Matthew Pearl's Blog, page 4

Why you might want to read The Mystery of Edwin Drood without knowing it

It kicks off the subject of my third novel. But I avoided Charles Dickens's The Mystery of Edwin Drood for a long time. So many Dickens novels, so little time, and few people volunteer it as the Dickens “you have to read.” Since Dickens died in the middle of writing it, it falls into the category of the unfinished work that leaves you hanging: Lesley Castle by Austen, The Last Tycoon by Fitzgerald, The Buccaneers by Edith Wharton, to name a few.

Reading an unfinished book means taking on a project. If you're anything like me, it leads you to a stack of other reading that loads you down with increasingly esoteric substitutions for an actual conclusion. The Mystery of Edwin Drood was reportedly the most written-about book in the English language at one point. Who has time for another obsession?

Without giving anything away to those still in the avoidance stage, readers of The Mystery of Edwin Drood divide into two camps: the survivalists who think Edwin Drood lives beyond his uncle John Jasper's attempt on his life, and the traditionalists who believe Edwin dies. In support of the theories, readers point to clues in the original illustrations, the book's chapter headings, Dickens's working notes for the novel and his discarded ideas for the title.

Dickens knew well what questions he was setting us up to ask. Cloisterham, the novel's fictional town, was (writes Dickens's narrator) “pretty equally divided in opinion whether John Jasper's beloved nephew had been rolled by his passionate rival treacherously, or in an open struggle; or had, for his own purposes, spirited himself away.” Surely, the big reveal could not simply have been to pick one of these two choices we already know about, or could it? Ask me at your peril. I'm so indecisive I have trouble choosing from a restaurant menu even as a vegetarian when there are often only one or two choices.

One reason The Mystery of Edwin Drood is important and unique today is related to the way it was first published in the summer of 1870. At the start of each month, readers would line up to purchase the latest installment of Dickens's novel. Families and friends would discuss and debate what might happen next—would even write letters to Dickens with ideas or complaints. The story unfolded around them in real time as part of their lives (more on serial writing). I call my novel The Last Dickens not only because it's about his final book, but also because there will never be another Charles Dickens.

I like to think of The Mystery of Edwin Drood as the last nineteenth century novel. Not literally. But in it we have the strange combination of a Dickens novel with all its multiple strands of story lines waiting for resolution, and the very postmodern lack of the desired resolution.

My characters in The Last Dickens are driven to commit both brave and evil deeds by trying to find out how The Mystery of Edwin Drood was meant to end. But I don't try to dictate on the subject. In fact, alongside our paperback release of the novel from Random House, Modern Library is releasing a new edition of The Mystery of Edwin Drood which I edited. I'd previously convinced them to let me edit similar companion editions for my other novels: a companion edition for The Dante Club, a companion edition for The Poe Shadow and a companion edition for The Last Dickens.

A special feature of our new edition is the inclusion of a previously out-of-print transcript of a mock trial about The Mystery of Edwin Drood's true ending, presided over by G. K. Chesterston and including George Bernard Shaw as head juror! It's a hoot, besides being enlightening.

People ask me how The Mystery of Edwin Drood was really supposed to end, as if I'd hold back if I had found the secret (I get the same question about Poe's death). Here is my answer: I happen to think Dickens himself was still deciding how the story would come out when he died—a luxury of the serially published author—but if I'm wrong, it's possible we'll one day find evidence of his plan for its ending. That might be a shame.

Besides the mock trial, other writers have tried their hand at writing a new ending to The Mystery of Edwin Drood as well as other unfinished books.

What do you think: should we try to recreate missing endings to books, or let them stand on their own?

The Real Investigators of Poe's Death

Another guest post!

Two posts about the real first investigators of Edgar Allan Poe's mysterious death, which inspired The Poe Shadow. Thanks to Rob Velella's Edgar A. Poe Calendar Blog--and while you're there check out more of the excellent posts on Rob's blog.

Part I

Part II

The Last Dickens & the exciting history (really!) of the publishing industry

Here is another guest post I've written, this one about the secret world of 19th century publishing and literary pirates as portrayed in The Last Dickens.

The post is at ReadingGroupGuides.com, an "online community for reading groups". Take a look around their site if you go to read my post.

Read the post here.

The Last Dickens now out in paperback

Special message to my readers...

