Thursday, January 17, 2008
Why Griswold?
I just wanted to expand on the question that was brought up in class today, why would Poe choose Griswold as his literary executive? I was thinking about it a little more after class and I think that one of his main influences is that he really had respect for a fellow critic. He wanted to have someone with experience write about him with honest to goodness knowledge about him and who he was kind of like it being an honor to him. As a critic himself he would want people to take him seriously and have a true critic represent him. I feel like he wouldn't like a critique about himself that someone with no experience wrote because he knows the true making of a critique. I don't feel like I am representing this idea too clear but let me know if anyone else did any thinking after class about that!
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2 comments:
I think that perhaps Griswold was chosen because of the whole love/hate thing between them, and Poe could really choose no one else. But didn't he change his mind or something, and appoint someone else? I was a bit confused about it.
I certainly do not think it was any kind of self-destructive tendency in Poe. I agree with--I think it was what Adam said--about your friends and how they can talk more about you than some.
It's interesting to think about the Griswold choice in terms of Poe's ability/inability to "read" people. In looking at his correspondence with John Allan, I was struck by how tone deaf Poe could be at times. You'll have a letter in which Poe is begging his foster father for more money, but in a tone that is arrogant and off-putting. I'm thinking here as well of they way in which, after he had already accused Longfellow of plagiarism, twice, he then has the temerity to solicit him to contribute to one of his journals. Seems to tie in with Poe's depiction of the nameless wanderer in "The Man of the Crowd" -- perhaps for Poe, people "do not permit themselves to be read."
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