Mark Dawidziak has a new book out, this one on Edgar Allan Poe. It takes its place on the bookshelf alongside other volumes Dawidziak has written. It’s a varied lot with subjects such as Mark Twain (who he has portrayed on stage for 44 years), Theodore Roosevelt, Richard Matheson and classic TV shows like “Twilight Zone,” “Columbo,” and “Kolchak: the Night Stalker.”
In the new book, Dawidziak makes the point that Poe is completely misunderstood. “Our vision of Poe remains a blurry one, at best,” he writes. “The Poe we know—or think we know—is a grotesque caricature. He’s the sickly pasty guy with the sunken eyes, huddled over a manuscript in an attic, a raven perched on his shoulder. A red-eyed black cat sits among the cobwebs at one hand, a bottle of cognac at the other. We’ve reduced him to this cartoonish image, letting a small part of his literary output completely frame that distorted perception,” noted Dawidziak.
But Poe, famous for writing “The Tell-Tale Heart,” “The Raven,” “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” and “The Cask of Amontillado,” was so much more than a creator of horror tales, Dawidziak told Steve Tarter. In his short life—Poe died under mysterious circumstances at the age of 40 in 1849—Poe’s largest output came as a literary critic and a tough one (nicknamed the tomahawk). He was also an accomplished poet.
“Poe had to find sources of income. He sought to support himself as a professional writer. That was not the norm. Most writers at that time had a day job such as being a teacher,” said Dawidziak.
As a result, Poe wrote a lot—enough to fill 17 volumes when his collected works were published in the early 20th century. “Poe was also funny. He wrote as much comedy as he did horror. We just don’t read the funny stuff,” he said.
Along the way, Poe also created the modern detective story, said Dawidziak, noting that the author "was a dedicated artist who was constantly revising manuscripts."
While Mark Twain’s image has expanded beyond “Huck Finn” and “Tom Sawyer” with the release of writings that showed “he had a lot to say about religion, and the damn human race,” the view of Poe has not similarly been enlarged, said Dawidziak.
“One of the reasons I wrote the book was while the publisher was interested in the mystery of his death, I was more interested in how he lived,” Dawidziak said.
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