Deep into that Darkness Peering

Summary

Book Riot – The Podcast

Episode: Deep into that Darkness Peering

Air Date: October 22, 2025
Hosts: Jeff O’Neal & Rebecca Schinsky
Guest: Vanessa Diaz (Managing Editor)

---

Overview

This episode dives deep into the life, work, and myth of Edgar Allan Poe. With “spooky season” in full swing, Vanessa Diaz takes the wheel to guide Jeff and Rebecca through Poe’s biography, the mysterious circumstances of his death, his literary innovations, and the long-lasting effects of a single hater: Rufus Griswold. The episode blends history, literary gossip, and cultural context, inviting listeners to revisit or rediscover Poe’s legacy.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Personal Relationships with Poe (07:14–10:20)

• Vanessa asks the group about their relationship to Poe:
  • Jeff: Remembers Poe from high school (e.g., “Telltale Heart,” “Cask of Amontillado,” “The Raven”), noting Poe’s role as a genre/short story originator and a journalist (07:22–08:59).
  • Rebecca: Admits not reading much Poe as an adult but notes Poe’s strong presence in Richmond, VA, through museums and local culture; she wasn’t aware of the mystery surrounding Poe’s death (08:59–10:20).

2. Poe’s Early Life and Odd Education (10:20–16:33)

• Vanessa outlines Poe’s turbulent childhood:
  • Orphaned young: Father abandoned the family (12:51), mother died of tuberculosis (13:02).
  • Raised by the wealthy Allan family in Richmond; received a privileged but emotionally distant upbringing (13:02–14:23).
  • Unusual for an American writer of the time to have a classical education and exposure to UK boarding schools—these would later inspire names in his stories (14:50).

3. Poe’s Tumultuous Young Adulthood (16:33–21:42)

• Early promise as a writer and student, but financial hardship struck at University of Virginia (17:23–18:17). Attempted to gamble to cover tuition, ended further in debt.
• Joined the Army (“a Bostonian” was his first pen name) and briefly attended West Point (19:32–20:31), ultimately getting court-martialed via “extreme dereliction of duty” (20:24).
• Moves to Baltimore after foster father dies and is left out of the will, living with aunt and cousin (21:02–21:42).

4. Career, First Publications, and Infamous Marriage (21:42–25:39)

• Poe starts publishing poetry and then short stories; initial reception is minimal, but he slowly gains recognition (23:14–23:57).
• Writes reviews, edits journals, and marries his first cousin, Virginia Clemm—aged 12 or 13—sparking modern discomfort and even some “side-eye” at the time (23:14–24:08).

5. Literary Innovations: Detective Fiction, Psychological Horror, and Influence (25:39–28:14)

• The Murders in the Rue Morgue (1841) arguably launches detective fiction, and its protagonist inspires Sherlock Holmes (25:39–26:19).
• Poe’s short stories are praised as still lively and engaging for contemporary readers (26:39–27:46).
• Rebecca notes the thrill of realizing genres (like detective fiction) had to be invented by someone—and Poe was that someone (27:07–27:46).

6. Poe’s Fame, Tragedy, and the Mystery of His Death (30:54–38:48)

• Becomes a celebrity with “The Raven” (1845), though only earning $15 from its publication (30:54).
• Wife Virginia dies of tuberculosis (1847), sending Poe into a spiral of grief and increased drinking (32:38–33:43).
• 1849: Poe reconnects with childhood sweetheart Elmira and becomes engaged, only to vanish en route to New York (33:43–35:06).
• Found incoherent in Baltimore (wearing clothes not his own), never regains composure, dies four days later. No definitive cause of death—various theories include illness, alcoholism, murder, or “cooping” (voter fraud scheme) (35:06–38:48).

“There’s never been a conclusive diagnosis or cause of death determined. But there are, of course, a lot of theories...”
— Vanessa (35:36)

7. The Hater: How Rufus Griswold Twisted Poe’s Legacy (39:01–48:39)

• After Poe’s death, literary rival Rufus Griswold engineered a smear campaign:
  • Wrote a searing obituary (“This announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it.” – 43:32)
  • Assumed control of Poe’s literary estate (under dubious circumstances), published a memoir filled with fabrications: accused Poe of womanizing, opium addiction, and using his “evil predilections” for inspiration.
  • Directly forged quotes from Poe praising Griswold.
• These myths “stuck”—no competing biography appeared for 25 years, and many remain in public imagination today.

“Most of the stuff, like the jiggly pokery he did, was after Poe died. So, like, he didn’t even do it with his chest.”
— Vanessa (40:02)

8. Poe’s Enduring Impact and Recommendations (48:39–54:54)

• Poe’s real legacy: Invented or popularized the detective story, psychological horror, aspects of science fiction, and established literary criticism in the U.S. (49:02–49:16).
• His themes focus on loss, madness, and the darkness within humanity.
• Recommendations for reading (52:21–53:54):
  • “Telltale Heart,” “Cask of Amontillado,” “Purloined Letter,” “The Black Cat,” “Fall of the House of Usher,” “The Masque of the Red Death,” “Murders in the Rue Morgue.”
  • The new Netflix series The Fall of the House of Usher draws heavily on Poe’s works (53:16).
• Modern myths (e.g., 'Wednesday’s' Nevermore Academy was inspired by Rowling, not Poe) reflect how misunderstanding persists (49:57).

“You probably got a lot of Poe wrong, but he’s still worth reading for…really being the introduction to a lot of the things we enjoy about genre fiction.”
— Vanessa (54:42)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Poe’s Looks and Athletics:
  “If you haven’t seen a picture of Edgar Allan Poe, he looks like a character from an Edgar Allan Poe story.”
  — Jeff (16:33)

• On Poe’s Writing Career:
  “He is just still dear dyering it all the way to an eventual career. But it doesn’t happen at first.”
  — Vanessa (22:03)

• On Poe’s Marriage to His Cousin:
  “These things do exist on a spectrum and marrying your 13-year-old cousin is on the pretty bad end.”
  — Rebecca (23:27)

• On Literary Innovations:
  “It’s not just the primordial soup out of which…Holmes will evolve. Like, it’s pretty great in its own regard and in the public domain.”
  — Jeff (26:39)

• On Literary Haters:
  “Rufus Griswold was Poe’s arch nemesis and pretty much single-handedly responsible for a lot of the character assassination…”
  — Vanessa (39:01)

  “You knew what you were getting into when you asked this dude to write this review…”
  — Vanessa (42:35)

  “Literally that—Po’s over there doing the Don Draper ‘I don’t ever think about you’.”
  — Vanessa (43:02)

• On Reading Poe Today:
  “All these stories…I really think you should just discover it. But it’s like, somebody gets lured into a slow and very terrible death…”
  — Vanessa (52:35)

---

Timestamps by Segment

• Intro, guest setup: 01:05–02:20
• Poe’s childhood and education: 12:51–15:47
• University/gambling/Army & West Point: 17:23–20:31
• Early writing/publishing & Marriage: 21:42–24:08
• Detective fiction & genre innovation: 25:39–26:39
• Later career, “The Raven,” & Death: 30:54–38:48
• Rufus Griswold’s smear campaign: 39:01–48:39
• Legacy, recommendations & wrap-up: 48:39–54:54

---

Conclusion

This episode delivers an accessible and fascinating reevaluation of Edgar Allan Poe—unpacking the myths, highlighting his groundbreaking literary contributions, and exposing how a vengeful rival warped his reputation for generations. With Vanessa Diaz at the helm, listeners are encouraged to revisit Poe’s works with fresh eyes and an appreciation for both the genius and the messiness of one of American literature’s most misunderstood figures.

Transcript

[A]

The holidays have arrived at the Home Depot and we're here to help bring the excitement with decor for every part of your home.

[B]

Check out our wide assortment of easy.

