His despair is only part of his artistic journey. When researching Poe last year, I was surprised to come across an anecdote about him playing leap-frog with his wife and splitting his pants, causing both of them to collapse in fits of laughter. I’m sure it was the memory of joyful moments like this that haunted him as she lay dying and long after she was dead.
It turned out Poe was not a mysterious, mad genius. He was actually a lot like my writer-friends, with whom I constantly exchange emails bitching about the perversities of our trade—the struggle to break in, the late and sometimes nonexistent payments, the occasional stolen pitch. In short, I realized that Poe was, for a good portion of his career, a broke-ass freelancer. Also, that our much-vaunted gig economy isn’t the new development it’s so often taken to be. —The Millions
Post was last modified on 13 Sep 2017 4:45 pm
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This status took a very Poe turn at the end. #gloomy
My favorite Poe story (possibly apocryphal) has always been his frantic self-sabotaging of his audience with the President, culminating in getting tossed out of the White House after trying to sell him magazine subscriptions.
Yeah, the story is he went drunk to a job interview that didn't go so well.
I read Mrs. Poe last spring and fell in love with his story. That's an excellent, excellent book, btw. Historical fiction...but really accurate.