Tales of Men and Ghosts

It took me quite a while to finish Tales of Men and Ghosts and not because I wasn’t interested in the book. It is because I had to read the stories very carefully in order to grasp their inner meanings. And was I successful? I don’t know. But it was quite an experience.

Tales of Men and Ghosts is a collection of short stories by Edith Wharton. It was published in 1910. These stories were previously published in Scribner's Magazine and The Century in the years 1909 and 1910.

The book consists of ten stories, The Bolted Door, His Father's Son, The Daunt Diana, The Debt, Full Circle, The Legend, The Eyes, The Blond Beast, Afterward and The Letters.

In The Bolted Door, a man goes slowly insane while trying to prove his own guilt.

His show more Father's Son tells the story of a father who dotes on his son, a son who is beginning to doubt his own origins.

A collector finds out that the thrill lies in the ‘chase’ and not in ‘possession' in the The Daunt Diana.

In The Debt a protégé shows what it means to be a true successor to his mentor.

In Full Circle, a complacently successful writer feels uneasy after hiring a down on his luck writer to oversee his fan mails.

The Legend tells the story of a legendary author and his mysterious disappearance from society.

An ever watchful pair of eyes keeps a man awake in The Eyes.

In The Blond Beast an ambitious young man has the perfect plan to climb the ladder of success.

Afterward is the story of an unsuspecting couple who move in to a supposedly haunted house.

And finally, The Letters is a story of love and the almost inevitable disillusionment it brings.

A majority of the stories are about ordinary men trying to do something, anything, to get out of the circumstances that bind them. They are mostly commonplace everyday men, grasping at happiness or what they perceive to be happiness and chasing the illusion of greatness.

But most of them end up going nowhere and often returning to where they had begun is no longer an option. Even if success does come, they often find that the fruits of success may leave a bitter after taste. Some make peace with their lives and some plummet into the gloomy void of misery.

There are no heroes or villains per se in most of the stories. The adversaries most of them face are their own inner demons.

I loved The Debt and The Eyes. The Daunt Diana and Full Circle are close seconds. I found The Bolted Door, The Legend and The Blond Beast kind of long drawn out.

Except for the last one or two stories, most of the protagonists are male.

Wharton makes the characters so fascinatingly intricate despite their ordinariness. You can actually feel their desperations and frustrations.

Edith Wharton’s writing is wonderful but complex. It kind of reminds me of the experience I had last year while reading E.M. Forster, another brilliantly complex writer.

Tales of Men and Ghosts is the first Edith Wharton book I’ve read and it has turned out to be a fascinating experience. I was held captivated by these ten shining literary gems. My love for short stories mingled with my love for classics made this a good read. Definitely recommended. show less

And then his success began to submerge him: he gasped under the thickening shower of letters. His admirers were really unappeasable. And they wanted him to do such preposterous things—to give lectures, to head movements, to be tendered receptions, to speak at banquets, to address mothers, to plead for orphans, to go up in balloons, to lead the struggle for sterilized milk. They wanted his photograph for literary supplements, his autograph for charity bazaars, his name on committees, literary, educational, and social; above all, they wanted his opinion on everything: on Christianity, Buddhism, tight lacing, the drug-habit, democratic government, female suffrage and love.

By the half-way point there had been lots of men but no ghosts, show more although some of the men could be said to be haunted metaphorically rather than literally. There were, however, some actual ghosts in the second half of the book. show less

Read: October-November 2016
Overall rating: 3/5 stars

This was a real mix of good, bad and mediocre. The standout stories for me were The Bolted Door and Afterward while His Father's Son and Full Circle were also worth a read. I wouldnt recommend this collection unless you are already a fan of Edith Wharton.

The individual ratings for each tale is as follows:
The Bolted Door - 4/5 stars
His Father's Son - 3.5/5 stars
The Daunt Diana - 2.5/5 stars
The Debt - 1/5 stars
Full Circle- 3/5 stars
The Legend- 1.5/5 stars
The Eyes- 1/5 stars
The Blond Beast - DNF
Afterward - 4/5 stars
The Letters - 2/5 stars

The collection was fine, nothing really scary or spooky. Overall, I my favorites were the couple of stories that had a ghostly element.