19th century writers and ruining their stories by depicting unintelligible dialect phonetically; name a more iconic duo.Look, I finish almost everything I read. And I really do like Poe. But I just can't do it with this one. There's probably a very good story in here somewhere, but Legrand's African American servant Jupiter's illiterate dialogue is so frustratingly constructed that I simply can't bring myself to continue bludgeoning through it to get to the good stuff. Reading The Gold Bug is a miserable chore and I have much better things to do with my time (and better books to read) than to waste it decoding this nonsense.
"Keeps a syphon wid de figgurs on de slate --de queerest figgurs I ebber did see. Ise gittin to be skeered, I tell you. Hab for to keep mighty tight eye pon him noovers. Todder day he gib me slip fore de sun up and was gone de whole ob de blessed day. I had a big stick ready cut for to gib him d--d good beating when he did come --but Ise sich a fool dat I hadn't de heart arter all --he look so berry poorly."Pardon my French, but: Fuck this shit, Edgar. You're better than this. It goes past style value. This is bad without even applying the lens of 21st century ethics and criticizing this in a racial fashion. I'm not reading this for literary purposes, but for enjoyment. And this sort of dialogue is such a chore to decipher that it completely destroys my ability to read and enjoy the story.
When it comes to dialect and dialogue, let's have more Twain and less Poe, please.
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