[A]

To assemble pre lit trees so you can spend less time setting up and more time celebrating. And bring your holiday spirit outdoors with unique decor like one of our Santa inflatables. Whatever your style, find the right pieces at the right prices this holiday season at the Home Depot.

[B]

Adjective used to describe an individual whose.

[C]

Spirit is unyielding, unconstrained. One who navigates life on their own terms, effortlessly. They do not always show up on time, but when they arrive, you notice an individual confident in their contradictions.

[B]

They know the rules, but behave as.

[C]

If they do not exist. The new fragrance by Miu Miu, defined by you.

[A]

This is the Book Riot Podcast. I'm Jeff o'. Neill.

[B]

And I'm Rebecca Schinsky.

[A]

Rebecca, who do we have with us today?

[B]

We have Vanessa Diaz, our managing editor at Book Riot and our frequent guest now here on the Book Riot pod. And she is back for another journey down the literary rabbit hole. Folks might have heard her with me a month or so ago. She took me way into the gossip about Agatha Christine. And we don't know where she's going to take us today. We are just letting Vanessa. She's been in the sidecar, but now Vanessa has the steering wheel.

[A]

I couldn't have less of an idea.

[B]

I have no idea either.

[A]

Vanessa has wide taste. There's a lot of books. We could go anywhere. The odds makers. Let me check here. No bets. There's nothing on the board. I've got no board. So, Vanessa, where would we like to. What do we get to go to?

[B]

All we know is that Vanessa has picked something that you and I will be able to talk about. We have some kind of background, but that also is wide open. Like, we're eclectic weirdos too.

[C]

That could be like Marilyn Robinson or like Obama. Like, you just don't.

[A]

The race, teenage male pattern baldness, home coffee roasting. There's not a lot there, Vanessa.

[C]

Nugget ice makers.

[B]

I did have to order a new pour over this week. I thought of you, Jeff.

[A]

Yeah, very nice. Okay, Vanessa, where are we going? What are we doing?

[C]

So, yeah, I think if you really thought, I mean, maybe you wouldn't have guessed, but if you had to, like, where is Vanessa gonna go? It's like, it's probably gonna be something to do with spooky season adjacent.

[A]

I wondered.

[C]

So there was a moment where I thought I would go for the Malleus Marfikaram. But really that just ends up being like there was a witch book, People hate women and it was too short an episode. So instead we are going to news at 11. Yeah, we're going to spend a little time with my dude, Edgar Allan Poe today.

[A]

Interesting. I was just reading about him for the flagship. Again, I was just looking for quotes, but. So this is a nine hour pod because we're going to, we're going to solve the death of Edgar Allan Poe and how we put a ditch in Baltimore. Vanessa. That's what we're going to do.

[C]

So what's funny is I did not know Jeff was joining today until a little bit ago.

[A]

I'm the surprise.

[C]

It's not the surprise.

[A]

It's not eap, it's Jake.

[C]

And then on top of that, I was copy editing said newsletter and you included a paragraph about his death and I was like, can he see me? Because I was preparing this. So yes, we're going to talk like I did with the Agatha Christie episode. We're going to do a little bit of bio stuff just because I, I. The time I spend on the bookish Internet, I learn every day that the things I take for granted is like, yeah, people know this. This is old hat. Of course, new generation of readers are encountering it. I had to explain to some of my youth cousins that like the Fall of the House of Usher show I recommended to them was like, this is Poe. And they're like, what do you mean? I was like, oh, I know what episode I'm going to do now. And so that's how this idea was born.

[B]

Great.

[C]

So we'll do the bio. But yeah, I want to spend some time. Some of my favorite parts about the Poe of it all are the kind of mystery around his death and really how his reputation is sort of single handedly like one hater's fault. And so that's what we're going to do today.

[D]

Today's episode is brought to you by Avery Books, an imprint of Penguin Random House, publishers of Playful by Cass Holman with Lydia Denworth we're all born playful, but we tend to disconnect from that instinct as we grow older and get bogged down in productivity culture, among other things. But in the book, how play shifts our thinking, inspires connection and sparks creativity. Renowned designer and play expert Cass Holman advocates for adults to embrace open ended, unstructured play with no obvious goal or purpose. The book shows us that play helps us build problem solving skills, find joy in tough times and literally improves our individual and collective work. Well being. Adopting a playful mindset is crucial in helping us overcome fear, failure and embrace new ways of thinking, de stress, reset and connect with each other. It also grows our creativity at every stage of our lives and helps us find joy in bleak times. I mean, all of that. Some of that, Every bit of that. Okay, so make sure to pick up Playful by Cass Holman with Lydia Denworth and thanks again to Avery Books for sponsoring this episode. Foreign is brought to you by Hachette Audio, publishers of the audiobook Poppy State A Labyrinth of Plants and A Story of Beginnings by Miriam Gerba Read by Miriam Gerba from the award winning author of Creep comes a powerful book about a writer at the peak of her powers. At once a love letter to California and a literary tour de force that tells the story of resilience and reclamation through relationship with plants, memory, myth and indigenous knowledge. Miriam Gerba has lived in California her entire life, with its plants and soils, forests and ecology, immersing herself in the language of the landscapes as refracted through the languages and memories of her ancestors. In Poppy State, California plants serve as structural anchors in a wildly inventive work of narrative nonfiction that is part botanical criticism, part personal storytelling and part study of place. We love a nonfiction genre, Bender, and if you do too, make sure to pick up Poppy State by Miriam Gerba Red by Miriam Gerba and thanks again to Hachette Audio for sponsoring this episode. Today's episode is brought to you by Harlequin, a leading publisher of romantic fiction delivering feel good high stakes and heart pounding stories across every kind of love. No matter what kind of romance you love to read, Harlequin has it for you. And in one of their latest books, Accidentally Wedded to a Werewolf by Isabel Taylor, we've got some snowed in goodness. We've got some small towns and some unusual residents. So. So when a snowstorm hits during her travels, Luna Stack finds herself stranded in Clawhaven, Alaska, a cozy small town with more than a few unusual residents. Well, things go from bad to complicated when Luna accidentally drinks a potion that tethers her to Oliver Musgrove, the local grumpy innkeeper who also happens to be a werewolf. Now these two opposites are stuck spending the winter together while they wait for the antidote. And although they might not want anything to do with each other, the bond says otherwise. Otherwise, make sure to pick up Accidentally Wedded to a Werewolf by Isabel Taylor. And thanks again to Harlequin for sponsoring this episode.

[C]

But so, yeah, first question I always like to Ask right. Is like, what is your. And this feels silly to maybe ask Jeff, but, like, what's. What's. How do you po. What's your relationship?

[B]

How do you po.

[A]

So it's funny. Sharifah and I were talking on the pod a couple weeks ago, and Rebecca is out, and I don't actually remember how this subject came up. So, you know, this is potty.

[B]

Sharifo is present. Of course, Poe comes up.

[A]

We weren't talking about Poe. We're talking about short stories. And we were sort of popcorning ideas for, like, what is the most famous short story. I was thinking maybe we do one for zero. Well read. Or like, we don't talk about short stories much, but it's a nice unit of discussion, like going back to high school. And that's one of the reasons Poe gets taught a lot, is because you get well in. The one I brought up was Telltale Heart. I said, it's probably in the first tier of short stories that, you know, people might know. So, you know, I did the normal high school thing of doing the Cask of Monteado and doing the. The Raven. I think the thing that's difficult for me to remember is, especially in American literature. And I swear to God, Rebecca, you haven't get a chance to talk. I'll be done here just a second.

[B]

I know he has said especially in American literature. So.

