Edgar Allan Poe (11 page)

In ‘The Man that was Used Up’, General Smith provides a counterpoint for the emerging concept of the self-made man in American culture. Smith is a product of the age of invention, which he personally praises. As Psyche Zenobia had questioned her own identity upon being decapitated, ‘The Man that was Used Up’ questions the very meaning of identity. How much of ourselves can we lose and still retain our personal identity? General Smith has lost so much of himself that the fact of his loss now defines him.

The general’s emphasis on the brand names of his various prosthetics makes a comment on modern consumer culture. Much as people nowadays buy name-brand clothing, timepieces and other personal accessories as status symbols, General Smith drops the names of his body parts to emphasize their quality. He relies on these name-brand products to construct his personal identity. Another film analogy: when Mireille Darc loses her Hermès handbag in an auto accident in Jean-Luc Godard’s
Week End
, she feels such a sense of loss that she is willing to risk her life in a burning auto to retrieve it. Those who use brand names to construct their personal identity must guard their possessions for fear of losing themselves. General Smith, too, has constructed his identity from name-brand products. Without them, he is a man who has been used up, nothing more than a nondescript bundle others can easily kick around.

Poe’s contributions to
Burton’s
greatly enhanced the magazine’s quality. ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’, which many consider his finest tale, appeared in September 1839 to widespread acclaim. John Frost, editor of
Alexander’s
, praised the story, calling it ‘a noble and imposing picture, such as can be drawn only by a master hand. Such things are not produced by your slip-shod amateurs in composition.’
¹⁹
Poe, who worked hard throughout his career to emphasize literature as a professional pursuit, found such words especially gratifying. Frost also appreciated ‘William Wilson’, which appeared in
Burton’s
the following month. He recognized the tale’s pictorial quality, too, suggesting that Poe ‘paints with sombre Rembrandt-like tints’.
²⁰

Both ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ and ‘William Wilson’ are highly complex works, neither of which can be reduced to a single interpretation. Like Poe’s other tales of the late 1830s, both play upon the theme of personal identity. Instead of using the idea of dismemberment as he does elsewhere, Poe splits an individual identity between two characters in both of these stories. ‘William Wilson’, the greatest doppelgänger tale in American literature, gives one man an evil nature and the other a moral sense and explores their interrelationship. Similarly, Roderick Usher and his twin sister Madeline represent two halves of a single identity, which only achieves unity in death. These two thought-provoking and carefully crafted tales question to what an extent any individual can integrate the opposing parts of the self.

A frame enlargement of James Sibley Watson and Melville Webber’s
The Fall of the House of Usher
.

To enhance the prestige of
Burton’s Gentleman’s Magazine
further, Poe and Burton devised a contest like no previous one in the history of American journalism. According to their announcement, which appeared in November 1839, the contest would award premiums totalling a thousand dollars. There would be eight separate awards ranging from fifty dollars for a sketch of foreign travel to two hundred and fifty for a series of five tales. The contest attracted submissions from Boston to Baltimore. James Russell Lowell, then a law student at Harvard, entered the contest. So did Joseph Snodgrass.

Poe later wrote to Snodgrass, telling him the contest was all Burton’s idea.
²¹
But Poe’s letters do not always make the best biographical evidence. As Geoffrey Rans observes, ‘In his letters he dramatizes himself to such an extent that the truth is hard to come by.’
²²
The details of the contest suggest that Burton welcomed Poe’s input. The reward for the set of tales indicates the importance Poe placed on story cycles. And the explanation of the judging process reflects Poe’s attitude toward literary professionalism:

Poe was greatly disappointed when Burton cancelled the contest the following year. In retrospect, Burton seemed disingenuous. He just advertised it as a publicity stunt while never intending to fulfil his promise, Poe concluded. The matter of the contest caused a chasm to open in the professional relationship between Burton and Poe.

Though increasingly dissatisfied with different aspects of the magazine, Poe could not deny that his continued association with
Burton’s
was helping him build his name. His ongoing notoriety finally led to the publication of a collected edition of his short stories,
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
. The edition is dated 1840, but publisher Lea and Blanchard issued the book in December 1839. A landmark in American literary history,
Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque
was less a triumph for Poe than it seems now. Before-hand, his publisher told him it did not expect to profit from the book and would issue it solely as a personal favour. After originally agreeing to publish 1750 copies, the firm scaled back the edition, publishing only 750 copies.
²⁴

Poe’s dealings with Lea and Blanchard embittered him toward the literary marketplace. The world of business, which was coming to define American society, upset and dismayed Poe. In early 1840 he launched a satirical attack on a new type of person who was emerging as a major force in American culture, the businessman. The term ‘businessman’ had only recently entered the English language, but Poe’s short story, ‘Peter Pendulum, The Business Man’, codified, albeit satirically, the defining characteristics of the type. Poe first published the story in the February 1840 issue of
Burton’s
. He later revised and greatly expanded it, changing the title to ‘The Business Man’ and changing the name of his narrator-protagonist to Peter Proffit.