THE LAST DICKENS is out in paperback today in the US and Canada! If you haven't had a chance to read it yet, this is a great time to show booksellers support for the book at your local store or online. (You can order a copy here)

If you already have the hardcover, I hope you'll consider picking up the paperback as a gift for someone, and do pass along this email to anyone who might be interested. There is a Readers' Guide in the back of the paperback perfect for book clubs. Your support for the books, as always, means everything.

THE LAST DICKENS, a National Bestseller and an Editor's Choice by the New York Times Book Review, is a literary thriller that begins when Dickens's sudden death leaves his final mystery novel unfinished. His young American publisher James Osgood sets out on a quest from Boston to England to discover how Dickens's novel was going to end, unleashing a real-life puzzle that becomes a matter of life and death.

For those of you who have already read the novel, a companion volume is also out today that you might enjoy: a new edition of Charles Dickens's THE MYSTERY OF EDWIN DROOD from Modern Library for which I wrote an introduction and served as editor (more here)

With all my thanks as always!

Matthew
official author website

Read the novel that critics around the world call...

"A genuine whodunit... resonates with our times."
—New York Times Book Review

"Beautifully written and cleverly plotted."
—Globe & Mail

"A plot packed full of incident, coincidences, devious
twists and dramatic set pieces ensures excitement."
—Daily Mail (London)

Was Edgar Allan Poe really an alcoholic? Review the evidence...

(While my detective character Duponte expresses his opinions on the matter in The Poe Shadow, I've actually never shared my own opinions on Poe's drinking in writing, so here we go.)

This is a question more difficult than many people imagine. To address it, you must throw out caricatures of Poe and combine actual historical evidence with common sense.

I read a scholarly article once that applied to Poe a modern medical questionnaire, the Michigan Alcoholism Screening Test. According to the writer, Poe scored 37 points, seven times above the minimum number to diagnose alcoholism. The usage of the word “alcoholic,” in the way we mean it for someone addicted to alcohol, did not exist in Poe's time, by the way. Indeed, the concept of addiction itself would not begin to be understood for years after his death in 1849.

We must be careful with questions like “was Poe an alcoholic?” not to become anachronistic, ahistorical or unhistorical, as that journal article teetered on doing. It was fashionable to declare Poe a drunk at the time of his death, and for various reasons it has come back into fashion.

There is no question, Poe drank. There is also no question that Poe's drinking was seen as a problem by people around him. He himself saw it as a problem.

Fourteen years before Poe's death, one of his employers, T. W. White, wrote, “You have fine talents Edgar, and you ought to have them respected, as well as yourself. Learn to respect yourself, and you will very soon find that you are respected. Separate yourself from the bottle, and bottle companions, for ever!” When another employer, Burton, spread the word that Poe was drinking at the office, Poe wrote in a letter defending himself that “it is now quite four years since I have abandoned every kind of alcoholic drink” and told his friend Joseph Snodgrass that “nothing stronger than water ever passed my lips” while working for Burton.

Approximately four years before his death, a colleague of Poe claimed more incidents of drinking interfering with his work. He wrote about Poe that “I believe that he had not drunk anything for more than 18 months until within the past 3 months, but in this time he has been very frequently carried home in a wretched condition. I am sorry for him. He has some good points, but taken together he is badly made up.”

Poe declared his intention to stop drinking again and again, conflicting with his denials that he was drinking. In 1839, correspondent James Heath patted him on the back with approval: “It gives me sincere pleasure to understand that your own good sense and the influence of high and noble motives have enabled you to overcome a seductive and dangerous treatment which too often prostrates the highest and best by its fatal grasp.” Poe looked into joining at least one temperance (or anti-alcohol) organization that he did not end up joining, and did join one in the last months of his life. Poe wrote, in 1845, “I am resolved not to touch a drop as long as I live.” That sounds like the language of an addict, not someone who abstains to begin with.

Case closed? Poe the alcoholic?

I actually think Poe was the opposite of alcoholic. I'll explain.

Let us look more at what Poe himself has to tell us about his drinking. In the summer of 1846, he writes to Thomas Chivers something I've always found intriguing. “There is one thing you will be glad to learn: It has been a long while since any artificial stimulus has passed my lips. When I see you—should that day ever come—this is a topic on which I desire to have a long talk with you. I am done forever with drink—depend upon that—but there is much more in this matter than meets the eye.”

What does Poe imply as more than meets the eye about his drinking? Perhaps his wife Virginia's deteriorating health (she would die a few months after he wrote that letter). But Poe might refer to a peculiarity about his drinking.

