Well, "The Nail and Other Stories" turned out to be "The Nail and One Other Story Which Is Only Ten Pages Long and Is Much Better Than The Damn Nail". Too bad mr. Pedro Antonio de Alarcón was so infatuated with Poe. He could have written something better if he weren't trying so hard to imitate him. Thankfully, this was merely the first of his literary attempts. He was later to become one of Spain's most important novelists of the 19th century, certainly one of the most distinguished writers within the country's realist tradition. His books El Sombrero de Tres Picos (The Three-Cornered Hat) and El Escándalo (The Scandal), written during the 1870s gained him national and international fame. But, alas, this is still the 1850s and The Nail is predictable, unoriginal and, frankly, quite boring. What's funny is that the writer seems to be aware of this: in one of the rare moments where the narrator addresses the reader directly, he reveals the story's "dramatic" conclusion before it even happens by saying something like "you probably imagined, just like I did, that *insert dramatic ending* would happen". Yep, we did imagine it. So is Alarcón under the impression that we just want our suspicions confirmed? That we'll be interested in reading about something that we already knew would happen just because we want to hear it from the narrator himself? Sorry, hombre. Wrong again.

"La Corneta de Llaves" then follows 'El Clavo", and for a moment I'm thinking maybe I was too harsh on the guy. But unfortunately, it's too little, too late. ( )