Catherine Baab-Muguira - Poe for Your Problems: Uncommon Advice from Historys Least Likely Self-Help Guru

If comedy is tragedy plus time, then Edgar Allan Poes life reads like a punchlinejust one long, sad trombone.

Heres the short, oversimplified version: Everyone got sick and everyone died, starting with both Poes parents before he turned three. A wealthy family adopted him, but only in an informal sense. He lived with them, but he never really belonged, and about the time he reached eighteen, Poe found himself penniless and disowned, forced to craft his masterpieces in cold, dirty, rented rooms.

Later, his beloved wife, Virginia, contracted the same disease that had killed his biological parents, and he became, at lastby his own accountinsane, with long intervals of horrible sanity. Every hand that fed him, he chomped. Every bridge he could burn, he torched. Finally, in October 1849, Poe collapsed in the street outside a tavern, and his career of provocation and troublemaking ground to a halt. In a literal gutter. Yet what followed was even worse.

Poes greatest frenemy, Rufus W. Griswold, wrote his obituary. Publishing his insults under a pseudonym, Griswold told the world that Poe was a cynical, depraved drunk, with no friends, who had only ever used his talent for spite.

The twist? That hit job of an obit turned out to be pretty good PR. Not only did Poes colleagues and (in fact, numerous) friends sprint to his defense, the notoriety that the obit helped create caused a scandal-loving public to seek out his work as never before. You could say that, in the end, Poes feuds, mistakes, and missteps worked out for him. Or you could say they werent mistakes or missteps at allinstead a series of brilliant career moves and an astoundingly effective system for success. Anyone can get to the top doing all the right things. To make it to the top doing all the wrong things? Now that takes genius.

Today, nearly two hundred years since his death, millions of people across the globe know and love Poe. Hes recognized as one of the most brilliant, original, and influential writers of all time. His poetry and short stories have been translated into every major language and adapted for every new technology, from radio broadcasts to web series to memes. The film and TV adaptations alonenot to mention the references everywhere from The Simpsons to South Park to Jordan Peeles Usare so numerous it would take ten pages to list them all. He has an awfully long IMDB profile for someone born in 1809.

Poes fans have included highbrow elites like Vladimir Nabokov and Alfred Hitchcock, and hes enjoyed off-the-charts pop success, too. Baltimore named its NFL team the Ravens. Lou Reed, Joan Baez, and Stevie Nicks have all either recorded songs about Poe or put his words to music. The Beatles stuck him in the top row, eighth from the left, on the cover of Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. In 2001, Britney Spears kicked off her Dream Within a Dream Tour, while actress Evan Rachel Wood has the final two lines of that poem inked in black across her upper back. As we speak, Sylvester Stallone is trying to produce a Poe biopic. (Hey, Sly, maybe combine it with Rambo 6 ?)

And if you should feel like raising a toastwell, in 2015, Marylands RavenBeer rolled out Annabel Lee White, a wheat beer angels envy, and in 2018, a Philadelphia distillery launched a whiskey called Fortunatos Fate. Who wouldnt want to achieve such high-proof prominence, putting so many others under their influence? We should all be so lucky.

Yet somehow the notoriety lingers. Despite Poes unparalleled worldwide renown, we continue to conceive of him as a neer-do-welljust some hopeless, almost Chaplin-esque loserwhen the question we should be asking is, Whats his secret? In a better world, Poe would be considered a self-help guru on par with Oprah, Deepak Chopra, the 4-Hour Workweek guy, Gwyneth Paltrow, or Dr. Laura Schlesinger. As it is, we celebrate the work but sadly underrate the man.

Except were not making a mistake about just one man. Were making a mistake about renegades, rebels, and outcasts more generally. Were also making a very big mistake in being so certain that we know which creative, professional, and even existential strategies workand which ones are dead ends. Success on Poes scale doesnt just happen. It isnt solely a matter of genius, either. It requires a unique vision, and more than that, the fortitude, the determination, the narcissism, and the megalomania to hew to that vision no matter what anyone else says.

It is true Poes life was a dumpster fire. Thats precisely the point. He dealt with horrendous circumstances. He had amply justifiable mental-health issues as well as an impossible personality, and he lived in an absurdly depressing era full of racism, sexism, classism, injustice, misfortune, poverty, disease, and death. You and I live in such an era, too. In a screwed-up world, why not look to the most screwed-up writer of all time for advice on navigating the daily dumpster fires of our own lives? Who better to inspire us as we struggle through our own absurdly depressing time?

Personally, I love nothing more than when a misanthropic supposed loser is later wildly, spectacularly vindicated. It is like hearing that your own lifeno matter this foreclosure youre facing, or the musty Uber youre driving right nowmight also end in the best-case scenario. And no one could be more qualified than Poe when it comes to teaching us how to fight through our suffering, how to keep hustling in the face of despair, and how to apologize for getting too drunk (all while ordering another round for the house, on me!). In short, how to take the crapola weve been handed and spin it into gold, like Poe did.