Poe, referring again to drinking alcohol, once explained to Snodgrass that “my sensitive temperament could not stand an excitement which was an everyday matter to my companions.”

Friend Elizabeth Oakes Smith later wrote of Poe, “I am convinced he was not habitually addicted to any kind of intoxicating drink, and am well persuaded that a very little might excite nearly to madness a brain of such volume and delicacy of fiber.” Maria Clemm, the person closest to Poe at the time of his death, wrote: “my darling Eddie was not entirely perfect, and when he had indulged in a glass or two of wine, he was not responsible for either his words, or actions.”

Mayne Reid, poet, wrote that “a single glass” of champagne “used to affect” Poe “so much that he was hardly any longer responsible for his actions.” Literary critic and Poe friend N. P. Willis, expanded on this in 1846 in an article: “The least stimulus – a single glass of wine – would produce this effect upon Mr. Poe, and that, rarely as these instances of easy aberration of caution and mind occurred, he was liable to them, and while under the influence, voluble and personally self-possessed, but neither sane nor responsible. Now, very possibly, Mr. Poe may not be willing to consent to even this admission of any infirmity. He has little or no memory of them afterwards, we understand. But public opinion unqualifiedly holds him blameable for what he has said and done under such excitements; and while a call is made in a public paper for aid, it looks like doing him a timely service, to at least partially to exonerate him.” Willis repeated this description after Poe's death in 1849, writing that “with a single glass of wine his whole nature was reversed.” Thomas Clarke wrote “I have seen men who drank bottles of wine to Poe’s wine glasses who yet escaped all unpleasantries of intemperance.”

What exactly was going on with Poe when he had a drink?

Here is a vivid description from William Gill, a clergyman, describing a meeting with Poe. “I was thirsty and invited him to take a glass of wine with me. He declined, but finally compromised by taking a glass of ale. Almost instantly a great change came over him. Previously engaged in an indescribably eloquent conversation, he became as if paralyzed, and with compressed lips, and fixed, glaring eyes, returned without uttering a word to the house which we were visiting.” George Lippard, Philadelphia friend of Poe's, wrote that “he was not an intemperate man. When he drank, the first drop maddened him; hence his occasional departures from the line of strict propriety.” Descendant Elizabeth Ellicott Poe, in 1909, wrote that “There is a legend in our family that stimulant in the lightest form would excite him and act almost instantly on his nerves.”

Alcoholics typically can drink a large number of drinks before showing intoxication, and that tolerance usually grows with the degree of alcoholism.

For many years in the 20th century, the medical community studied what they called “pathological intoxication,” “complicated intoxication,” “atypical intoxication,” or “alcohol idiosyncratic intoxication.” The terms have gone out of favor, but their definitions are useful in looking at the contemporary evidence of Poe's drinking habits. As one writer in a medical journal summed it up as recently as 1986, “the essential point of all the definitions is the marked change with minimal alcohol intake.” The intolerance was classified as a direct effect of alcohol, rather than some other underlying physical disorder or condition.

It was said, in studying this phenomenon, that “small quantities bring about disproportionately strong reactions” and could result in blind rage and confusion, amnesia or ecstatic state, absence of motor coordination, slurred speech, occasionally accompanied by “ideas of ownership of the world and omnipotence,” behavior that seems “fantastic, unreal, complete misunderstanding,” “wild rages with delusions of persecution,” and suicidal tendencies.

As I say at the beginning of this consideration, I am hesitant to apply a medical textbook to Poe. But those familiar with the details of Poe biography would raise an eyebrow at the above list.

Putting aside whether this should be classified as a condition and what it should be named, it seems like common sense to me that some people do become intoxicated more quickly than others. We all know people who can drink large amounts without showing many signs of being intoxicated. There are others who start feeling intoxicated or disoriented pretty quickly. The most obvious differences often seem to be in how much people weigh. The more recent scientific literature concentrates on genetic and ethnic heritages affecting absorption and effect of alcohol in our bodies.

We must keep in mind the social culture of Poe's era. Particularly in the South, alcoholic drinks were constantly offered as social ritual. Poe spoke of the “temptation held out on all sides by the spirit of Southern conviviality.” Perhaps more importantly, there was not a cultural expectation of men declining drinks, and in many circles there was derision of the temperance movements. One Poe acquaintance even alleged that people enjoyed triggering Poe's peculiar sensitivity as a sport: “I have been told that it was an amusement in some quarters for persons to present Poe with wine for no purpose but to watch its effects upon his sensitive nerves... Thoughtless persons amused themselves at his expense, by urging him to drink, when they knew a single glass would upset him.”

