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Poe: A Life Cut Short

A great writer and drinker

Peter Ackroyd
Chatto, 170pp, £15.99,

Sam Leith

Wednesday, 23rd January 2008

Sam Leith on Peter Ackroyd's latest book

He married his underage cousin Virginia (whom he continued, creepily, to call ‘Sissy’) and carted her and his doting aunt Maria about in a funny little ménage from one rickety lodging-house to another. After she died of consumption he was chased by, and in turn chased, a collection of dotty literary ladies; towards the end, passionately and ineffectively, two at once.

Above all, he was drunk — something that put him in dreadful health and, in more than one sense, dreadful odour. Ackroyd’s thesis in this book is that ‘heavy drinking’ and ‘alcoholism’ are different things, and that while Poe may even have suffered from a congenital predisposition to the first, ‘he was not an alcoholic’. Clinical diagnosis of a long-dead poet is neither, finally, here nor there — but it seems a pretty fine distinction to make.

Poe was able to remain abstinent for periods of time, but when he started drinking he’d set off on week-long ‘sprees’ and be unable to stop. Though a courteous and considerate man in sobriety, he was an ugly and aggressive drunk. He lied (drunk and sober) as easily as most people breathe. He suffered hallucinations, paranoia, lacerating remorse, delirium tremens and suicidal ideation. When he went to dinner parties his devoted aunt waited in the kitchen in the hopes of preventing him drinking too much and making sure he got home. His letters of apology and reproach tell their stories eloquently. Ackroyd decodes one of them, with the delightful dry humour he brings to this book, thus: ‘So he had paraded through the streets wearing his cloak inside-out, and had made fun of a Spaniard’s moustache.’ As a kindly and perspicacious colleague remarked to Poe, ‘No man is safe who drinks before breakfast.’

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Rev. Garet Aldridge

January 25th, 2008 12:16pm

May 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 5:55pm

Poe'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 7:43pm

The 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 3:38am

Extraordinary 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.)