Generations stop and wonder when the Mad Hatter asks Alice why a crow is like a writing desk. The answers range from Lewis Carroll’s “because it can make some notes” to Aldous Huxley’s “because both have ‘b’ and neither have ‘n'”. It was an exquisite brain fire.
Recreational mathematician (yes, some people do math for fun) Sam Lloyd was the poet and mathematician Carroll and the multifaceted Edgar Allan Poe (January 19 – October 7, 1809 Day, 1849).
There was another line between the two – Carroll wrote the wild and wonderful Adventures of Alice in Wonderland for ten-year-old Alice Pleasance Liddell. Huxley married when she was 13 and his wife when he was 26. By the way, Huxley explained that Poe’s writing was too flashy, like “a diamond ring on every finger.”
Depictions of Poe in popular culture lean toward the tortured genius, but the Bostonians were sharp critics, and Fireside poet James Russell Lowell’s famous Poe comment uses “hydrocyanic acid instead of ink.” are doing.
In the recent film adaptation of Lewis Bayard’s novel Pale Blue Eyes (2003), Harry Melling plays Poe, a bright West Point cadet who assists detectives in solving horrific crimes. It seems natural that the father of detective fiction is Holmes from Watson to Lander (Christian Bale). We all know the famous resident of 221B Baker’s Street, whose creator Arthur Conan his Lord Doyle, with the words “Where was the detective story until Poe breathed life into it?” I paid my respects to Poe.
source of inspiration
Having solved The Murders In The Rue Morgue (1841), The Mystery Of Marie-Roger (1842), And Found The Stolen Letter (1844), Auguste Dupin created whodunnits, locked-room mysteries, and the template of the detective himself. Set up. As Doyle comments, each story is “the root from which the whole literature has developed.”
Murders in the Rue Morgue presents the prototype of Dupin’s amateur detective and unnamed narrator Watson. Thankfully, at least, Watson has a backstory and a life to follow, even though that Jezair bullet seems to be traveling from limb to limb.
The two men share a room with Dupin and charm the narrator with his analytical mind. Two women were brutally murdered and her two bags of gold lie untouched in her fourth-floor room, which was locked from the inside. Witnesses claim to have heard two voices. One is a French-speaking man, and another he speaks in a language that no one can accurately identify. The solution that Dupin arrived at through the process of rationalization is poignant — poor confused orangutan!
Doyle’s Scandal in Bohemia is similar to The Stolen Letter, but the female Irene Adler beats Holmes. Known for his detective and short story inventions, Poe’s macabre tales have inspired countless fear practitioners, from H.P. Lovecraft to suspense maestro Alfred Hitchcock.
The Pale Blue Eye takes its title from Poe’s disturbing short story The Tell-Tale Heart, which tells how an unnamed narrator murders a benefactor after loathing them for their pale blue eyes. . Murders in bathtubs, dismemberments, and burials under floors once again inspired many thriller writers.
In tales like The Black Cat, The Cask of Amontillado, and The Fall of House Usher, madness and murder are Poe’s signature tricks, but the dead are rarely silent, at least for the permanent. There is a theory that Poe was avenging his literary rivals with the gruesome crimes of his stories. It seems like a long stretch, much like Bob Dylan’s “Positively 4th Street” seems aimed at his critics. Dylan also mentions a hungry woman in the Rue Morgue who will spoil you.
Detective, check, horror, check, wait From Poe’s work, cosmology (he was thinking about the big bang theory 80 years ahead) and cryptography (Gold Bug, which inspired US Army cryptographers, You can dig further from William Friedman’s Lifelong Interest in Code. .
science fiction
In science fiction, Jules Verne was inspired by Poe’s only novel, The Tale of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838). About Poe’s novel.
Hank Pym, Ant-Man in the Marvel Cinematic Universe, is a quantum physicist, possibly descended from Arthur Pym in another universe.
Poe’s unexplained death at age 40, incoherent and in someone else’s clothes, is the greatest mystery of all, and has spawned many theories and stories, including Matthew Pearl’s “Shadow of Poe.” is not surprising.
From books and graphic novels to television, movies, radio plays, and Edgars, Poe is as constant as a crow and a writing desk, and there is no sign of it ever being anywhere on the horizon.