Poe, who grew up in the South, did not like to be rude. One little girl in Fordham, where Poe lived in his final years, remembered that Maria Clemm “came to our house and asked us not to offer wine to Edgar, as his head was weak, but that he did not like to refuse it.”

Scholars have shown that in the 1830s and 1840s, American males drank more alcohol than any portion of the American population before or after in our history. Just as important to remember, alcohol itself was very different back then. It was not diluted. It was far stronger than it is now. What a terrible combination with Poe's sensitivity.

Could the claims about that sensitivity and rapid intoxication have been fabricated by Maria Clemm, as Poe biographer R. H. Stoddard argued in 1872? I suppose it's possible. Certainly some of the names I quote above are more reliable or unbiased than others. But the claims and eyewitnesses are very spread out, both before and after Poe's death, and if it truly was a type of damage control, it would be the sole example of Poe advocates managing successfully to coordinate a story in his favor!

Keep in mind that one of the most important clues into Poe's death, in my opinion, was his cousin Neilson Poe's private correspondence that a “single indulgence” led to the chain of events that left Poe hospitalized. This takes on a whole new significance if put in the context discussed in this post. Neilson, by the way, was not particularly a friend to his cousin.

None of this is to say Poe did not have instances of binge drinking, but if the accounts of his peculiar sensitivity are true, I'm not sure it made a difference whether Poe had X drinks or Y drinks (Y being some greater number, and X being a very small number). Once he had reached X, which might have been even one drink according to many eyewitnesses, Poe was in trouble.

I do not think Poe was addicted to alcohol, and I do not think he was habituated to drinking large quantities. Everything I see in the historical records points the other direction. Poe had a low sensitivity to alcohol in a time when men were pressured to drink often and to consume very strong drinks. This is why I say Poe was, in a way, the very opposite of an alcoholic. He had a problem with drinking, yes, but something very different than people imagine. There is, as Poe promises, more than meets the eye.

Yet, on the anniversary of Poe's birthday each year the “Poe toaster” in Baltimore gets publicity for leaving a bottle of cognac at Poe's grave. Pretty tasteless, in my opinion. Pretty silly, too.

Why is there still so little nuance in understanding Poe's drinking? Do we simply prefer the romantic idea of the alcoholic genius?

Dickens: Serial Thriller & Book Giveaway

Another guest post! Here I talk about Charles Dickens's serialized writing and why that remains an exciting topic. Please get to know "Book Chatter and other stuff" while your'e there. Also, note that if you comment on the post as Ti instructs and you'll be entered to win a copy of the paperback of "The Last Dickens"!

CLICK HERE

Thanks Ti and Book Chatter!

Charles Dickens's one-of-a-kind American book tour

Since we're nearing the release of the paperback for The Last Dickens in the U.S., I'll have some guest posts around the web on various blogs who were kind enough to invite me to intrude.

I hope this also gives you the opportunity to discover book-related blogs you might not have known about yet.

Here is my blog post on Raging Bibliomania, considering Charles Dickens's reading tour of the United States, which is dramatized in The Last Dickens:

http://www.ragingbibliomania.net/2009...



Thanks Raging Bibliomania!

To be a bee on the wall

See my post on what happened when Edgar Allan Poe met Charles Dickens...

http://www.facebook.com/note.php?note...

The Secret History of Blurbs

See my post on book blurbs in the 19th century and today:

http://www.redroom.com/blog/matthew-p...

Poe obituary review Part IV: A Period to His Existence

(See Part I: First Responders, Part II: Ludwig's Turn, Part III: Of Brandy and Poetry)

This is my final post on the original obituaries of Edgar Allan Poe as we lead up to the bicentennial of his birth. Below is not the most famous of the obituaries, but it is the most informative:

New York Herald, Oct 9, 1849: “Our Baltimore Correspondence. Our city was yesterday shocked with the announcement of the death of Edgar A. Poe, Esq., who arrived in this city about a week since after a successful tour through Virginia, where he delivered a series of able lectures. On last Wednesday, election day, he was found near the Fourth ward polls laboring under an attack of mania a potu, and in a most shocking condition. Being recognized by some of our citizens he was placed in a carriage and conveyed to the Washington Hospital, where every attention has been bestowed on him. He lingered, however, until yesterday morning, when death put a period to his existence. He was a most eccentric genius, with many friends and many foes, but all, I feel satisfied, will view with regret the sad fate of the poet and critic.”

