Book Review: A Mystery of Mysteries by Mark Dawidziak

As a mystery aficionado and all-around genre reader, I’ve long been acquainted with the works of Edgar Allan Poe. After all:

The two forms he crafted into literature have one thing in common: both horror and mystery are an attempt to uncover a truth. The horror story probes the mysteries of the cosmos and human nature, searching for revelations that we may never find. The journey into darkness must be taken, and fears must be faced, but answers are not guaranteed. We may well be on the trail of the unknowable, the insolvable, the impenetrable. The detective story might take us down similarly dark alleys, but it gives us the assurance and comfort that an answer can be found, understood, and revealed.

To a large extent, I’ve favored his mysteries over his horror stories, but perhaps none of the ones he penned has seized the public imagination so greatly as the mystery surrounding his own demise. The facts are few but certain. On October 3, 1849, he was found in Baltimore in a state of insensibility, wearing cheap clothes that were not his own. He was taken to the Washington Medical College, where he died several days later. Every other facet of his death has been disputed, if not outright lied about, almost from the moment the last breath left his body.

I freely admit that I was one of the people bamboozled by the wealth of urban legends surrounding his final days. I’d been under the impression that he’d died in a Baltimore gutter, most likely of rabies, all of which is untrue. Mark Dawidziak not only sets the record straight, establishing the few known facts of what happened but also does a deep dive into what may have occurred and what the likeliest actual causes of death might have been, offering the known evidence for the support of each but ultimately acknowledging that modern technology might not yet be capable of ascertaining without a shadow of a doubt how the legendary writer actually passed on.

A Mystery Of Mysteries does a greater service besides merely presenting the most plausible causes of death. It also debunks the many myths that have grown around the great writer’s life. It’s easy to think of Poe as a gloomy alcoholic who wrote in great crazed spurts of inspiration before sinking back into long periods of prostration. The reality, however, is that he was a lively, humorous man in vigorous good health for most of his life. His work ethic was top-notch, as he persevered at various poorly paid positions while constantly writing and revising his own output. In his day, he was considered a critic first, a poet second, then a writer of prose fiction last. It is no surprise to me, a book critic, that this has entirely turned around in the intervening years, and that he’s best known now for his wildly atmospheric short stories. 

There are, of course, some aspects of his life that have persisted as truth. He did have a bad habit of quarreling with people he needed help from, and his romantic life raised eyebrows, to say the least. But he worked hard at his craft, and was severely beset by misfortune at nearly every step of the way. Mr. Dawidziak chronicles these setbacks with compassion and empathy, though one can’t help feeling that posthumous glory is cold comfort to someone who spent so much time struggling to house and feed his young wife and beloved mother-in-law. It’s argued that Poe would never have written his best works had he not had to struggle so hard, but I subscribe to the idea that he would have been even more prolific had he not had the stresses of survival to contend with. Adversity may build character but poverty sucks the energy out of souls trying to thrive in society.

Written with painstaking attention to detail and with the collected testimony of over a century of people who knew, admired or have studied Poe, A Mystery Of Mysteries is the kind of book that ought to be read by anyone with even a passing interest in the acclaimed author. The timeline can sometimes feel disjointed, but this is, overall, one of the finest investigations into his life and death I’ve come across. After having read this book, I like to remember him now thusly, as he appeared to friends barely a fortnight before his untimely death:

Certainly during the last few days in Richmond, many friends and acquaintances described his mood as upbeat. That seemed to be the case when he bid farewell to the Talley family on September 25. He was the last to leave the party at Talavera that night. The parting image was for Susan Archer Talley both symbolic of his life and sadly prophetic of his death: “We were standing on the portico, and after going a few steps he paused, turned, and again lifted his hat, in a last adieu. At that moment, a brilliant meteor appeared in the sky directly over his head.”

A literary figure whose light shone only too briefly during his own lifetime, Poe was a rare talent indeed.