Fact-Checking Edgar Allan Poe

Dear Edgar,

Thank you for the opportunity to review your latest literary offerings.

We always appreciate receiving submissions from you here at Heritage Press, we really do.

Your unique ‘take’ on current and past events, your exploration of the dark forces of fate, your examination of intense personal relationships, and the importance of unknowable and often terrifying inner drives, bring a perspective to the human experience that we just don’t see anywhere else. Anywhere else at all. If one of the big problems in the world is that people are too happy, your work brings a sure antidote.

That was quite a packet of material you sent! You’ve been busy, busy, busy!

Just to take a first cut at the pieces we ran them by our internal fact-checking unit.

These guys may be new to you but they’re the latest thing in the publishing industry. They check dates and locations and what-not, just to make sure everything ‘jibes.’

In the haste of composition the author may get a spelling wrong, or write Springfield, Missouri when he really meant Springfield, Massachusetts. That kind of thing. Maybe now and again take a run at ‘believability,’ you know, is the reading public going to buy the premise of the story and the way it is spun out? That kind of thing.

I include some of their remarks here:

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Report From Fact-Checking Department

Author: Edgar Allan Poe

Titles: Several, see below.

Bill, Dan, Mary, as requested we got to these as soon as we could.

They make for very interesting reading and we commend the author on his vibrant, even wild, even somewhat crazed imagination.

We have tried to keep personal opinion out of the mix and simply attempted to ascertain how some of these pieces will be received by the reading public who are, after all, our customers.

Take these for what they are: thoughts on the fly, quick takes if you will, looking at the pieces from one angle only, that of believability.

The Raven

We all got a kick out of The Raven! People love animals, especially talking animals. Having said that….

I know it seems like nit-picking, but if you say the words ‘talking bird’ to me, to any of us really, we think things like ‘Polly wants a cracker,’ or ‘top o’ the morning to ya!’

I don’t have to tell you, this bird is quite a bit different.

In other books we have read, talking birds usually have several lines of memorized dialogue that can move the plot forward.

You know, like when the lone unmarried daughter of Lord Eversley, Marquee of Dampenshire, sits alone in her room dwelling on her hopeless love for the roguish supposed commoner – but really royalty in disguise – Hal Gooderman, and she turns to her parrot or whatever and asks, ‘will I never find true love, Dolly?” and Dolly replies ‘surely so,’ or ‘give it a bit of time,’ or ‘ask again later.’

You see, there’s a variety of response there that can take the plot in several directions.

This bird in the attached says only one word throughout this whole poem! One word! Who teaches their bird only a single word?

If you can somehow get a bird to talk wouldn’t you teach it something besides the word ‘Nevermore’?

I’m not sure this will be received as credible by our readers.

A lot of the rest of the poem was um, depressing, and a lot of it we really didn’t ‘get.’

We’ll Just leave it at that.

The Tell-Tale Heart

Well, two counts against this one.

If I understood correctly, and it took several readings, the guy, the narrator, plots to murder the old man because he doesn’t like his eye?

His eye?

If people killed each other because they took exception to physical characteristics of others there wouldn’t be any of us left!

Why, I have a brother-in-law who will be glad to tell you that he ‘throws some metal around at the gym’ – his words, not mine – he ‘throws some metal around at the gym’ three times a week and so he’s always wearing these short sleeve shirts that fit tight around his biceps because the shirt is two sizes too small, but that doesn’t mean I want to kill him! Not always at least!

Now, he also, this same brother-in-law, when he is at a four way stop, will impatiently motion other drivers through in the order he thinks they should go. Who appointed him traffic cop? That’s what I want to know. I hate these four way stop gesture guys, but I don’t fantasize about going around murdering them and then placing their bodies under the floorboard. Or not all the time anyway.

Anyway, that’s one thing.

The other is the narrator is supposed to be driven to distraction by the beating of the dead man’s heart under the floorboards. I don’t want to be obvious, but the guy’s d-e-a-d. There’s just not a lot of heart-beating going on in those circumstances.

A major plot hole.

Enough said.

The Cask of Amontillado.

Whoaa, major grudge action going on here!

I’m not a generous judge of character myself but even I wouldn’t wall a guy up into a makeshift vertical tomb, having first chained him to the wall in this recess in a catacomb-like place, because ‘he ventured upon insult.’

I mean, who does that?

I suppose the story holds together well enough, if you accept the whacked-out premises, but I will say we don’t hear a thing about the quality of the bricks and especially of the mortar.

Mr. Poe goes to some length to describe the underground passages as dank and dripping and what-not. Well, I can tell you from personal experience – three tries at building that damned wall in the basement rec room, three! – that you’re not going to end up with a successful project if you just go with the stuff on the display at the front of the store by the checkout counters.

Under these conditions you are for sure going to have to go with a rapid set waterproofing mortar. It is relatively easy to use and mixes well and delivers excellent bonding. Abrasion resistant as well. It’ll set you back a few more dollars, but well worth it. Tell Poe that ought to hold the sucker!

Absent some thoughtful decisions about materials and equipment, the guy inside more or less just has to wait a few days for the wall to crumble of its own accord and he can carry on a friendly conversation with any tourist passing overhead. He’ll be slugging down the wine again in no time, issuing insults and what-not, and then where does that leave the narrator?  

The pressures of fact-checking all the other books we have in the queue preclude us from going into depth on the other Poe manuscripts, I’ll just touch on the fact that houses seldom actually split in two and tumble to the ground (The Fall of the House of Usher), people very rarely get buried alive (The Premature Burial), and sometimes it is better to just say ‘this big old clock in the corner chimed’ instead of

“It was in this apartment, also, that there stood against the western wall, a gigantic clock of ebony. It's pendulum swung to and fro with a dull, heavy, monotonous clang; and when the minute-hand made the circuit of the face, and the hour was to be stricken, there came from the brazen lungs of the clock a sound which was clear and loud and deep and exceedingly musical, but of so peculiar a note and emphasis that, at each lapse of an hour, the musicians of the note orchestra were constrained to pause, momentarily, in their performance, to harken to the sound and thus the waltzers perforce ceased their evolutions; and there was a brief disconcert of the whole gay company; and, while the chimes of the clock yet rang, it was observed that the giddiest grew pale, and the more aged and sedate passed their hands over their brows as in confessed revery or meditation” (The Masque of the Red Death)

Sometimes the simple touch is the author’s friend! ‘This big old clock in the corner chimed’ and leave it at that. Just leave it at that. Does the job just as well and saves on printer’s ink and paper.

Well, I could go on, but most of our comments are of the same nature. Most of these stories just don’t pass the ‘sniff’ test, and the reader is likely to put off by the many digressions from what might be called normal human nature or an ordinary chain of events.

He is however your author and you’ll know best if the audience is out there for this stuff.

Just my two cents worth. Back to the salt mines!

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Back to me, Edgar, Bill here in the front office.

Well, you see the kind of pushback I’m getting from inside these walls.

I think it’s fair to say that your fine pieces aren’t right for us just now. Good stuff! Great writing! Doesn’t mean there’ll never be a good fit! Don’t kill the messenger and be coming around here to wall me up alive in some catacomb, ha! Just kidding.

I know you wouldn’t do that.

Tell you what, let’s give a few months, say five or six years, maybe you make some of the suggested revisions, maybe you don’t – hey, you’re the author! – and then run these past us again. Maybe there’ll be a change in the market and we’ll start to see a taste for these fine vignettes emerge.

Sound like a deal?

Keep writing, my friend, a lot of this shows real promise and we’d love to be the ones to put your best stuff before the public. Someday.

Yours truly,