While I may not have access to my favorite autumn treats yet, i.e. Michigan apples, cooler temperatures, scarves, I read a great new book about a universal fall favorite: Edgar Allan Poe. The book, Poe for Your Problems: Uncommon Advice from History's Least Likely Self-Help Guru by Catherine Baab-Muguira (you can also check out her Substack if you want more Poe) and illustrated with sly humor by Javier Olivares is a treat you can savor all season long.
The book takes Poe's biography as the basis for creating rules to live by. Taking her critical eye and pen to the "think positive" movement that has taken over all manner of books and other self-help materials over the last few decades, Baab-Muguira offers a Poe-sitive perspective from which anyone struggling with hardship, confusion, addiction, and/or writer's block can glean, if not a roadmap for persistence, at least a humorous and accepting look at how everyone, especially this literary giant of the American imagination, has flaws.
Studded throughout are "Poe Tips" (one of the book's several lovely puns; in this case think pro-tip). In one of my favorites, Poe would advise you to "count that chip on your shoulder as a blessing, not a curse." His grievances were a force he pushed up against to make him stronger. Holding onto grudges, proving the haters wrong, persisting in the face of near constant rejection helped him survive the all-boys private schools of his youth and prepared him for a life trying to make a mark on the literary establishment. Maybe that's at least part of his appeal after nearly two centuries. We're a nation of outcasts and popular kids, a division that is clearer than political parties or zip codes. As far as outcasts go, there are few more far out than Poe. Read the section where Baab-Muguira discusses how the 40,000-word Eureka came to be (printed by Putnam at a 500 copy run). As far as cringeworthy literary public nervous breakdowns go, I suggest you compare it to a contemporary shocker like the one in Micaela Coel's I May Destroy You. Writers can create so much drama off the page!
Other sections for how to live in the anti-positivity movement Poe-gram include topics on Poe-sonal Finance, be advised to "sell out as soon as possible" because making a living writing from your heart/soul's desire was not possible in the 1840s and is as unlikely now. Given Poe's pattern of writing short stories in which children incarnate as spirits of their dead mothers, Poe Tip #13 warns "Don't have kids. They'll probably be the reincarnated spirits of your dead lovers." Because this is the Romantic era (which some scholars call the early Modern period) of English language literature, loads of dead lovers show up which given the diseases of the day, least of which was tuberculosis from which Poe's wife Virginia died, as well as drowning and gas poisoning there were many sources of inspiration to be found.
While Poe was fascinated with death in his stories and poems, his biography leaves copious evidence that he was resilient in spite of his angst, though surely he had lots to be bummed about. He had an outsized belief in his talent and his, as Baab-Muguira writes, Poe-tential. One of the bits of his biography that I suspect is widely unknown is the fact that he wrote a gossip column in various ladies's magazines titled "The Literati of New York City" in which he burned all his goodwill by discussing fellow writers' weight and height, facial features, education, intimate relationships, and bank accounts. I'd never guess he was a Poe-to (my own terrible pun on proto) Cindy Adams. What some people will do for readers. Baab-Muguira writes that his trolling wasn't all fueled by self-righteousness. He targeted overly praised trendsetters of his time and trained his real cultural critical eye to praise Charles Dickens and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, turning them into advocates for his work. Not that it did much to help his career when his reputation as a drunk, a necrophiliac, and as simply evil followed him to his grave, and beyond into current biographies and scholarship, called, aptly, Poe Studies.
Comments are open! Share your favorite autumn treats or your favorite of Poe's writing. I am a for evermore lover of "The Raven" (call me basic, but name a more widely recognized metaphor for grief).