloisters; shut themselves up from the face of man, and the still more blessed face of nature, and devoted themselves to painful research and intense reflection. And all for what! to occupy an inch of dusty shelf—to have the title of their works read now and then in a future age, by some drowsy churchman, or casual straggler like myself; and in another age to be lost, even to remembrance.
Westminster Abbey
Good description and a nice jaunt through history and how it’s remembered.
History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription moulders from the tablet; the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?
The Wife
This is definitely the sweetest of the stories. On the one hand, you should know what kind of a person you’re married to; on the other, it shows how you can be perfectly happy with much less than you’ve been accustomed to. Definitely not a tale for feminists.
“Have the courage to appear poor and you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting.”
Mountjoy
Well, that went in an unexpected direction. I thought it’d be some mushy romance and then it took a more practical route that’s quite delightful. It shows the follies of putting too much stock in vague and non substantive learning and illustrates the wisdom of humility.
“These [physical] studies,” said he, “store a man’s mind with valuable facts, and at the same time repress self-confidence, by letting him know how boundless are the realms of knowledge, and how little we can possibly know. Whereas metaphysical studies, though of an ingenious order of intellectual employment, are apt to bewilder some minds with vague speculations. They never know how far they have advanced, or what may be the correctness of their favorite theory. They render many of our young men verbose and declamatory, and prone to mistake the aberrations of their fancy for the inspirations of divine philosophy.”
It’s like I always say: Forget metaphysics and take up cooking.
But I suppose I shouldn’t expect much from a character who thinks: Can any one have real sensibility of heart, and not be alive to poetry?
His oh-so poetical heart concocts a vision of a perfect woman after finding her solitary footprint. He mentions to his teacher that he’s in love (neglecting the imaginary part), prompting this response:
“Were you caught by some fleeting or superficial charm—a bright eye, a blooming cheek, a soft voice, or a voluptuous form—I would warn you to beware; I would tell you that beauty is but a passing gleam of the morning, a perishable flower; that accident may becloud and blight it, and that at best it must soon pass away. But were you in love with such a one as I could describe; young in years, but still younger in feelings; lovely in person, but as a type of the mind’s beauty; soft in voice, in token of gentleness of spirit; blooming in countenance, like the rosy tints of morning kindling with the promise of a genial day; an eye beaming with the benignity of a happy heart; a cheerful temper, alive to all kind impulses, and frankly diffusing its own felicity; a self-poised mind, that needs not lean on others for support; an elegant taste, that can embellish solitude, and furnish out its own enjoyments—”
“My dear sir,” cried I, for I could contain myself no longer, “you have described the very person!”
“Why then, my dear young friend,” said he, affectionately pressing my hand, “in God’s name, love on!”
Adventure of the German Student
This one is very short but still packs a punch. It ends in an unexpected way and gives the story a tinge of horror.
Adventure of the Mysterious Stranger
Unlike H. P. Lovecraft’s stories which are genuinely disturbing, Irving’s horror-y ones aren’t terrifying but they have their own brand of spine-tingling mystery that makes them enjoyable and not too scary. The ending of this one isn’t fair, although I understand why he did it. Still unfair though.
The Adventure of My Uncle
What’s up with these cliffhangers? I like that these stories are in first-person and generally it’s just a person telling the story secondhand. But it also makes it possible for parts of the story to be cut out, like in here. It’s an okay story, but I’d have liked a better ending.
In a word, it was precisely the kind of comfortless apartment that a ghost, if ghost there were in the chateau, would single out for its favorite lounge.
The Adventure of My Aunt
It’s not all that interesting, but it’s still well-written.
The Story of the Young Italian
I don’t know about this one. A lot of Irving’s characters are strongly emotional, high strung and prone to fantastical imaginings. I think the problem is these people are so unbelievable that it’s kinda hard to fully get onboard their journey. The ending went in a fairly predictable way, but the remaining unanswered mystery dampens the finale.
The Devil and Tom Walker
There’s no mystery, no horror, nothing to set itself apart. It’s a weak way of saying, “Don’t make a deal with the Devil.” Even the writing isn’t as engaging as the others. This one’s my least favorite.
And there we have it. I had no idea Irving wrote short stories of such an engaging slant. The sentences can be overly long and the vocabulary is the hardest I’ve seen in a while, but those didn’t hinder me from merrily skipping through the whole collection.
Favorite stories:
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
The Spectre Bridegroom
The Mutability of Literature
Adventure of the German Student
Check out my rating here.