[A]

Yeah, I know, right. As I take a tour through translation over the. You know, he is now seen, rightly so, as sort of a spooky writer. But he was a journalist and a crime writer, maybe even. Especially and interestingly. But it's also this early American. Not really early early American, but this primordial soup of, like, Hawthorne and Poe, where they're like, genre didn't really exist yet. It hadn't been invented yet. So they're doing all this weird stuff and sort of invented multiple genres at the same time. So I think that's one thing that's surprising about him. And his death was tawdry and strange, but he had a big, interesting full life. Vanessa. That's what I've got, is don't tell me if I'm right, Rebecca. What, if any of that is familiar to you?

[B]

You know, not much. Poe is a real gap in my adult reading life. I remember doing the short stories in high school. I don't think I read any Poe in college. Yeah. Now that I'm, like, tapping into it, this is where the fact that I minored in English instead of majored, I think really makes a difference, is these Kind of. Not that PO is an edge case, but not like top shelf, like first authors that you've got to read. So I remember the Telltale Heart. I remember, you know, Quoth the Raven, Nevermore. And that's about it until I moved to Richmond, which is one of the many cities, like. And all. Every city up and down the eastern seaboard claims Poe in some way.

[A]

He got drunk and passed out in almost every sort of brothel and bar of a dining seaboard. Or did he? Okay, thank you very much, Vanessa.

[B]

So he spent a little time in Richmond, and we have an Edgar Allen Poe museum where people do, like, themed cocktail hours. The goths like to get married there. Like, that's a thing that is part of my city's culture. I'm pretty sure there's like an Edgar Allan Poe tour that you can do. I have never done it. And yeah, that is what I know about him. Spooky, weird, drank a lot, probably. I did not even know that he died in a weird and tawdry way. So I'm here ready to be a straight man for whatever you've got.

[C]

Vanessa. That's exciting. Yeah. I was also really interested by how all they're, like, rich because he comes back to Richmond over and over and over again. It's like, oh, look, there's a little Rebecca tie in. But, yeah, let's talk about him. So, of course, you know, we kind of just got the groundwork from Jeff and Rebecca. But, yeah, he is sort of an American literary icon, both for his poetry. He did very much or is considered the architect of the short story. My relationship to him was that I. When I got to. I think it was Catholic school in, like, the third grade. One of the first things my teacher said to me was like, you need to memorize a poem. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. And that was a thing that we did every year. And there tended to be a lot of the, like, you know, repeats when you ask kids to memorize poem. Lots of Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks, lots of Shel Silverstein. So much.

[B]

Oh, we've done two roads are also diverging in a wood.

[C]

Yeah, lots. Literally, Stevenson, Kipling, words. But so. But then somewhere in like, the fifth or sixth grade, somebody prepared the raven. And I remember my little head snapping and being like you. We can do that both for Catholics.

[A]

Yeah, the Catholics that you do that. I wondered if they would say, you know what? Maybe not so much with.

[C]

Yep. I don't know that we ever did again. But in that moment, I was like, who is this? And, you know, went to my library, and I feel like that was the beginnings of my taste for the twisty and creepy. But also discovered in that immediately looking for the twisty creepy. That. That wasn't, like, all of Poe's legacy. In fact, it was probably disappointing to me at that age where I was like, more creepy. And there's plenty of creepy to be had. But there is. The more I studied about him, there is a lot about his legacy that is misunderstood, some of which is underrated. So, yeah, let's get into that. So just the boring. Not even boring. I think he's a fascinating subject, even if you don't. As apparently Rebecca didn't. That he died in this suspicious way. It's just a fascinating figure for all that he accomplished. He was born on January 19, 1809, in Boston, Mass. To two actors. His mother was English born. Dad was American born, son of Irish immigrants. And he met his mother at. When she was performing in Norfolk and like, a traveling acting troupe saw her, was like, love at first sight. And he's like, I'm not going to be a lawyer. No mo. And join the acting group. And that's. That's how they met. And six months after her first husband had died, they were married and, like, get into it as to travel.

[A]

Not wasting any time, Vanessa, just for other people. What. What time period are we talking here?

[C]

1809 is when. Yeah, is when. Well, sorry. That 1809 is when Poe was born. I think that was the. The first thing I said. My bad.

[A]

Oh. I was trying to figure out where Norfolk was. It's on the coast, right, Rebecca?

[C]

Oh, like, literally where we're at.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

Yes. Just the general Virginia region.

[B]

A lot of military bases in and around Norfolk.

[C]

There will be a lot of Virginia and western seaboard cities. So, you know, if you want to drop some geographic lore, you. You do that for us.

[B]

You are in the wrong place if you're looking for geographic lore.

[C]

I thought that might be the case. Edgar is the second of their eventual three children. He's an older brother named Henry, a younger sister named Rosalie, and we're gonna slide straight into bummer territory here because, yes, less than a year after his parents had Poe, he ends up passing. Let's reel it back. The father actually disappears under mysterious circumstances. We still don't know, like, why he left. We know that he probably died shortly thereafter. But his mother was left with the three children. Did her best for about a year, took them with her on the traveling acting troupe thing that they Wind up back in Richmond at this point and unfortunately she dies less than a year after the father disappeared of tuberculosis and the kids are split up. So the oldest brother goes, is the only one actually to go with family in Baltimore. The other two, Poe and his sister are sent to just like random folks who can take and foster kids. And that's how he ends up with the Allens. That Josh John Allen is the name of his foster father. And that relationship was like eh. Like we're not entirely sure. It doesn't seem like it was a particularly warm one. He kind of vacillated between spoiling him because he was very well off. He was a merchant and a tobacco trader and then just disciplining him harshly. But so even though it wasn't a warm relationship, he did live a good life with them. He was now part of the upper class and got to enjoy a lot of those droppings. So they officially never actually adopted him, even though he did take. That's where he gets the Allan part of Edgar Allan Poe. But he ends up traveling with them to the uk. They sent him to boarding schools. It's that kind of relationship, right, where they're like kind of given him the fruits of their privilege but he's not getting a whole lot of affection.

[A]

Well in education importantly, I mean that's that sort of reminding myself now he wouldn't have had access to this kind of education, you know, even if his parents had survived traipsing the boards, you know, eventually, eventually meeting up with the Booth family I would imagine in a couple of decades. And I'm sure that would have gone super well over there. But yeah, that early education was. He just wouldn't have had the same.

[B]

Kind of classical education and access to a worldly sensibility that you're not getting on the east coast of the US in the early 19th century.

[C]

Also he literally, I mean he spends times at several different boarding schools and I didn't know that several of the boarding schools end up. Not that this is seminal to his work, but he names portions of the people and places he encounters at these boarding schools. He ends up putting so famously the Murders in the Rue Morgue is named after a woman who used to run one of the boarding schools. It was the school of the Mrs. Dubourg, and that's who Pauline Dubourg gets her name from. So it's just interesting to see those little things flow in there. But so the Allens and Edgar move back to the US to Virginia in 1820. And this is where Edgar continues To develop his studies. He's now or private tutelage again, things he would not have had access to in his former life. And this is when people are starting to sort of notice that he's got a bit of a thing. Right. He's got the prowess for the poetic and the storytelling.

[B]

So he's like 11.

[C]

Oh, math on that. Let's see. So he was born in 1809 and we're now in 1820. Yeah. Yeah. So young.

[B]

Wow. So they're noticing prowess.

[A]

You started learning Greek and Latin. Really? I mean in the old days you would learn this stuff super like crazy crazy.

[B]

So what you're telling me is that embarrassing? Middle school poetry was not always embarrassing.

[A]

Yeah, you were. You were doing Marcus Aurelius. Not. I don't know, something.

[C]

I would love to see the things that he would have written at that time. And I mean that like legitimately he was. There's apparently also noted for his athleticism, which I just thought was funny because I think of the picture as not being like, that's an athlete, but that's.

[A]

An indoor kid right there. Eddie or Allen Poe is like the scene of the indoor kids.

[C]

My notes say he looks like an indoor kid.

[B]

Well and even depictions of him almost look like caricatures most of the time where his head is much bigger than the rest of his body. He's not giving an active guy.

[C]

That's that old tiny face. Photography style is not really lending much to you anyway. But like him in particular, I wasn't like, that's a boxer. But apparently boxing and swimming. He was quite good.

[A]

If you haven't seen a picture of Edgar Allan Poe, he looks like a character from an Edgar Allan Poe story. That's the best description I can give of Edgar Allan Poe.

[C]

Yeah. That is like, yeah, like no, no lies have been told. I did not realize that he had a military career before he like really dug into the writing stuff. So in 1825 he first tries to enroll and does enroll at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. He leaves behind a fiance named Elmira who Pinky promised name him back then.

[A]

Elmira.

[C]

Elmira.

[B]

I have seen his dorm room at the University of Virginia. Yeah, you can go and like they have. It's either his or like a replica of it.

[C]

I'm.

[B]

I don't know which. But you walk down a big like open promenade area and you can peek into like tiny little.

[C]

That's awesome. Well, the funny thing is he didn't last long there. For money related reasons, everybody is willing.

[B]

To claim Edgar Allan Poe for however long or short he was there some hay off of the tourism.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, apparently he was like, he, he was a really good student, like shocking no one. He'd had access to phenomenal education. But by the time he gets there, he apparently only showed up with $110, which is exactly one third of the tuition money that he needed. And he was like all figured out thinking, you know, my foster dad who's got the money, he's going to do it. And the guy was like, no, like you're on your own, like I have spoiled you and like this is your time to like earn your way in the world. And so he's like, I'm just going to fundraise fundraiser. It decides to try to gamble to make up the difference and instead of.

[A]

Always goes, well, 2:30 short.

[C]

Now he's two GS in debt. Also, do you want to take a guess at what college 2G's in debt.

[B]

In 1820, 1825 is a lot of money now.

[C]

Oh yeah, that's what I was gonna say. So if the tuition was a hundred and ten dollars.

[A]

Well, you said 110 and that's a third of it. So for a semester is a thousand dollars a year. That would have been super expensive in today's money.

[C]

I ended up looking it up and it is 3, $600, which is a lot of money for then, but is also, I'm like, damn, 2002 education before scholarship.

[B]

Education has inflated is what you're saying.

[A]

My undergraduate education, I think my tuition was $33,000 a semester at KU when I was there 75 years ago.

[C]

Some things have changed. But yeah, the, the finances of education were definitely a thing that I went, you know, because, but so due to these financial straits, he's like, yeah, I, I, I, I can't do this. So he ends up going back home. And like a lot of folks still do when you have, you know, to make your way in the world, don't have the finances to do it, there is a resource that you turn to, and that resource is the US military. So in 1827, he heads to Boston and enlists in the US army. In part also because when he went home, that girl that was like, I promise, I promise, baby, baby, I'll wait for you. She's like, so I kind of married someone else. So he's like, yeah, I'm peace, I'm a go. And he does. And this is the beginning of his military career. But then also, albeit very slowly, his career as a Writer. He ends up being stationed in Boston. This is when he writes that first book of poetry, Tamerlane and Other Poems, Although he publishes it under a very glamorous pseudonym. And that pseudonym is a Bostonian. That's how it first came out.

[A]

We should bring that back.

[B]

We should bring that back. I was just about to say it's like signing your letter to the editor.

[C]

A concerned citizen, literally, that those are the things that I get a kick out of. And then I'm going to summarize this next several years, kind of like at a blast pace just to keep us going. But basically between 1828 and 1834, a whole lot happens. So his foster mom passes away. He decides that he doesn't want to be like active duty. He wants to go to West Point. He convinces his stepdad to please lobby on his behalf. Even though they're not getting along. The guy does, gets him into West Point. He gets to West Point and is like, I kind of want to resign. That's like, over my dead body. Basically just stops doing what he's supposed to so that he can get court martialed and thrown out of West Point. And that is precisely what happens. He gets court.

[B]

A time honored tactic.

[C]

Some things don't change.

[A]

Did Edgar Allan Poe invent quiet quitting.

[B]

Or what is it weaponized incompetent?

[C]

That's what I thought of for sure. Because, you know, the thing is, extreme dereliction of duty is the official charge. And that felt like they wouldn't let it.

[A]

They wouldn't let you get away with that. In the Korean War, I'd learned that in maps. You couldn't. You couldn't do that. They would just keep you in at a spot.

[C]

It only works when you're working as a desk dude.

[B]

I'm really loving this, like, mental image I'm concocting of military barracks and Edgar Allan Poe being like the weird dude writing poetry in his journal, sitting on his bunk, and everybody else being like, what the hell is Tameline?

[C]

They're like, yeah, but we gotta shine these boots.

[A]

So he was there in the 1820s, Vanessa. Like, he's probably there, like around the same time as like Robert E. Lee and Long Street. Like, that's completely nuts to think about.

[C]

Those were the rabbit holes my brain kept wanting to go on. Once I realized with the time frame here was like, oh, this could be a whole separate thing. But okay, fine, fine. But yeah, just again, I didn't know anything about this military career, so it was interesting. But in that time, then the foster father Dies. And in case anybody, including Poe, was thinking, okay, well, now I'll finally get some of the financial comeuppance. Not. He doesn't even name Poe in the will. So he ends up moving back to Baltimore with his widowed aunt Maria Clem, and her daughter Virginia. Clem, which is a name you should remember for a second. So all of that while it's happening. He's also published his second and third collections of poetry, which the third was actually financed with help from fellow cadets at West Point. Right. It's funny little detail.

[B]

Can I ask a question?

[C]

Of course.

[B]

How are these collections of poetry received at the time?

[C]

For honestly, most of what I'm talking about until we get to like kind of an inflection point down the road here. It's one of those, like, it's out there and few people are reading it. But he really is not getting like.

[B]

That much like the usual thing you expect from a collection of poetry.

[A]

Just shout true today.

[B]

Okay.

[C]

He is just still dear Dyering it all the way to an eventual career. But it's. It doesn't happen at first. But then right around this time is when some of this starts to change because now he's also publishing the earliest of his short stories. The Philadelphia Saturday Courier does his first horror story, Metzengerstein, I think. And then that short story Ms. Found in a Bottle, wins a short story contest with a different publication. And so they published a story. So a little bit more notoriety here, at least in literary circles. Not in like a household variety, but, like, people are starting to know who he is. So he's doing the thing, he's writing. Things are going well for now, but, you know, shocking state of affairs. It's not really paying. But then in 1835, the short story Berenice is published in the Southern Literary Messenger. And this kicks off a period of sort of improved financial stability. He's starting to write reviews for the Journal. He returns to Richmond in August as the Journal's editor. And then shortly thereafter, he moves in that aunt and cousin that I mentioned earlier with him. And in 1835, Poe marries Virginia, his first cousin. Virginia Rough, his first cousin, who is either 12 or 13 years old. And he is 27. So woof, you know, time, etc, it's still EP. Craig.

[A]

Cormac McCarthy's not looking too bad right now, is he, Rebecca?

[B]

Is that where we're going with that? You know, you're not wrong.

[A]

Not looking good.

[C]

Good. It's not what we would call a good look.

[B]

These things do exist on a Spectrum and marrying your 13 year old cousin is on the pretty bad end.

[A]

I wonder what that was. I mean, times change. Was that. I wonder, do we even know like where people like, oh my God, Edgar, what are you doing? Was that more normal? I don't know if there's. This is not something I know about. I can't imagine. It was super celebrity celebratory.

[C]

I absolutely looked into that. It definitely sounds like it was at the cusp of like, this is sort of what we do. And also that's creepy. Like it kind of. It was at a weird inflection. People like, oh, but they're cousins. And then. And most of what I saw was like, outwardly it seemed like he cared for very much what went on behind the scenes. We're never gonna know. It's still, you know, weird.

