Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living (Icons)

Edgar Allan Poe, by the time he wrote down the phrase “The fever called ‘Living’” – in his poem “For Annie” (1849) – was impoverished, in poor health, and desperately lonely, two years after the death of his beloved wife Virginia. The forty-year-old poet was also, though he could not have known it, in his last year of life; by the end of 1849, he would die, under mysterious circumstances and from unknown causes, in a Baltimore hospital. How fitting, then, that Paul Collins has taken the phrase "The Fever Called Living" and made it the subtitle of this brief Poe biography."Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living," with only 107 pages of text, is brief by design. Collins’s book is part of the "Icons" series of concise biographies published by New Harvest, an imprint of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Books published in the series so far include biographies of Jesus of Nazareth, Joseph Stalin, Lucian Freud, J.D. Salinger, Vincent Van Gogh, Alfred Hitchcock, Hannah Arendt, Paul of Tarsus, David Lynch, Benazir Bhutto, and of course Edgar Allan Poe – truly an eclectic list of icons.It is fortunate – and striking, considering the book’s status as part of a series called “Icons” – that Collins, a professor of English at Portland State University, takes the reader’s focus away from Poe as icon, and invites the reader to concentrate on Poe as a hard-working writer. This theme is emphasized right from the book’s beginning; Collins opens with the familiar though now-lapsed tradition of the “Poe Toaster’s” annual late-night visits to Poe’s Baltimore grave on the anniversary of Poe’s birth. But then Collins encourages us to ignore the colorful manifestations of EAP fan culture embodied by the Poe Toaster, “and instead watch the Baltimore Sun reporter taking notes from the perimeter. There, and not amid the weathered tombstones, is the reality of the living and working writer. Poe’s reputation was not earned through tragedy, but in spite of it: he was a careful craftsman of words, and a man whose deep dedication to understanding art is often obscured by the drama around his life” (p. 1).I like that focus and emphasis. Widespread awareness of the difficult circumstances of Poe’s life has no doubt done much to give Poe his, well, iconic status as an embodiment of the Romantic artist whose bleeding heart beats on through one tragedy after another. But Poe was a writer first and foremost, and one who produced some of the greatest American literature, in a variety of genres, under the most difficult circumstances imaginable. That part of Poe’s story is inspiring.Considering the brevity of "Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living," it is doubly impressive that Collins provides persuasive explanations for a number of the mysteries surrounding Poe’s life. When, for example, Collins considers biographers’ puzzlement at the odd scenario of Poe’s foster father John Allan sending the young Poe to the University of Virginia without sufficient funds to study there, Collins suggests that “It is hardly a mystery to any first-generation student. John Allan was an immigrant who never attended college; what he understood was business, secondary schools, and the occasional tutor fee….Of the time and money necessary for college, and its cultivation of sheer intellectual curiosity, he was ignorant” (p. 13).It is a sensible explanation; and that freshness of perspective marks many parts of this biography, as when Collins, looking at Poe’s time as an enlisted man in the United States Army, suggests that “the U.S. Army has the distinction of being the only institution to steadily support and appreciate the talents of Edgar Allan Poe while he was still alive” (p. 20).Collins takes particular care in tracing the development of Poe’s literary art. Poe’s early prose, Collins suggests, while following the sensationalist literary norms of his time, “still lacked a compelling narrator. In particular, a charismatic, manic first-person presence was needed to bring alive Poe’s use of dread and terrified sensation”, because, “though Poe could mock the form [of sensationalism], he hadn’t learned how to transcend it” (p. 25). In contrast, by the time of Poe’s failed verse drama "Politian" (1835), the young writer was learning from his prior mistakes: “With his genius at haunting narrators and an emerging commitment to plot structure, Poe now was growing closer to a mastery of his art” (p. 31).As mentioned above, Collins concentrates well on the practicalities of Poe’s life as a working author. Knowing the vagaries of a writing life – the book is dedicated to Dave Eggers, “who gave me my first break as a writer” – Collins looks at how Poe’s life choices affected his career. When it comes to Poe’s penchant for writing often savage reviews of the work of fellow authors, for instance, Collins writes that “The careers of the author and the reviewer mix with deceptive and dangerous ease. Reviews are quick but paltry money, distracting from the work that makes a writer’s reputation; they are transient in their effect on readers, but lasting in their damage to a writer’s professional relations” (p. 34). Similarly, aspiring writers who think they will make their first mark in short stories before going on to write The Great American Novel might benefit from Collins’s somber advice, in the context of publishers’ repeated rejections of Poe’s proposals of a volume of his short stories, that “authors receive precisely the same rejections from publishers even today. Short fiction sells poorly and is an extravagance barely tolerated even in established writers” (p. 35). So get back to work on that novel, alright?As any Poe biographer should do, Collins recognizes Poe’s singular achievements. Aptly, Collins describes Poe’s 1841 short story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue,” the world’s first true mystery story in the modern sense, as “initiating the world’s most popular genre of fiction”, and therefore as “literally the most influential short story of the nineteenth century” (p. 49). And his later tale of ratiocination “The Purloined Letter” (1844), featuring as it did the same detective character of C. Auguste Dupin, arguably went even further in placing “deductive analysis and problem solving at the center” of the mystery story; “The Purloined Letter” illustrates how the appeal of the mystery genre lies not in bloodshed or violence, but rather in “the bringing of order to disorder, and causality to the seemingly inexplicable” (pp. 59-60)."Edgar Allan Poe: The Fever Called Living" is, as mentioned above, brief; indeed, I would hazard a surmise that authors writing for the Icons series are told very strictly what the word limit for books in this series is. But Collins tells Poe’s sad and compelling story in a concise and effective manner. Edgar Allan Poe may have conquered “the fever called ‘Living’” in 1849, but the literature he wrote has transcended the passage of time.

