Books
Poe: A Life Cut Short
A great writer and drinker
Peter AckroydChatto, 170pp, £15.99,
Sam Leith on Peter Ackroyd's latest book
Even though, contrary to myth, he was considerably acclaimed during his lifetime, Poe spent most of his days in abject poverty and a positive rapture of unsuccess. He took on editorships of literary magazines and, falling into drink, lost them. He got posts as a critic and, incensed at the success of those he knew to be his inferiors, set about denouncing them. Longfellow and James Russell Lowell came in for literary cudgellings; others for the more ad hominem kind. Of the magazine editor Lewis Gaylord Clark, he wrote: ‘an apple, in fact, or a pumpkin has more angles . . . he is noticeable for nothing in the world except for the markedness by which he is noticeable for nothing.’ He rounded off a screed of insults to another writer, Thomas Dunne English, with the observation that ‘he exists in a perpetual state of vacillation between moustachio and goatee’.
He could dish it out but he could not take it, and, when a victim (he of the indecisive facial hair) accused him in turn of forgery and plagiarism, he sued. His libel winnings were almost certainly the most substantial lump sum his writing ever earned him.
Poe lived — just — on journalism; and he had a considerable eye for fads and crazes, working them calculatingly into his fiction. But American writers were at a disadvantage. The law of copyright did not protect the work of English writers, so there seemed no great incentive for a publisher to pay domestically for what he could pirate from overseas for free. It was calculated, says Ackroyd, that the total income from all Poe’s books, over 20 years, was $300.
As well as being broke, he had an agonising personal life. Abandoned by his father, orphaned at three, and enduring a very fractious relationship with his adoptive father (whom, like everybody else, he was perpetually begging for money), he yearned for the safe haven of nurturing women. But he only seemed to be attracted to women (starting with his mother) who were batty, or dying of consumption, or both: ‘I could not love except where Death/ Was mingling his with Beauty’s breath.’
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Rev. Garet Aldridge
January 25th, 2008 12:16pmMay I also strongly recommend "Private Perry and Mr. Poe" by the late and heroic Major William F. Hecker? This tome gives wonderful insights into the poet's West Point years and, perhaps, further explanation of the discipline with which he wrote.
James Jeffrey Paul
January 25th, 2008 5:55pmPoe's genuis and influence on so many aspects of the literary arts can't possibly be overstated. I look forward to reading Mr. Ackroyd's book on Poe--he's a master of his own art (the biography).
Robert Coates
January 25th, 2008 7:43pmThe concluding paragraph seems to sum it up - if this is the most interesting fare on offer, best to stick to the work itself (which is hardly mentioned in this review at all)
Laurie
January 26th, 2008 3:38amExtraordinary art comes as often from extraordinary lives as from extraordinary talent. It seems strained personal relationships, sexual oddity, substance abuse and financial desperation, in various combinations have powered a majority of literary talent from (at least) Swift, through Dostoevsky to Joyce and Behan. Perhaps that is why so much of the modern fiction produced by graduates of all those creative writing courses, while often interesting and well crafted, appears to lack something essential. The concept of suffering for your art is out of fashion (well in the West at least, pace Promoedya Ananta Toer et al.)