One of the most lauded and successful novels of the early 1990’s was Trainspotting by Scottish writer Irvine Walsh. It is undoubtedly one of the best books I have never successfully read. The same can be said for Anthony Burgess 1962 novel A Clockwork Orange. Aside both being set within counter culture youth diasporas, and both been made in to movies, they both have something else in common, which is what makes them, for me specifically, unreadable. Which is not to say I have not tried, merely that I can’t read them for very long without my brain rebelling, feeling dizzy and wanting to lay down in a darkened room.

When I say they are unreadable for me, that is exactly want I mean.

I am dyslexic, I learned to read the hard way by forcing the mindless scratching’s I see in to some form of collective meaning that allows me to interpret them as words. It took years and determination from my mother who made me read to her every night. She instilled within me a love of the written word and I have never stopped reading since. But while I have read Shakespeare, Homer, the Bronte’s, Dickens and well just about anything and everything I can. The one thing I can not read are things a written in ‘not’ English. Which is the case for both Trainspotting and A Clockwork Orange. One is written in Scottish brogue, the other in a teenage street language. While both are recognizably English by root my dylexic brain can not decipher the non-words into words without having to stop at each one and more or less spell them out to myself. I just can’t, while I would love to read both novels, I revert to the reading age for a five year old when I try. Its frustrating, horrifying in fact, and I hate it…

I can cope with, indeed have written, dialogue in ‘rough brogues’ when appropriate. Such things do not break me. But an entire story, let alone an entire novel where the narrative is written and spelt in dialect is literally painful for me personally.

This brings me to ‘Why the Little Frenchman Wears his Hand in a Sling’. As you may have guessed the reason for the extended diatribe on why a published writer, and one who reads just about anything and everything, can not actually read ‘everything’, is because of this particular story from our Dear Edgar. The entirety of which is written in a rough Irish brogue. I am sure for many readers this presents an entertaining departure from the norms of narrative. But I, as I hope I have explained above, can not read it.

This is something of a problem when one is tasked with reading the entirety of Edgar Alan Poe’s work. As such I have persevered with this story far more than I ever would have done otherwise, and I have been trying to read it for over a month now. A month in which I have come to hate every word of this story with a tempestuous passion. Has it been worth it, the annoyance (mostly with myself), the feeling of inadequacy, the self abhorrence at my own ineptitude. The occasional throwing of my otherwise beloved complete works across the bed room…

No. It has not…

Take this passage

for every inch o’ the six wakes that I’ve been a gintleman, and left aff wid the bog-throthing to take up wid the Barronissy, it’s Pathrick that’s been living like a houly imperor, and gitting the iddication and the graces. Och! and wouldn’t it be a blessed thing for your sperrits if ye cud lay your two peepers jist, upon Sir Pathrick O’Grandison, Barrronitt, when he is all riddy drissed for the hopperer, or stipping into the Brisky

I have no idea what any of it means, nor, one is loathed to admit, do I care. It hurts me to try and read it and this is one of the more readable ones… It doesn’t help that the story itself is little more than a short anecdote, with nothing interesting going on, no wild flight of fancy, no dark overtones,, indeed nothing to hold the interest of the reader. Probably, it hard to be sure when it makes your brain hurt to read it…

So to return to the title which is after all a question. Why the Little Frenchman Wears his Hand in a Sling? Well, I have no idea, if you manage to find out please let me know.

A DEAD RAVEN

Should your read it: Well, if you can and wish to do so who am I to stop you, but I quite literally can’t

Should you avoid it: If you have the kind of issues I do with the written word due to dyslexia yes, if not , yes…

Bluffers facts:  Alone among Poe’s Tales, this story has no first publication in a periodical. It was published first and only in Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque.