Mystery of Mysteries: the Death and Life of Edgar Allan Poe

 

Edgar Allan Poe is a fascinating man. Dawidziak argues that our modern day image of him: a melancholy, tortured poet, hunched over a candle in a cobwebbed garret, a black raven perched on a bookshelf behind him--is not entirely accurate. Poe, while best known for his thrilling horror stories and poems, wrote quite a bit in his lifetime, from humorous pieces to literary criticism and yes, horror. People who knew Poe described him as an entertaining companion. He went to West Point and served in the military, and enjoyed swimming and other physical pursuits. 

Poe's mysterious death has only added to the legend. Poe was found in a daze in Baltimore, wearing clothes that were not his. His cause of death is still unknown, although many theories have been put forward. One of the most popular is that Poe was a victim of a practice called "cooping", where during an election, gangs would roam the streets and kidnap people, take them to polling places, and have them vote the way they wanted them to, change their clothes, and take them back to vote again. Usually these gangs would use alcohol or drugs to make their victims compliant. It's possible that Poe suffered from tuberculosis (which killed both his parents, his older brother, and his wife). It was dormant until a severely stressful situation (such as cooping) and then swiftly ended his life. It's just a theory, and there are many others that are equally plausible. It's just interesting to contemplate. 

Deliberate Cruelty

 

Truman Capote is a fascinating man. I've read almost everything he's written, and "In Cold Blood" was an exceptional book (it's fiction, not true crime, just so we're clear). Montillo weaved together the story of Capote's life with that of Ann Woodward. Ann was born poor and grew up in Kansas, raised by her single mother who, quite frankly, deserves to be held up in the highest regard. This woman worked her butt off in a time when it wasn't easy to be a woman, let along a single mother. She went to school and earned degrees and moved to try to make a better life for herself and her daughter. She started her own taxi service, only to have the employees screw her over and she had to start all over again from scratch. