The Great Bad Writer

The great bad writer
Kevin Jackson
  22nd February 2012  —  Issue 192

Self-indulgent, vulgar, borderline insane—Edgar Allan Poe was the most influential American author of the 19th century

GO HERE FOR FULL ARTICLEhttp://www.prospectmagazine.co.uk/2012/02/the-great-bad-writer-edgar-allan-poe-raven-cusack/

End of the line for Poe tradition?

Gravesite tradition to end.

Poe Collage --Serving Art and Commerce

GO HERE  Poe gets under your skin and on your skin (see evening gown image).

Big Read - 2011 Comes to a Close and a Beginning

Fascinating isn’t it how often someone or some thing you haven’t seen or thought of for years, even decades, comes to mind and cracks open the dam of the forgotten?  Connections in the mind, in conversations, in what you see and read in your normal rounds of life pour through this crack.  And then, magically, the debris of fading references, the flotsam of vague images, take concrete form. You’re delighted and surprised.  Parts of the past float into view and take on momentary (or, if you’re lucky, lasting) significance.  History may be a river and you may not be allowed to put your foot into the same part of that river more than once, but it seems the abandoned and the forgotten flowing on the current may come by again if you are watching. 

Reading Poe during this year’s Big Read had this effect. The great Mexican poet-novelist  Roberto Bolaño works this territory in his writing.  It was startling and satisfying to see the two streams-- memory traces reestablished/Poe-Bolano-- come together in Roberto Bolaño’s essay, “Who Would Dare?”  Here’s an excerpt:

. . . I don’t remember ever seeing lonelier bookstores. I didn’t steal any books in Santiago. They were cheap and I bought them. At the last bookstore I visited, as I was going through a row of old French novels, the bookseller, a tall, thin man of about forty, suddenly asked whether I thought it was right for an author to recommend his own works to a man who’s been sentenced to death.

The bookseller was standing in a corner, wearing a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up to the elbows and he had a prominent Adam’s apple that quivered as he spoke. I said it didn’t seem right. What condemned men are we talking about? I asked. The bookseller looked at me and said that he knew for certain of more than one novelist capable of recommending his own books to a man on the verge of death. Then he said that we were talking about desperate readers. I’m hardly qualified to judge, he said, but if I don’t, no one will.

What book would you give to a condemned man? he asked me. I don’t know, I said. I don’t know either, said the bookseller, and I think it’s terrible. What books do desperate men read? What books do they like? How do you imagine the reading room of a condemned man? he asked. I have no idea, I said. You’re young, I’m not surprised, he said. And then: it’s like Antarctica. Not like the North Pole, but like Antarctica. I was reminded of the last days of [Edgar Allan Poe’s] Arthur Gordon Pym, but I decided not to say anything. Let’s see, said the bookseller, what brave man would drop this novel on the lap of a man sentenced to death? He picked up a book that had done fairly well and then he tossed it on a pile. I paid him and left. When I turned to leave, the bookseller might have laughed or sobbed. As I stepped out I heard him say: What kind of arrogant bastard would dare to do such a thing? And then he said something else, but I couldn’t hear what it was.

Does Literature Still Matter?

New Book Asks Whether Literature Still Matters
In era that prizes the 140-character tweet, Harvard professor ponders the value of literature

"The Use and Abuse of Literature" (Pantheon Books), by Marjorie Garber: In an age that prizes short bursts of electronic information, Harvard English professor Marjorie Garber asks whether literature still matters. As might be expected of someone who has spent her career teaching Shakespeare to undergraduates, she answers with a resounding "yes."

. . . and here’s why . . .

For Garber, of course, literature does matter. "Language does change our world," she writes. "It does make possible what we think and how we think it." Echoing an argument made by the eminent literary critic Harold Bloom, Garber claims for literature a sort of stem cell-like power to generate fresh and new imaginative experiences in those who read it.

HERE

If you’ve  been reading Poe’s stories and poems, it’s unlikely that you will deny Garber’s claims for literature.  When was the last time you received a 140 character message on Twitter that made you think as much as these twenty-one words from Poe:

“Deep into that darkness peering, long I stood there, wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortal ever dared to dream before.”

Poe Wasn't in the Club

Age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.

Now that’s Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, the Hiawatha and Spreading Chestnut tree guy.  The Great Gray Poet.  He looked like this. 



Who could ever be hard on this thoughtful looking, stereotype of a grandfather? Well, Edgar Allan Poe took aim at him regularly.  Poe also picked critical fights with more than a few other poets of his times.  Here’s a recent news article on Poe’s criticism of the New England poets of his day, “Edgar Allan Poe’s case against the Boston literati.”  What do you think of his tone? 

GO HERE

The Tell Tale Heart by FuserXXI