[B]

I'm really happy to never know, honestly.

[C]

That is some things we don't ever, ever really like, particularly need to.

[A]

You're the one of the three of us that's been in Edgar Allan Poe's bedroom. So you're closer to this than any one of us right now.

[B]

He was in college at the time.

[C]

Yep. Homegirl was like 12 or whatever. Living a different life entirely. Anyway, Epcrae marriage deets aside, Poe would now go on to direct several other literary journals. So again gaining a notoriety in those literary circles. And this is when he starts to write of what we probably think of as some of his most seminal works, beginning in 1838. We've got like, this is when he moves to Philadelphia. So many cities. This is when he writes Telltale Heart, the Mask of the Red Death, the Black Cat, the Pit and the Pendulum, the Gold Bug, and of course the Fall of the House of Usher. And then in 1841, he wrote the Murders in the Rue Morgue. And this is the story, as Jeff kind of hinted at the top of here, that's widely considered the first work, or at least one of the first works of detective fiction. It's a story that he gives like a very fancy name to. Like Tales of Radiocination, I think is what they call it. It's a fancy word that basically means like, it includes deductive reasoning. Like, cool. You could have just said that. But another thing that I did not know until researching this is that the character from that story, the sort of amateur detective type that is born as a prototype and is used in other of his works, is the, according to Arthur Conan Dole, inspiration for Sherlock. So, like, if we don't fascinating, we don't get Sherlock Which I thought was super cute. I did not know that. I love that Auguste Dupin was the guy's name. But, yeah, that dude Dupont for Will is the guy that inspired Sherlock. We would not have him without that.

[A]

So we've been naming sort of detectives after French names for 200 years.

[C]

I just watched that yesterday. It was great. Kentucky Fried, whatever you call it. Anyway, that was a great time. Great fall movie.

[B]

This really reminds me, again, as we've been saying over and over, especially on zero, to, well, read. All of these historic works are in conversation with each other and in kind of surprising ways. Like that Edgar Allan Poe inspires Sherlock Holmes. And we think of Sherlock Holmes as kind of the pivotal detective thing, but. But somebody had to inspire him. Really incredible.

[C]

That's what I was gonna say is, I think, you know, the two ones that immediately came to mind is a person who read both of those very prolifically is that Agatha Christie kind of gets credit for Locked Room and that Sherlock gets credit for Sherlock. And of course, they did their own thing in their own right. But this story is technically both of those things. It is detective fiction. It is Locked Room. Like, it's. There was a.

[A]

My memory as a reader, too. Are. These are good. I really remember liking the toe stories. I mean, sometimes you read the original thing and you're like. Like, you know, Frankenstein. I mean, just to pick something one. Like, it's interesting, but it's not. I don't know for me, but I remember the post short stories, the detective stuff. Like, it's not just the primordial soup out of which, you know, the monkey of Holmes will evolve. Like, it's pretty great in its own regard and in the public domain. If you want to go download it for Project Gutenberg or something.

[B]

That's such a good point because, like, first of all, it blows my mind every time we have to remember or that I have to remember that, like, someone had to go invent all of these genres, that we didn't just always have romance or we didn't all always have detective fiction. But often the ones that were groundbreaking at the time, you have to set that context before you go read them with contemporary eyes and be like, now remember, here's what made it so exciting at the time. But I totally believe you. This makes me want to revisit Poe because I totally believe that going back would be just as exciting now.

[C]

Oh, it's great.

[B]

And would be a lot would feel alive and fresh in some ways that you don't always get from those old works.

[C]

Yeah, I was gonna say I went one of the first stories I remember reading, and I don't know why I would have picked this one, but when I first was like, ooh, somebody had read the Raven. I went and picked up like some work at the library. And one of the first stories was that Ms. Found in a bottle. And that is very wordy. And I think I would have been again, like what, nine or 10 years.

[B]

Old and was like, way over your head.

[C]

Yeah, it was not at all like zooming in for me. And then eventually when I got to the room or like, oh, okay, this is not that any of it is less my speed now, but it is just so interesting to see him like, switch taxes.

[A]

The one I remember, and I think I knew Sherlock first before, as most people do. The idea of Sherlock Holmes before reading any of the post stuff, it's a short story called the Purloined Letter. And I don't know where this fits into the timeline. And spoiler alert for a 200 year old short story. They're in there looking for a document and the main character is this the French guy. Do you know, Vanessa, if you tuck your head into the same character, anyway, it doesn't really matter except that to say that the. The detective looks at something that had been just left on the table with like a grocery list or something scrawled on the back of it, but on the other side was the hidden document. Right. So this idea of hidden in plain sight, you know, seeing something that other people are overlooking as taken for granted, or like, that could be a scene out of a Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman episode of Sherlock like six years ago. Like, it's so current, it tends to be a little bit smaller is my remembering. Like, they don't. They're not, as you, most contemporary readers know about crime, more about crime fiction than Edgar Allan Poe did because it hadn't all been invented and read yet. So it can seem a little elementary, but it is elementary, my dear Watson. It's right in there.

[C]

Yeah, yeah. Good times.

[B]

Anyway, I love this stuff also listeners, little baby Vanessa at like 10 years old reading Edgar Allan Poe, just need to know that this woman is a Scorpio.

[C]

Deeply, deeply a Scorpio. Scorpio.

[A]

The Scorpios.

[C]

Yes.

[B]

We'll talk about it later.

[C]

The number of times, like the librarian at the local library, like, would she be coming? And she's like, here this girl goes. Because I would always have the randomness list of like, dark stuff. And then like one really cozy, cutesy you know, whatever. And then I remember looking up like stuff about like the Catholic faith and why I had it was just a mixture, like a mixed bag. I kept her and that's you still.

[B]

Read that way today. You come on here and you're like, here's my dark creepy thing. And also here is my Golden Girls cozy mystery.

[C]

Yes, I contain multitudes.

[B]

This episode is brought to you by Marshall's where you never have to compromise between quality and price. The buyers of Marshalls hustle hard working to bring you great deals on brand name and designer pieces because Marshalls believes everyone deserves access to the good stuff. Visit a Marshalls store near you or shop [e-mail] when did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th and never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone.

[C]

Learn [e-mail] this episode is brought to you by State Farm. Listening to this podcast Smart move Being financially savvy Smart move. Another smart move having State Farm help you create a competitive price when you choose to bundle home and auto bundling. Just another way to save with a personal price plan like a good neighborhood, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer, availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. So at this point the profits of his writing are meager, but he is supporting his all through the work with his journals. And then in 1845 is when he officially becomes sort of an overnight celebrity with the Raven. It is the most famous of his poems and it, you know, again, he was known in the literary circles, but this is the thing that actually makes him a household name. According to the Poe Museum, which apparently we now know is the thing that is, you know, close to Rebecca, he only made about $15 from the publication of the Raven, but it created enough international success that he started getting financial opportunities to go speak like across, you know, giving lectures and recitations. And he's really getting known for not just his writing, but at this point now his critique because that is a huge part of his legacy is what he contributed into like literary criticism. He was apparently, according to the Poem Museum, the first American writer said to be living completely off of his earnings from writing, which is not Easy. Like, not. Not at all. But for most of his adulthood, in spite of all this, he did struggle to financially support he and his family. In 1847, sadly, after years of illness, his wife Virginia, passes away from the very thing that, you know, killed his mother. She passes away from tuberculosis, which, to be fair, like, everybody was dying from tuberculosis, but.

[B]

So she's, like, in her 20s because he's in his mid-30s here.

