Books With Staying Power

I accepted a Facebook challenge a few weeks ago: "Choose 20 books that have stayed with you or influenced you. One book per day for 20 days, in no particular order. No explanations, no reviews, just covers."

It was an enjoyable exercise that made me think about titles and authors and what has given them longevity in my life. But it was hard not to comment on my rationales. So I decided to do that here, hopeful it might inspire others to do the same. 

My first choice is I Am Legend (1954) by Richard Matheson, a stone-cold classic I reread every few years. In very few pages—it's more of a novella—Matheson creates a world ravaged by a virus that turns most of the population into vampires. The protagonist, Robert Neville, is one of the few survivors. He lives a life of isolation, foraging for supplies and killing vampires by day, hiding in his fortified house by night as his neighbors surround the house and taunt him. 

I love the new twist on classic vampire stories, including a pseudo-scientific rationale for the creatures, the post-apocalyptic, urban setting, Neville's resourcefulness, and—most of all—the incredible perspective shift at the conclusion that makes the reader recognize that "normal" and "abnormal" are concepts that depend on majority consensus. 

I Am Legend has been adapted into several movies. The best is The Last Man on Earth (1964), with Vincent Price as Neville. Other attempts are The Omega Man (1971), with Charlton Heston, and a 2007 version with Will Smith, the first to keep the novel's title. 

My first edition of the book is the Science Fiction Book Club edition shown above, but I gave it away many years ago. I now have a smaller paperback that includes some of Matheson's short stories. 

The Illustrated Tales of Edgar Allan Poe (1975) features photographs from various American International Pictures adaptations of his work. The book contains no copyright credits, so the provenance is sketchy—appropriate for the stories of villains, scoundrels, and homicidally disturbed people inside. 

Upping the macabre factor, the book came to me through dubious circumstances. It's a former library book that was stolen (not by me) from the stacks. As I read stories like "The Black Cat" and "The Tell-Tale Heart," where criminals were revealed and sometimes met with gruesome fates, Childhood Me dreaded some type of cosmic retribution for not returning the book. (I still have it, as the ratty photo above attests.) Adding to the unsettling vibe is the graffiti of some young Rembrandt who added obscene comments to some of the photos. I didn't know what a "gronk" was until I saw the word issuing from Vincent Price's mouth on page 67. I used my context clues and figured it out.

As a kid, I loved Poe because he expanded my vocabulary. It was a struggle to figure out what was going on in some of his stories (the Latin at the start of "The Fall of the House of Usher" flummoxed me), but the plots were similar to what I was enjoying in various comic books of the time. Ironically, Poe's ambition was to be a great poet and magazine editor. The stories for which he is so famous today, and which make up the bulk of this and many other collections of his work, were quick one-offs written for money, always in short supply for the author. 

When asked to name my favorite short story, "The Cask of Amontillado" is often my answer. It is the perfect example of Poe's famous dictate about the "unity of effect" (see his Philosophy of Composition). Every incident, line, and detail in the story leads to the moment when Montresor buries Fortunato alive in the catacombs beneath the former's home. Why? "For the thousand injuries" that Fortunato has given him, although the reader never learns what these are. The ending also frustrates the hope that good always wins out over evil. Fifty years after the crime, Montresor still hasn't been caught. Not even the Latin at the end—In pace requiescat!—kept me from recognizing the badassery at work here. 

I had hoped to cover all twenty books quickly, but this is taking longer than expected. More titles and reminisces to come! 

Get your zombie on!

I'm a sucker for anthologies, and Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! is a very good one. 

Truthfully, I'm not even a super fan of zombies. I mean, I like Night of the Living Dead and The Walking Dead, although I'm a bigger fan of the latter's comic-book incarnation than the TV show adaptation. And World War Z, 28 Days Later, and a few other zombie-centric movies are OK, too. 

But my go-to supernatural creature has always been the vampire. 

Nevertheless, I can't quibble with the breadth and depth of editor Otto Penzler's zombie volume, published in 2011. He's packed many drooling, shuffle-footed examples into every one of this book's 810 pages. 

It helps that Penzler's definition of a zombie is very liberal: If it was once dead and has come back to life, it's a zombie. Fair enough. This book is jam-packed with scary stuff from Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Richard Laymon, Guy de Maupassant, and dozens more. 

