Edgar Allen Poe, founder of the detective story? Or drunkard, womanizer, lunatic and worst of all, lousy writer? This was the predominant view in the US from his death in 1849 for a hundred years. Twain called his prose unreadable, Edith Wharton said he was drunken and demoralized, Ralph Waldo Emerson termed him ‘the jingle man.’ In Britain TS Eliot said he had the intellect of a gifted child before puberty, Orwell called him ‘not far from insane,’ and DH Lawrence summed it up in a famous quote saying, “Poe tried alcohol, and any drug he could lay his hands on. He also tried any human being he could lay his hands on.”
Poe: Spiritual Founder of Noir?
Poe: Spiritual Founder of Noir?
Poe: Spiritual Founder of Noir?
Edgar Allen Poe, founder of the detective story? Or drunkard, womanizer, lunatic and worst of all, lousy writer? This was the predominant view in the US from his death in 1849 for a hundred years. Twain called his prose unreadable, Edith Wharton said he was drunken and demoralized, Ralph Waldo Emerson termed him ‘the jingle man.’ In Britain TS Eliot said he had the intellect of a gifted child before puberty, Orwell called him ‘not far from insane,’ and DH Lawrence summed it up in a famous quote saying, “Poe tried alcohol, and any drug he could lay his hands on. He also tried any human being he could lay his hands on.”