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Most-Read Stories Behind the Stories:
No. 5, The Man Who Was Poe

This sum­mer, I’m re-post­ing the 10 Most-Read Sto­ries Behind the Sto­ries from this blog. I’ve rewrit­ten each essay some­what and includ­ed the most-often-asked ques­tion about the book. 

As we con­tin­ue our count­down, this book is #5 on the most-read list, my 21st book.

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The Man Who Was Poe

Some­times Book A leads to Book B. Such was the case for The Man Who Was Poe.

My post, about Some­thing Upstairs, men­tions how I moved to Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island, and how, once there, I began to read about local history.

While doing that I learned that Edgar Allen Poe had impor­tant con­nec­tions to the city: He was try­ing to get mar­ried. Indeed, there is a pho­to­graph of him-often replicated—that was tak­en in Prov­i­dence. The moment is a key part of the book.

When I first wrote Some­thing Upstairs, which deals with time trav­el, I had my hero trav­el back to dif­fer­ent moments of Prov­i­dence his­to­ry. At one such moment, he meets Poe. That mul­ti-time plot struc­ture how­ev­er, did not work well, and I dis­card­ed the mul­ti­ple times, and kept the sto­ry in one time zone.

Nev­er­the­less, I had, so to speak met Poe. More­over, he was (is) fascinating.

There­fore, when Some­thing Upstairs was com­plet­ed, I turned to Poe. It was enor­mous­ly help­ful that many of the places that Poe vis­it­ed when he was in Prov­i­dence, still stand. I could not just vis­it them, but walk the sto­ry almost in its entire­ty. You too, can do that, too.

Odd Fact #1. Part of the sto­ry involves a cod­ed let­ter. Poe, who had been an edi­tor, used print­er’s marks for the code that appears in his book, The Gold Bug. I used the same code for an impor­tant moment in my book. When the print­er of The Man Who Was Poe saw that code, he thought it was gob­bledy-gook, and stripped it from the book. I dis­cov­ered this when look­ing at the first print­ing of the book. I called my edi­tor (Richard Jack­son) Stop press!

Edgar Allan Poe The Gold Bug code
Edgar Allan Poe’s code derived from print­er’s marks for The Gold Bug

A new page had to be print­ed, and the entire first print­ing was recalled and had a new tipped in page with the cor­rect code.

Odd Fact #2. By the time this project first was put togeth­er, I had become friends with the artist, David Macaulay, the illus­tra­tor and writer. A Prov­i­dence res­i­dent, he was teach­ing illus­tra­tion at the Rhode Island School of Design. I asked him if he would do illus­tra­tions for the Man Who Was Poe.

Ini­tial­ly he agreed, but sub­se­quent­ly changed his mind. It is fun to think how the book would have looked if he had done illustrations.

But nev­er mind, Mr. Macaulay won’t dis­ap­pear from these sto­ries. Stay tuned.

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questionMost often asked question:

“How much of the sto­ry is true?”

Poe was in Prov­i­dence, Rhode Island at this time, and he was court­ing a woman whom he hoped to mar­ry. He did have his pho­to­graph tak­en as relat­ed in the book. When­ev­er you see a pho­to of Poe, it is that image you are see­ing. It’s the only one there is.

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