Edgar Allan Poe is one of the most intriguing writers in American literature. His short life (he died at 40) was productive and inventive. He’s often credited with the invention of the detective story (i.e. “Murders in the Rue Morgue”), and was prolific as a writer of stories, poetry, and criticism. We know him for macabre tales like “Tell-Tale Heart” and the poem, “The Raven.” Few authors invoke such a benighted image.Yet the popular image of Poe is a bit of a dark caricature, reflecting truths but exaggerating features for effect. Part of this exaggeration probably owes to our collective desire to romanticize the tortured artist – and Poe is as tortured as they come. However, some of the exaggeration of Poe’s faults owe to the fact that he was a harsh critic, and at least one of the authors who felt the sting of his pen found an opportunity to amplify the “drug-addled lunatic” aspect of Poe’s nature in a biography after the great author’s death. That’s not to deny that Poe had an addictive personality. He was both an alcoholic and prone to gambling away whatever funds graced his pockets.This short biography (less than 150pp.) gives one insight into Poe’s life from birth to death in five chapters. The first of these chapters describes Poe’s childhood, which was marred by the death of his mother, abandonment by his father, and being taken in -- but not adopted -- by a foster couple. Granted the foster couple was wealthy, but Poe’s foster-father could be a harsh man and the uncertainty of not being formally adopted seemed to have weighed on Poe’s mind.The middle chapters give special attention to Poe’s life as a writer, noting under what circumstances he was published, starting with a self-published chap book and moving through to becoming one of America’s great men of letters (though he never made enough money to live in comfort.) Poe famously married a cousin who was very young (though of legal age) at the time, and we get some insight into that relationship, which ended not terribly long before his own death. The last chapter gives the details of Poe’s demise.I found this book interesting and educational. Collins neither gets lost in the minutiae nor give’s Poe’s life short shrift, and it feels as though he reveals the true Poe and not the T-shirt version. I would recommend this book for fans of Poe’s work and for those who are interested in the literary history of America.

Poe has been a fascinating author for me. Some of his stories I love and re-read again and again. Others have left me cold. I read this book to get a better understanding of Poe and his life and writings. Now I understand much better why his writing has its ups and downs. This may not be for the in-depth researcher, but is is a wonderful launching point with a great bibliography. However, this book covers Poe quite well from his early life through to his final death at an early age. I was amazed at the well known writers, like Walt Whitman, crediting Poe with inspiration. Of course, he wrote the first detective mystery story, and Doyle credits that story with inspiring his Sherlock Holmes creations. I am glad I got this book and appreciate Poe - a very complex, world renowned writer - much more having read this excellent biography.

This is relatively short book that delivers a great deal of information about the life of Edgar Allan Poe. While other biographies go on and on, providing reams of plodding minutia, this presentation gave me all I really cared to know about Poe while informing me about many things I didn’t know about Poe before. And it did that in a manner that kept my attention. Where did his middle name, Allan, come from? What was his marriage to his 13 year old cousin all about? I had vague ideas about his time at West Point, and his having lived in Richmond and Baltimore and New York City. In fact, years ago I happened across his grave in Baltimore, but didn’t understand then what I was really seeing. Poe’s life of incredible creativity and unappreciated genius is an interesting and fascinating story told by Collins in an enjoyable, informative and interesting way.

interesting facs about his life

This is a good short biography summarising the life and work of this tortured genius, effective founder of the modern detective genre and populariser of the horror genre. I have read most of his most famous short stories (Masque of the Red Death, Pit and the Pendulum, Fall of the House of Usher, Cask of Amontillado, Tell-Tale Heart, Murders in the Rue Morgue, the Purloined Letter) a couple of his most famous poems (The Raven and Annabelle Lee), and his only full length novel (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket), but knew only the basic facts about his life. His parents died when he was a small child, and he, his brother and sister were brought up in different families. Poe's "adoptive" father, Mr Allan, never formally adopted him, leaving his legal status as that of an orphan, and refused to support him as he was growing up. Poe's short life was blighted by alcoholism and poverty, despite achieving some literary success in magazines, but which paid a pittance. His home life as an adult was somewhat more stable, and his marriage to his cousin Virginia (whom me married when she was just 13 and he twice her age), and support by his aunt Maria Clemm gave him some periods of happiness. He clearly had a streak of self-destructiveness working against his creativity and his early death at the age of 40 deprived him of the possibility of a longer period of stable creativity in a second marriage to his childhood sweetheart, his wife Virginia having tragically died of consumption at the age of 24. The book finishes with some useful notes and handy recommendations for future reading.