LITERAL REMAINS

I assume, if it is safe to do so, that I became familiar with the works of Edgar Allan Poe as most people did, and I guess still do:  school.  If I remember correctly it was sometime around grammar school that I was introduced to Poe.  I don’t remember what grade I was in, but I know I was still so very young, and our teacher played a record (a vinyl record, yep) of a recitation of “The Raven”.  I want to say Basil Rathbone was the performer, but that’s just one more thing that is foggy.  I do remember it hit  me like a sledgehammer, the flow of the words, the sounds, the images.  I fell instantly in love.

Considering all the stuff my classmates and I were forced to read until our emancipation from the Bedford County Public School System, Poe was always a bright spot.  He was always there to shed a little joy and fun among the likes of Charles Dickens, George Elliot, and Pearl S. Buck.  Nothing against them, mind you, it’s just that what I was forced to read of Dickens wasn’t to my tastes, at the time at least.  And to this day, I can do without The Good Earth.

One summer while on parole from the aforementioned education system, sometime in my middle school years, I checked out a book of Poe’s complete works from the public library.  Checked it out, and checked it out, and checked it out.  I spent that summer reading “The Raven”, over and over, but also getting to know “The Black Cat”, “The Murders In the Rue Morgue”, “The Fall of the House of Usher”, and “The Masque of the Red Death”.  It was from that summer that I learned something about Poe that I not only admired him for, but that I admire about a lot of great writers:  like the best of the best, he varied.  He was more than horror.  Poe wrote fantasy, whimsy, adventure, mystery, romantic poetry.  He was all over the place.  What if Stephen King or Clive Barker wrote only horror?  Never let it be.

If you have never delved into the great, wondrous, depths that is the body of work of Edgar Allan Poe, do so.  Dive in blind; wherever you land will be a magical place.  You may shudder, you may laugh, but you will be glad to have made the leap.  On this anniversary of his birth, raise a glass of cognac (or amontillado, if you prefer) toast the man and his legacy, thankful that his shadow still falls over us, and his soul from out that shadow that lies floating on the floor shall be lifted – nevermore!

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