Whether named Peter Pendulum or Peter Proffit, Poe’s character exemplifies the traits of the American businessman, who shifts from one frivolous endeavour to another to make a buck. The story applies as much today as it did in the 1840s. The stereotypical businessman switches careers frequently, always looking for a better opportunity. Devoid of aesthetic sensibilities, he thinks nothing of uglying up the town for the sake of profit. He also seems willing to sacrifice his personal identity for money. In Peter Proffit’s case, making a buck becomes more important than making a name. Wearing the clothing of the tailors who employ him, he sacrifices his personal identity and transforms himself into a mannequin. Like General Smith, he becomes a walking advertisement for the products he wears.

While working for Burton, Poe also contributed to
Alexander’s Weekly Messenger
. His anonymous contributions treat a variety of subjects from beetroot to bloodhounds, revivals to railroads. ‘Enigmatical and Conundrum-ical’, his earliest known contribution to
Alexander’s
, challenges readers to submit cryptograms for him to solve, the harder the better. Submissions were soon forthcoming. Poe rose to the challenge and solved several puzzles. He ultimately quit solving puzzles for
Alexander’s
, not because they got too difficult but because they grew too numerous. He would later demonstrate his cryptographic skills in
Graham’s Magazine
and make a cryptographic puzzle an essential part of ‘The Gold-Bug’.

Poe’s interest in cryptography reflects a broader issue that forms a prominent motif in his fiction: how can the apparent hold hidden messages? He was inspired by another neglected work that formed a part of his modest personal library,
Select Pieces on Commerce, Natural Philosophy, Morality, Antiquities, History, &c
. (1754).
²⁵
This anthology of mid-eighteenth-century magazine articles contains an essay by Willem Jacob’s Gravesande about coded messages, presenting different forms of secret writing and showing how to decipher them. ‘The Gold Bug’, in turn, inspired another prominent cryptographer, Leo Marks, head of agents’ codes and ciphers at Special Operations Executive (
SOE
) during World War
II
. Marks decided to become a cryptographer after he encountered ‘The Gold Bug’ as a boy at his father’s antiquarian bookshop at 84 Charing Cross Road. He was also indebted to Poe’s psychological tales of terror: Marks would later write the screenplay for Michael Powell’s
Peeping Tom
.

‘The Daguerreotype’, perhaps the most important article Poe contributed to
Alexander’s
, presents an appreciation of the newly invented process of photography. Years would pass before the photogravure process emerged, but the invention of the daguerreotype contributed to the proliferation of engraved portraiture. Formerly, engravings had been based on paintings, but now they could be patterned on photographs. Editors encouraged authors to have daguerreotypes taken so that their portraits could be published with their writings. Suddenly, establishing a literary reputation not only involved making a name, it also involved cultivating a personal image.

As a weekly magazine,
Alexander’s
was not in direct competition with the monthlies, so Burton did not mind Poe’s contributions to it. Actually, Poe used the pages of
Alexander’s
to promote
Burton’s
. In one contribution, Poe called the issue of
Burton’s
containing ‘Peter Pendulum’ ‘one of the best specimens, if not the very best specimen, of a monthly Magazine, which has yet been issued in this country’.
²⁶
Poe also contributed to the
Daily Chronicle
, the newspaper Alexander published. In May 1840 he published brief appreciations of two fellow authors, F. W. Thomas and Jesse Erskine Dow, in the
Chronicle
. These articles provide a clue to what was happening in Poe’s personal life this month.

Before meeting Dow personally, Poe knew him as the author of ‘Sketches from the Log of Old Ironsides’, a series of articles that had appeared in
Burton’s
over the previous nine months. Dow’s sketches were based on his personal experience as private secretary to Commodore Jesse Duncan Elliot aboard the
US
Constitution
. Now working as a clerk in the Post Office Department in Washington, Dow came to Philadelphia in May 1840 as a witness in Elliot’s court martial. While in town, he naturally sought out the man who had supervised the publication of his sketches.

This same month Poe also met Cincinnati novelist F. W. Thomas. Poe had reviewed
Clinton Bradshaw
, Thomas’s first novel, for the
Southern Literary Messenger
. Thomas came to Philadelphia this May seeking a publisher for his new novel,
Howard Pinckney
. He greatly respected Poe’s opinion and sought him out in Philadelphia. Poe apparently met Thomas soon after meeting Dow and introduced the two men. All three became fast friends, often gathering to discuss literature at the hotel kept by John Sturdivant at the corner of Chestnut and Third Streets next door to Congress Hall.

It is impossible to know exactly what the three said to each other at Sturdivant’s hotel, but a letter from Poe to Thomas fondly recalls ‘those literary and other disquisitions about which we quarrelld at Studevant’s’.
²⁷
Thomas’s memory of their conversations reflects similar sentiments, though he often listened while Poe and Dow spoke: ‘It was delightful to hear the two talk together and to see how Poe would start at some of Dow’s “strange notions” as he called them.’
²⁸

Poe candidly expressed his opinion about
Howard Pinckney
, evaluating it in terms of Thomas’s reputation:

Poe’s advice reveals the danger involved after an author establishes a name: stagnation. Once an author gets known for a certain style, the reading public expects him or her to continue writing in that same style. By doing so, authors can sustain their initial reputation. To progress as an artist, however, an author must experiment with different approaches, different styles. Making a name is not enough: an author must be willing to put that name on the line with each new work.