Edgar Allan Poe's life was a mess. But his work was in his command
26 comments
·March 14, 2025robin_reala
glimshe
Very cool. Are the cover images made with AI or classic paintings?
robin_reala
Classic paintings: everything used on Standard Ebooks productions is old enough to be in the US public domain. The artists are in the colophons if you want to find out more.
light_triad
Here’s a great reading of The Masque of the Red Death:
https://youtu.be/FskFXD-SQpI?si=UYapck6_51LcAi9y
The Simpsons did a famous rendition of The Raven read by James Earl Jones:
porkbrain
He was also into cryptography: https://www.cs.trincoll.edu/~crypto/historical/poe.html
sometimes_all
I was introduced to Poe via "The Cask of Amontillado". After that, I binge-watched The Fall of the House of Usher when it released, which is a mash-up of a lot of Poe's stories (the show didn't have the subtlety of the original work, but was a lot of fun). Now I'm reading all his short stories.
His work is really cool, and I wish I read him earlier.
slowtrek
Was just reading about Churchill's alcoholism in a bio and looks like Poe was right there with him on that front. My favorite Poe visual is the The Masque of the Red Death. Probably wrote it blasted out of his mind.
codr7
Alternatively, his life was exactly what it had to be for him to do what he was supposed to.
Mistletoe
I wonder what he would choose if he knew? A comfortable long life and happiness or to be remembered forever?
doctorhandshake
I don’t remember where I read it but I heard David Lynch recounting a conversation with his doctor in which he asked if being prescribed antidepressants could interfere with his creativity. The doctor said he couldn’t rule it out, so Lynch decided he’d rather deal with the symptoms of depression.
Trasmatta
On the other hand, Lynch also went on record saying that an artist doesn't need to suffer to produce great art. And that depression is the enemy of creativity.
echelon
"long life" is geologically just wishful thinking. We all have the same quality of life outcome when compared against the vastness of time.
What is a billionaire's lavish life to the toil of an artist, inventor, or revolutionary? We all wind up rotting in the blink of an eye. Luxury, pleasure, and dopamine are as fleeting as youth.
It's better to do something of note.
BrandoElFollito
"long life" is quantically super dope. You get to live 10^8 times longer than a meson so you have ample time to profit feom luxury, pleasure and dopamine.
And you have time to avoid philosophical discussions that distract you from the above.
card_zero
If you lived twice as long, you could do two things of note. Twice as better.
jama211
This sounds like some serious copium, we don’t live in the vastness of time, we live now. Not to mention that I can assure you in the vastness of time his work will also be forgotten in an almost as small a “blink of the eye” in geological time.
You could just as easily say “we’ll all end up rotting in the blink of an eye, so better to be happy and enjoy it than waste your time trying pointlessly to do something of note that will be forgotten”.
TheAtomic
Someone should summarize for Poe fans who don't support WaPo.
gcheong
Maybe just read the article through the archive link instead?
ndsipa_pomu
Although Edgar Allan Poe is well known, I think his influence is under appreciated. He pretty much invented the detective story genre with "The Murders in the Rue Morgue" and his "Eureka: A Prose Poem" was early sci-fi that more or less invented the idea of the Big Bang.
shortrounddev2
He was also the primary influence on HP Lovecraft
keiferski
I took a detective fiction course in college and Rue Morgue was indeed the first story we read.
I produced CC0 ebook compilations of Poe’s short fiction and poetry for Standard Ebooks if anyone is interested in diving deeper into his writing: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/edgar-allan-poe
(I’d also recommend Leonid Andreyev’s short fiction; he’s often referred to as Russia’s Poe: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/leonid-andreyev/short-fict... )