The hardest thing about teaching Edgar Allan Poe is what people already “know” about him. That he was brooding and melancholy, probably psychotic, and certainly obsessed with death and the dark side of the human soul. People are certain of it, but it’s absolute piffle.
A crime is a crime, isn’t it? Well, jaywalking is a crime. (Though when was the last time you even heard that term used, much less heard of someone being cited for it.) So is murder. So is conspiracy to commit treason. So all crimes are not created equal, and such is the glorious nature…
There seems to be a growing sub-genre these days of books drawing on the life and/or work of Edgar Allan Poe. Is some profound cultural force at work? I suspect the motives are more commercial. The fact is, Poe conjures—in a way that helps sell books. I don’t fault authors for appropriating Poe. Poe himself…
Next week, network TV executives will converge on New York City to announce their new fall TV schedules. More than 80 new pilots are currently being screened and selected to join returning favorite shows, and here’s a glimpse at a few of the criminally inclined that we’re hoping to see on the boob tube come…
When I was a child in the Southern California of the late 1950s, watching Peter Gunn on television was one of the week’s highlights. Henry Mancini, who did the music for the series, lived in a neighboring town and went to our San Fernando Valley church, so we had a proprietary interest in the show. …
Recently, the web was aflutter with the news that in 2012 Baltimore plans to cut off funding for its Poe House. This imminent closing has raised again the question of which city can call itself the Poe city. Six cities lay claim to Edgar Allan Poe: Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charlottesville, Richmond, and New York. Although born…
