So, What's New, Edgar Allan Poe?

On January 19, any writer who kills would not be worth her curare-tipped blow dart if she didn’t lift a glass of happy birthday amontillado to Edgar Allan Poe. Very few literary figures have endured like our Goth poet laureate, who is credited with inventing the detective story. In his stories of C. Auguste Dupin, Poe drew the template for an entire genre. Arthur Conan Doyle called Poe “the father of the detective tale” and noted that Poe “covered its limits so completely that I fail to see how his followers can find any fresh ground which they can confidently call their own.”

Yet writers and artists of all kinds continue to find fresh ground not only in Poe’s work, but also in his life story. In a sign of Poe’s uncanny appeal, English teachers tell me that his work is actually read by their teenage students. His stories have been adapted to film and television and his work is celebrated worldwide (this past weekend saw the Poe Festival in Richmond, Virginia).

But many writers are celebrated. Many literary figures have their own coffee mugs and t-shirts, but how many American poets inspire their own line of press-on nails?  NEVERMORE - The Imaginary Life and Mysterious Death of Edgar Allan Poe officially opens on Broadway January 25. Baltimore’s professional football team is called the Ravens in Poe’s honor. People tattoo Poe’s poetry on their shoulder blades.

He has over 3 million likes on Facebook.

Is our enduring fascination with Poe due to the hypnotic power of his poetry? His enthralling storytelling? Or it is because of our obsession with the dark, the macabre?  Do we remember Poe because we never got over the shock of discovering that he married his 14-year-old cousin, Virginia? Is it those eyes, dark, melancholy portals to God only knows what delicious horrors?

Variety just reported that Idris Elba is producing a film based on Mark Olden’s 1978 novel Poe Must Die. In the story, Poe and “bare knuckle fighter” Pierce James Figg join forces to stop a Satanist from finding the Throne of Solomon and unleashing its power on the people of earth.

Like the television show The Following, which is about student followers of a Poe scholar who orders them to kill (seriously, how many professors can even get their students to turn off their cell phones during class?), many modern works miss what is essential about Poe. Contrary to the facile mad genius trope they embrace, Poe was a prodigious talent who didn't just exploit horror, melancholy, and madness but also explored them on the page and endured them in his life. Poe rests in his grave in Baltimore  (or does he?) while his work still chills, captivates, and inspires. His own fever mad passions touch something fever mad within us.

 One of my favorite reviews of Poe’s work is from the Fanpop website. A desperate student writes (and I’ve retained the original spelling and punctuation):

“how would you describe the poem The Raven

i'm trying to write an essay about the poem The Raven By Edgar Allen Poe, and i don't know what to say about it i'm stuck so that's why i came to you guys for help”

Freakoutnow gave the perfect answer: “haunting.”

What do you think accounts for Poe’s enduring, and it seems, ever growing popularity?

Literary Landmarks USA

What do Slip F18 in Bahia Mar, Grip the Raven, a windmill in Stony Brook, NY, and John’s Grill in San Francisco have in common? They’ve all been designated Literary Landmarks.

To encourage the preservation of American literary sites and history, Friends of Libraries (now United for Libraries) started the Literary Landmarks program in 1986. Since then, the group has evaluated and recognized sites of literary importance in 33 states. The program partners with local literary and historical societies to ensure that sites honoring influential literary figures are managed and maintained for future generations of readers.

While most sites are what one would expect – author’s birthplaces and library collections – some more unexpected sites have made the list.

The Stony Brook windmill? Tennessee Williams lived in the windmill in Southampton, NY, in the summer of 1967 while he wrote “The Day on Which a Man Dies” about his friend Jackson Pollock. Williams has had a total of six Literary Landmarks dedicated to him: the windmill; his Key West home; the Tennessee Williams Visitors Center in his birthplace, Columbus, MS; St. George’s Episcopal Rectory in Clarksdale, MS; the Hotel Monteleone in New Orleans; and his New Orleans townhouse.

Strater Hotel, Durango, Colorado

Several hotels have been designated landmarks: The Monteleone in New Orleans was named to the list in honor of frequent visitors Williams, Truman Capote, Eudora Welty, and William Faulkner. While the hotel is officially the landmark, one imagines that the bar was actually the attraction for this group of writers. The Plaza Hotel in New York was added to the list for being the home of Kay Thompson’s creation, Eloise, and The Menger Hotel in San Antonio, TX was recognized for hosting literary lights like O. Henry and Oscar Wilde.

Louis L’Amour’s landmark is Room 222 of the Strater Hotel in Durango, CO. For twenty years, L’Amour spent every August there with his family, and said that the sounds rising from the hotel’s bar inspired his writing.

Capote, Faulkner, Welty, and Williams may have had the elegant Monteleone, but Jack London has Heinhold’s First and Last Chance Saloon in Oakland, CA. Dashiell Hammett is honored with the inclusion of two San Francisco sites: John’s Grill and an apartment at 891 Post Street.  Hammett wrote his first three novels Red Harvest, The Dain Curse, and The Maltese Falcon there, and Sam Spade’s apartment was modeled on Hammett’s Post Street home.

For sheer size, Willa Cather’s Literary Landmark tops them all; she is honored with the Willa Cather Prairie just off Highway 281 in Red Cloud, Nebraska.

United for Libraries’ first landmark was Slip F-18 Bahia Mar in Fort Lauderdale, FL, the “address” of The Busted Flush, John D. MacDonald’s beloved character Travis McGee’s houseboat. A redesign of the marina demolished the slip, so now the honorary plaque is displayed in the marina’s offices.

Grip the Raven at the Free Library of Philadelphia

Our Goth Poet Laureate Edgar Allan Poe has two landmarks: the Poe House in Philadelphia, PA and Grip’s roost at the Rare Books Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Grip was the beloved pet of Charles Dickens, who had the unusually intelligent bird preserved upon his death. In 1843, Poe and Dickens met in Philadelphia. Poe had reviewed a Dickens story that featured a raven named Grip. Soon after this meeting, Poe wrote the blockbuster poem that turned Grip into “The Raven.” Grip is part of an extensive collection of Dickens memorabilia at the Free Library.

The most recent additions to the Literary Landmarks list are the Walt Whitman Birthplace State Historic Site and Interpretive Center, Huntington Station, NY; the Alex Haley Museum and Interpretive Center, Henning, TN; and The Sarah Josepha Hale Memorial Park, Newport, NH. As editor of “Godey’s Lady Book,” Hale nurtured the careers of Edgar Allan Poe and Nathaniel Hawthorne. In a timely note, Hale successfully campaigned to establish our national Thanksgiving holiday.

What author do you think deserves a Literary Landmark?