How is it that the Baltimore correspondent for this New York paper knows more than the Baltimore Sun writer whose article we looked at first?

The writer of this piece correctly identifies Poe's purpose in Richmond, where he was delivering lectures. Poe was attempting to raise funds for a magazine he had always hoped to launch.

This finally gives us some details about what happened to Poe in Baltimore. The day and location where he was discovered, for one, is provided. The fourth ward polls refers to Ryan's, an inn and tavern that was being used for state election day that October 3rd.

The fact that it was election day would figure prominently approximately ten years later in the first appearances of a theory of “cooping,” or mistreatment by political thugs. While I find the appeal of the cooping theory limited, I will throw some support to the coopers with this quote from a Poe story, set in the future but reflecting the chaos and fraud of elections in his era:

“Every man ‘voted,’ as they called it – that is to say meddled with public affairs – until, at length, it was discovered that what is everybody’s business is nobody’s, and that the ‘Republic’ (so the absurd thing was called) was without a government at all… that universal suffrage gave opportunity for fraudulent schemes, by means of which any desired number of votes might at any time be polled, without the possibility of prevention or even detection, by any party which should be merely villainous enough not to be ashamed of the fraud” (from Mellonta Tauta)

Now to Poe's condition, about which the Herald correspondent at least tries to be more specific than the other obituaries. Mania a potu was an oft-diagnosed and described delirium from drinking. Since this was overused at the time, more helpful and a bit less subjective is actually “shocking condition,” which starts to put more flesh on the bare bones tale of Poe's demise. Note that the way it's phrased “in a most shocking condition” is separate and in addition to the “mania a potu.”

The obituary even slows down enough to choreograph Poe being placed in a carriage by a few individuals who recognized him. This is right on the money. The man who recognized him at Ryan's was Joseph W. Walker, who wrote this note to another Joseph, Joseph Snodgrass, a local editor and familiar figure. Later, we'd get to see the text of this note:

Baltimore City, Oct 3d 1849
Dear Sir, -
There is a gentleman, rather the worse for wear, at Ryan’s 4th Ward polls, who goes under the cognomen of Edgar A. Poe, and who appears in great distress, & he says he is acquainted with you, and I assure you, he is in need of immediate assistance,
Yours, in haste,
Jos. W. Walker

Snodgrass ends up putting Poe alone in a carriage to the hospital, possibly because Poe had to be positioned lying down and nobody else could fit (the Poe death narrative is one that revolves on small, slow and strange details, which are explicated in full in The Poe Shadow and also in my two part essay “The Poe Death Dossier”, which is linked from www.matthewpearl.com/other.html)

The obituary also identifies the hospital and emphasizes a high level of care, which by all accounts seem true (not to say he was cared for the same way he would be in a modern hospital). The hospital went by several names, and the building is now replaced by condos. I have heard differing accounts on whether there is a plaque somewhere on the spot there or not—I couldn't find one (I believe the condos were under construction when I went).

As far as I know, nobody has found the name of this New York Herald correspondent in Baltimore. I'm not sure that anyone has ever really looked, although I tried a bit. The problem with certain research questions is that if there is no existing source to at least start you off, the answer to a small question might take literally years of dedicated research building up a foundation of information before that question is answerable. In this case, it would involve becoming an expert in the history of the defunct New York Herald. Finding that name could prove helpful to Poe scholarship, since one might be able to trace what else he or she knew.

Remember how Rufus Griswold in his “Ludwig” obituary assured us that few would grieve for Poe's death? This obituary, at least, counters that, commenting that all will view his death with regret.

The Poe obituaries form a first draft of his death narrative. Unfortunately, their vagueness and focus on moral judgments paved the way for more than a century and a half of confusion and misinformation.

I hope you enjoyed this series of posts on the original obituaries. Look for upcoming bicentennial-timed posts on whether Poe was an alcoholic, the myths about Poe, and some Dickens related posts timed for the US release of The Last Dickens in paperback. If you ever have ideas for a subject you'd like me to write a post about, please feel free to suggest!