[C]

She's very young. They were living in New York at the time. And this, of course, course sends him into. He doesn't react well. Like, he cared for her very much. Although weird creepiness, complexity can still be there. And he could still have, obviously more in her death than he did. And this is when his health starts to deteriorate. And where he does, at least according to, you know, accounts, he does start to drink. So he. Lots of places cite him as having several romantic affairs. Most of the stuff I found sounds like he had two different women that he was seeing at the same time. And he proposed to one of them, and she said no, and it was a whole thing. But, like, I don't know that I would call it, like, rampant so much as that. It was just sort of messy. But, like, also, your wife just died, and you're going through it. Like, okay, like, sure, he moves back to Richmond at this point in 1849 and rekindles after all that messiness, that childhood romance with Elmira or Elmira, however you would say that. But the first person he was supposed to marry who did not wait for him when he went to college. So at this point, she has done well for herself. Like, he obviously is now a renowned writer, and she is a wealthy widow, and they decide to give it another go and get engaged. Engaged again in 1849.

[A]

The two sweetest words for a struggling writer. Wealthy widow.

[C]

But. So his kids not happy about this, but they're like, whatever. And he's like, okay, well, I'm gonna go get my aunt and bring her down.

[A]

He's like, dude, your mom was 13. I've done way worse. Like, let's calm down.

[C]

Well, actually, these are the. The kids of Elmira, so I don't know.

[B]

Oh, so he's. Oh, your new stepdad is a creep. Watch out.

[C]

Yeah, no, he's.

[A]

To going up the will hierarchy. We don't like. We don't like that.

[B]

So they're running this play of getting together with the high school flame way before the boomers were doing this on Facebook.

[C]

Then this is when things get sticky. And again, we're never going to know the answer to what comes next. But right around here, he's like, okay, I'm going to go get my aunt. My aunt, slash, mother in law. Auntie, mother in law in my notes. And like, so his plan that he articulates to a few different people now they're engaged. He is going to take a steamship from Philadelphia to Baltimore. He's going to disembark in Baltimore. Then he's going to go to New York. York. And he never makes it to New York. So again, if he left on September 27, pops up at a tavern in Baltimore on October 3, no one knows where he was from the time he debarked to how he gets to this bar. When they find him at the tavern, he's disheveled, he's incoherent. He appears to be intoxicated. Not entirely sure, but he's definitely not himself. He's wearing clothes that are not his and just, again, isn't making any sense.

[A]

How do they know the clothes aren't his? They. They do know this. Afterwards, the bar people don't know how he normally dresses, presumably.

[C]

That's literally what I'd see.

[A]

Yeah.

[C]

It must have just been some sort of level of dishevelment where you're like, that's. Anyway. But he. Somebody recognizes him, calls an editor that knows him. That editor, like, comes down, they take him admitted. Yeah. To Washington College Hospital. And four days later, on October 7, he dies and never gains his composure. He never becomes coherent again. He's just always in this, like, strange state. And there's never been a conclusive diagnosis or like, caus death determined. But there are, of course, a lot of theories on the one we have. The, like. Okay, well, the family wasn't, like, happy about things. Could that have been. Probably not, given that he was found, you know, in the state that he was. It's not like he was poisoned or anything to that degree.

[A]

Not very well, at least. You can't get off the boat.

[C]

I've read enough Agatha Christie didn't know.

[D]

I could have pulled it off.

[C]

But, like, that's right. You just made a little bit. Anyway, there's a theory that it could have been rabies, and apparently that does hold water for the time. Not like, incredibly likely, but could have explained a lot.

[A]

That would be such an Edgar Allen Poe thing to die of. Died of rabies, holding weird animals, getting drunk. It's just gonna happen.

[C]

A little coon. Yeah. Other theories include epilepsy, a brain tumor. There's one that says stroke and brain swelling. But apparently at the time to say someone's brain was swollen, which, not that it wouldn't have been, but was often a euphemism for drunk out of your mind, so that it could have just been alcoholism.

[B]

There's no autopsy, I'm guessing.

[C]

Guessing, no.

[A]

There's barely medicine. Rebecca, this is 1840.

[B]

Have we ruled out syphilis? Because that could also make you, like, kind of crazy again.

[C]

Again, there's some people that like to put forth the concept that he might have gotten mugged, which I don't know that that explains the alcoholism part, but apparently he had maybe gotten, like, a relatively large cash advance before getting on that boat for, like, a story that he never wrote that he was supposed to. But there's also a lot of people that are like, ah, that person's just saying that because they're mad the story never got written. So, like, we don't know. Know. The one theory that I saw a lot of that I thought was like, oh, because it just feels sort of weirdly relevant in a backwards way, is that there's an idea that it could have been something called cooping, which was a practice that happened a lot at this time. And it was a practice of kidnapping people, intoxicating them against their will, changing their clothes, and then engaging in repeated voter fraud this way, like, taking them, like, literally. The thing that people like to pretend is like, oh, voter fraud. Voting in different clothes. Clothes. Which that is.

[B]

That is not where I was expecting that sentence to go.

[A]

Different clothes.

[C]

Which just feels like the silliest, like. And put on the Groucho marks. Now go put on your fake mustache. A lot of the people suggesting this point out that is it election season. Yes, it is. It literally is. And he is found at a tavern that is known for essentially offering, like, a free round to folks who have voted. Like, yay, democracy. So there's. Again, this feels like a lot of people putting together stuff that sense makes maybe isn't true.

[B]

Circumstantial man.

[A]

Edgar Allan Poe and voter fraud. This is Amanda Nelson corner. She needs to do something with.

[B]

It is somewhere her ear.

[C]

Maybe if we say her name three times, she'll stop.

[B]

Yeah, I'm having dinner with her tonight, and I'm gonna be like, we really needed to.

[A]

Just like, she probably already has done a video about this.

[B]

It should be like, Bloody Mary, where.

[C]

She should just appear in this year that I would.

[B]

Yeah, just like, you rang Edgar Al po y.

[A]

You said Poe. An electoral scandal of some kind. Just apparate. I Don't know how, like the state farm guy just. I don't know what, what's happening?

[B]

She's like, what are we doing? Oh, got it.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, I'm brief.

[D]

So.

[C]

But yeah, those, those details again, which of those feels more likely than the next? We do know that he was, you know, just battling alcoholism at this point. So really to me just feels like the simplest explanation is probably the right one. But we're never actually going.

[A]

Edgar's razor.

[C]

Yeah, yeah, Edgar's razor. So that is really all that we know about the death. But I want to know how much you know about what I call like haters gonna hate section of this story. How much do you know about Rufus Griswold?

[B]

Not a thing.

[A]

You know, just with every man knows, I would say.

[C]

Yep, yep, same thing for listeners. There is actually an episode of a podcast that's now concluded out there called Criminalia that is really interesting and very funny about this. The podcast True Crime is a really weird space for me for like ethics related reasons. But this one essentially was just a documentation of historical crimes. And it went on for like 15 seasons. There was one season that was dedicated all to like stalkers and you know how those crimes reverberate. Anyway, and the one on Rufus Griswold is just very funny because he really was just the biggest hater and it backfired in more ways than not. But Rufus Griswold was Poe's arch nemesis and pretty much single handedly responsible for a lot of the character assassination. With a lot of the things that even at the top of the show we mentioned as being related to him are all specifically this dude.

[A]

Dudes like doing his Salieri. If your name is Rufus Griswold, you're like, whose arch nemesis am I gonna be? Because I have to be someone's.

[C]

Someone's name.

[A]

I can't carry around this and be.

[C]

There were no other options.

[A]

Samaritan.