One reason I like anthologies is that readers can dip into them as frequently or infrequently as they desire. A few months ago, I read the Robert E. Howard classic, "Pigeons from Hell" in this volume. Last week, Theodore Sturgeon's "It" caught my attention. 

("It," by the way, predates the muckman-in-comics craze—Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, et al.—by several decades. It's also a heckuva story. Penzler says that Sturgeon "was admired by, and was an influence on, his peers far disproportionate to his success with readers." That may be, but I really enjoy "It.")

I may well put Zombies! Zombies! Zombies! aside for a few weeks or months, but I know another story is waiting whenever I get the urge for things that go shuffle in the night. 

I'm always on the hunt for more good anthology titles. Share any favorites! 

Remembering Edgar Allan Poe

Some musings about the great E.A. Poe, written and published in 2019, on the week of his 213th birthday.

“To vilify a great man is the readiest way in which a little man can himself attain greatness,” said Edgar Allan Poe.

It is an apt quote from the famed American writer and poet, whose 210th birthday is celebrated on Jan. 19. After his passing in 1849, Poe’s rival, a little man named Rufus Griswold, wrote an unflattering obituary, amplifying Poe’s personal faults. Griswold later admitted to Poe’s literary genius, but opined that it was “in a singular degree wasted or misapplied.”

Rather than destroying Poe’s reputation, however, Griswold’s calumny may have had the opposite effect. The website of the Poe Museum speculates that the criticism fostered further interest in Poe. Griswold certainly cemented the writer’s reputation, especially among readers who enjoy believing that the writer’s life was as lurid and morbid as his most famous stories, including “The Fall of the House of Usher” and “The Cask of Amontillado.”

Just how unhappy Poe’s life may have been is a matter of some conjecture. Aficionados know the lowlights.

Poe was born in Boston in 1809 and orphaned by the age of 3. He was taken in — but not adopted — by John Allan and his wife, Frances, of Richmond, Virginia. He studied at the University of Virginia, where he amassed a considerable gambling debt in an attempt to pay for his studies. He did not graduate. A later stint at the United States Military Academy at West Point ended with his dismissal.

His fiancee became engaged to another man. He later married his 13-year-old cousin, Virginia Clemm, a fact that incites equal measures of nervous laughter and disgusted looks among high school freshman when they first hear it.

Poe’s dream of becoming a great poet clashed with his constant poverty, and a series of low-paying editorial jobs often ended in termination, either because of his nettlesome personality, penchant for drinking or both.

After his wife’s death from tuberculosis, Poe reconnected with his first fiancee, who was now widowed, and they planned to marry. But then Poe disappeared while on a trip to New York and Philadelphia. When he resurfaced five days later, in Baltimore, he was drunk and raving. He died shortly after, from causes that have been variously attributed to alcoholism, rabies, and even election fraud.

While this has every appearance of a sordid life story, it must be countered with what were undoubtedly pleasant years and events, including a marriage that was, despite the strangeness of its origins, happy; his tenure with the Southern Literary Messenger in Baltimore, where he came into his own as a magazine writer; and the smash success of his poem, “The Raven,” which brought him fame, but not fortune.

Whether these moments were enough to counter the many setbacks Poe encountered is unknown. It’s easy to believe that, because Poe chose such morbid topics for his poetry and fiction, his life must have been equally bleak. Yet authors, like the rest of us, are more than the sum of the milestones from their biographies, and lurking behind Poe’s tragedies and addiction might have been a contented person.

Happiness, however, doesn’t sell as many books.

Ironically, for a man who struggled with debt for most of his life, Poe’s works in the years since his death have generated millions of dollars. His creation of the detective story spawned the mystery genre, which continues to sell more books than anything other than romance, year after year. His stories and poetry have been printed in countless editions and have been adapted for stage, screen, videogames and podcasts.

Those last are especially apt, as Poe was also a visionary. In the 1840s, he correctly read the trends and recognized that magazines were the future of publishing, reflecting Americans’ penchant for shorter works, delivered more often and more efficiently. If he were alive today, he would be tweeting out his stories in 280-character bursts or publishing them as eBooks on Amazon, I’m convinced.

As for Rufus Griswold, perhaps his biggest contribution was disproving the Poe quote at the top of this column. Like Aaron Burr to Alexander Hamilton, Griswold lives on as only a footnote in the life story of a writer far greater than he.

So raise a glass and a book to Edgar Allan Poe this month. His short life spawned literary immortality.