[C]

Yeah, none. None others. And the really sad part about this is that most of the stuff, like the jiggly pokery he did was after Poe died. So, like, he didn't even do it with his chest, which die fat. Yeah, come on, come on. But. So he was a fellow literary critic, an editor, a poet who met Poe in 1841 shortly after the murders of the in the Room Org had been published. It had just appeared in the April issue of a publication called Graham's Magazine, where Poe was the, I think, assistant editor. And in 1842, though, after his wife died, he was sliding into alcoholism. He Ended up resigning from that publication. And the person who got hired to kind of come up after him is Rufus Griswold. He's the new editor. Apparently they were friendly at first. At least they were. You know, they got together to talk craft and literary person stuff. Everything's fine. Griswold tells Poe that he's working on an anthology of poetry and writing of American writers. And Poe is like, oh, cool. I would love to talk to you about that. I've got all kinds of tips and suggestions. I've been working at all these literary journals. So apparently he offers all kinds of advice and revisions and then submits a whole bunch of his own work. Like, here you go. You can include this. And Rufus is like. And when he publishes it, Poe is surprised to find that he did not take most of his submissions. He only published three, like, relatively short poems and didn't take, like, one lick of his.

[B]

The poets are cutthroat, man.

[C]

They really are. And that. That threat will continue for the rest of this discussion. So the. Again, the work comes out, and in a weird move that even though. Okay, so he's. He published the whole thing without any of Poe's, you know, suggestions for the thing. Seems to be a little bit assaulty about him suggesting them in the first place. But then he turns around and asks Poe to write a review of the anthology. And like, Poe already has a reputation at this point for being what we'll call brutally honest. He doesn't. He's in the thing. So his.

[B]

Can you review an anthology that your work is in?

[C]

But he does. And the review is fair. It is mostly positive. Mostly, it is not as complimentary as I think Griswold was hoping it would be for reasons that don't make any sense to me very famously, he. He spent a pretty decent chunk of that review saying that most of the. Or not most, but many of the poets in there shouldn't have been included in the first. The most famous of those critiques. He came straight for freaking Longfellow and said that he accused him of plagiarizing Tennyson and said that petty spaghetti man. So petty. Literally. The quote is, let's see, where is it that, like, most of them were not. They're too mediocre to entitle them to any particular notice. Cool.

[B]

They could do insults back then, too.

[C]

Oh, I love the insults. They're so weird. Yeah.

[B]

Too mediocre to entitle them to any particular notice.

[C]

But, like, why was Griswold surprised? Apparently, even when they were Friends like he'd already referred to in some other publication as like calling Griswold a failed poet. So, like, you knew what you were getting into when you asked this dude to write this review, but he still was very prickled by it because. Okay, sure, this is the moment that sparks the rivalry that really is kind of one sided.

[B]

Because Po's over there doing the Don Draper. I don't ever think about you.

[C]

Literally that. Literally that. And then again, now Poe has died. So you would think at this point.

[A]

Okay, like, it's very one sided very quickly. At that point.

[C]

It tends to. Although I would love to believe that he haunted him at some point because that just feels like a thing that Po would do. But so he dies and Poe goes. Or, sorry, Rufus goes nuclear with the defamation. Would you like to guess the vehicle that he chooses for this defamation?

[B]

A poem.

[A]

I'm guessing a long ass poem. Yeah, I was gonna say this.

[C]

How about an obituary?

[A]

Oh, a Po bituary.

[C]

But literally, you stole my jo.

[A]

That's what I'm here for.

[C]

No, I love it. This is exactly what I wanted. Yeah. He chooses the obituary. The opening line is, this announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it. Like, bro, incredible stuff there, bro. He calls him morally bankrupt. He calls him a drunken womanizer. We know. I'm gonna keep going with this, but, like, that most of the stuff he said is not demonstrably true. Like, yes, he went through this patch and it seems like he did abuse alcohol for like this period, but it wasn't like a thing that followed him throughout his whole life. He's just out here writing like willy nilly. And in case there's any question as to whether Griswold knew that what he was engaging in was libel. Like, he knew because he also published this under a pseudonym and that pseudonym was Ludwig. Because if you're going to be salty and petty, your name should be Ludwig. Sure, there's that.

[B]

His name is already Rufus.

[C]

It's Rufus Griswold. And he was like, nah, nah, call me Ludwig. That's. That's. Anyway, something a little more sinister. Where can I.

[D]

A little.

[C]

There were. There were options. There were options. The thing is, the obit did not have the intended effect, which, like, hello, even today, right? We see how this goes. A piece of media goes viral for all the reasons. And what do people do? Go look for it so he. That it increases post readership. Like, he was already kind of a household name because of the whole Raven thing.

[A]

But this makes people now he's a bad boy.

[C]

Yep. Literally that they're fascinated with like the Persona that is Poe and they all flock to read his work. So now if you're old grizzly, you might be thinking, I can't stand myself.

[B]

This is so delightful.

[C]

You would think he would now at this point say I should cut my losses. Like, not only did I get salty, I got salty in an obit. People are reading him. It's not helping my career, clearly. Like I should stop. No, I'm going to write Poe's memoirs.

[A]

So Rufus, double down Griswold. Here we go.

[B]

Literally that sunk cost.

[C]

The context here is that there's like two theories for how that's even allowed to happen. One is that some historians think that Griswold was named Poe's literary executor back when they were like on good terms. That is one option which sucks. The second, equally bad, is that he waited until he died and then essentially kind of hoodwinked his pose auntie mother in law and convinced her to sell him basically his unpublished works, promising to share the profits with her. We do know that those profits he eventually turned over to her. However he came buy the information or the documents. He sent her a note with $0.06 of a profit from the sale of the two volumes and was like, you can sell these two volumes and therein will lie your profit. So shady in one way or another, no matter how he came to own his property. So he continues to go for broke in those memoirs. It was a combination. He published it in conjunction with an inaccurate collection of Poe's writings. We'll get to that in a second. But then he includes this autobiographical section where he makes all kinds of false claims about Poe's characters and this time they kind of stick. He portrays him, yes, as the womanizer. He says that he was addicted to opioids or to opium. Is that the word? It was called it at the time that he conned a woman out of all kinds of money, which is funny because that's what he did to his mother in law and of just all kinds of terrible behavior, namely of using his own desires and evil predilections to inspire like the like nasty or most unsavory characters that he put in his story. So he's just saying stuff like left, right. But then he takes the defamation up another notch and falsifies entire passages and quotes, attributing them to Poe. And in those passages which you think he might have been like, okay, let me fabricate a bunch of nasty stuff. That he said, like, terrible, disparaging remarks. No, he uses them to highly praise his own work. So basically, he's like this guy, morally bankrupt, scum of the earth. He is the, you know, dirt beneath my feet, devil incarnate. But he had great taste, and that taste is me, and that is super freaking weird. Why? Why? Why?

[B]

Some have said I'm the greatest poet of all time.

[A]

I don't know, like, very Richard Gear in Chicago vibes.

[C]

Oh, yes. Oh, yes. So, yeah, he's just a weird dude. And, like, we don't need to spend too much more time on Griswold because it's not ultimately what this is about. But he repeated stuff like this with multiple other people, so there is a good track, like, to be able to point that he just gets salty when people think things don't go his way.

[B]

You know exactly what this dude would.

[C]

Have been like on the Internet, 100%. Like, what? He had a whole spot with a woman over the fact that just that she didn't thank him for something, and he plagiarized her. Like, it's just stupid. Like, he. He really, of course, got a reputation. And because of this, like, people of course, went back and pretty much debunked all of the evidence that he brought forth about Po. But even though folks even went to so far as to write, it gets sticky.

[A]

I mean, it is surprising how that kind of stuff gets sticky. Sticky, like Mandela effects all over the place.

[C]

Yeah, that's what I was gonna say is, like, apparently there was not another actual official autobiography about Poe for 25 years. So, like, really, it stuck. Like, to this day, when you ask people about Po, a lot of those, like, more unsavory, like, little notes will pop up about him.

[A]

Yeah. Like, the opium stuff still around. Like, I know that enough to, like, know that wasn't true, But I know that's the thing people do think is true.

[C]

It's very strange.

[B]

So what we're doing here today is the redemption of Edgar Allan Poe.

[C]

Yeah, I mean, I mean, quasi, like, you know, you still married your little cousin, like, 17 years old, and, like, cancel him. There was some weirdness. But, like, clearly, now that we've, you know, done this whole bit and we've established the kind of arc, it's like. Of course, it makes sense that so many of his books delved into those kind of darker, macabre themes. He focused a lot on themes of loss and abandonment, about the, like, darker parts of human psyche, about madness and death. And, you know, the quote that I wrote down is that he often wrote stories where the true monster was the capacity for evil that is inside each person. What happened happens when that evil is acted upon. Like, he just had several different, you know, run ins with that sort of thing. This is where I like to think that the ghost in him came back and saw Rufus, because that's just brutal. But, you know, that's just my own personal thing. And yet, to sum up his legacy, like, again, he really did, if not invent, certainly popularize not just detective fiction, but science fiction. Obviously. He did huge things in horror, specifically psychological horror. His essays really set the standard for a whole different wave of literary criticism. He helped shape, you know, the American Romantic movement, the French Symbolist movement. He was a champion of the concept of art for art's sake. His, you know, effect is still obviously, something we see today. I also had to point out to somebody on the Internet who was like, oh, my gosh. The people who wrote Wednesday on Netflix, like, totally ripped off J.K. rowling. And I was like, livermore Academy.

[B]

Oh, my God, that's wrong.

[A]

That's where my pitchforks and torches come out. That's where I'm like, okay, we have to get out of this room and into the street. The streets?

[C]

Yep.

[B]

Touch some grass.

[C]

Touch some grass. Pick up a book.

[A]

Touch a anthology.

[C]

Something like. It's right there. And it wasn't like, the show made it. It's called the Nevermore Academy. Anyway.

[A]

No. No, it's not subtext.

[C]

No.

[B]

Because I have not watched Wednesday. Does no one in that show ever drop a very. Like. And you know, the school is named after.

[C]

No, again, it's called Nevermore Academy. There are, like, awards and contests that are named after Poe about his short stories. There's ravens everywhere. There, like, girl.

[A]

Wednesday does not traffic in subtlety, Rebecca. Like, everything is said to one degree or another. It's a much beloved show among certain members of my household, but it is not one for delicately suggestive illusion.

[C]

Got it. Although I do love a quote that I feel like some of the people on this call, maybe Jeff could relate to somebody. Don't you have fomo? And then this dead pantry's like, I have phobia. Fear of being included. And I'm like, thank you so much.

[A]

Sounds very relatable.

[C]

Anyway.

[A]

Well, it is so funny how. How. And again, we've done a little of this with zero to well read. When you go back and you engage with the real lives of these authors that people know. Anyone who has, like, a funko pop, you could have Bought at Urban outfitters in, like, 2002. Like, almost completely understood, misunderstood, almost like the Emily Dickinson, the Hemingway, the James Baldwin. Like, anyone who has like that has become totemic, has become an icon where in a way, they're. The idea of them precedes any worse than anyone actually knows knows they're meaningfully wrong. In almost every vector, like, there's a kernel of untruth that's connected to something. But it is surprising how you go look. It's like, oh, this Hemingway was a big softy. You know, like, it's all stuff like that all the time. It's crazy.

[C]

That's honestly the kind of crux of what I wanted to do with these little deep dives was because I realized in my own right, you know, if I'm. If I am remembering, you know, I told Rebecca initially, I think when I pitched it, like, I kind of want to do like a. You're wrong about for literary stuff. And that's what so much of this unlearning and that is, you know, people that we all spend time in these spaces. We are book people. We study this stuff. And yet it's still interesting to see how somebody's legacy and a reputation has been twisted and turned by pop culture and. Or just really bitter dudes named Rufus. So there is.

[B]

Watch out for the bitter dudes named Rufus.

[A]

So, I mean, Telltale heart pit in the Pendulum Purloin letter. I mean, those are all bangers, right, Vanessa? Like, where else should people go?

[C]

Oh, no, a list.

[A]

Stuff that gets anthologies is good. Is there anything. Do you have Underrated or, you know.

[B]

You know, she's right.

[A]

Secretary things.

[C]

Yeah, I. I don't. I can't even call these overrated because they're like, some of his most famous. But like, I love the Purloin letter. Tiltle Heart just feels like a thing you got to do to like the essence.

[A]

I think that one holds up like it. It still. If you have never encountered it, don't read anything about it.

[C]

Nope.

[A]

And it has a very powerful. As a reading experience, it's. It's almost singular in its effect.

[C]

It's so good. The Cask of Amontillado is one of my favorites. Just because then I'm trying not to tell people too much about them because I really think you should just discover it. But it's like somebody gets lured into a slow and very terrible death. What I will say about. So the ones I was going to recommend were that the Black Cat, Fall of the House of Usher, the Mask of The Red Death.

[A]

And if you are like, I don't remember that one.

[C]

Do you know the main character is sort of slowly descending into madness and he is haunted.

[A]

Oh, no. Oh, that's. It's unusual for post, someone slowly descending into madness. Weird.

[C]

He broke with tradition and there is. Is indeed a haunted cat who appears to be like returning from the dead to poke and at the crimes. If you have not yet watched and are a person who enjoys this kind of stuff. And I'm a weenie, but I love this guy's entire, like, oeuvre. The Mike Flanagan production of the Fall of the House of Usher on Netflix is actually just a wealth. He went full P.O. like, it's called the Fall of the House of Usher and does definitely tease that story. But he takes elements, elements of all the stories I just listed in others and like puts them in one big mash. And if you were even a little bit familiar with Poe, everything from the names of the characters to the names of the company, it's like a rich people problem.

[A]

I understood that reference. Yeah. Okay.

[C]

So, so good. So if you like any of that, any one of these stories is going to be perfect because they are like one of the through lines in each of that. And he is just so good at tapping into that, like horror plus Catholicism, like weird horror of that. And combined it with Poe's just sort of macabre sensibility to paint pictures about. Yeah. The way we look at rich people and wealth and privilege, it's just a commentary in a lot of different ways. So if you find yourself liking that any of the stories I just mentioned are going to be great. And then definitely murders in the room or just because again, it is such like an early work of a thing that you now think of as detective fiction. But at the time he gave a fancy French name to be like. I used the reasoning that would eventually become Poirot's like, tackle using the, you know, the great. Yeah, exactly. So that is my pitch for you to go learn a little bit more about Poe. That you probably got a lot of Poe wrong, but that he's still worth reading for if nothing else, really being the introduction to a lot of the other things that we enjoy about genre fiction that back then were just radiocination or whatever he was.

[B]

This was an informative delight. Vanessa, thank you.

[A]

Terrific. Thank you, Vanessa. You can find shownotes bookriot.com listen, shoot us an email podcast riot.com what's coming up on the Patreon. Oh, Zadie week. No, next week.

[B]

Next week will be Zadie week on the Patreon. We're also going to power rank Amazon's number one books of the last 25 years, which is their number one book from each of the last 25 years. So they have not done new rankings. They're going back to look at their other ones.

[A]

That's a weird list, Rebecca. I'm previewing.

[B]

It is a weird list.

[A]

It's a weird list.

[B]

We will be talking about that in the news episode episode on Monday here in this feed. The broad look at that list. Hamlet just dropped in zero to well read. And To Kill a Mockingbird is up next. It was my first time reading it since high school.

[A]

Vanessa, thanks so much.

[C]

Thank you.

[A]

This episode is brought to you by 20th Century Studios New film Springsteen, Deliver Me From Nowhere, starring Golden Globe winner Jeremy Allen White and Academy Award nominee Jeremy Strahm. Scott Cooper, the director of the Academy Award winning movie Crazy Heart, brings you the story of the most pivotal chapter in the life of an icon. Springsteen Deliver Me from Nowhere Only in theaters October 24th. Get your tickets now.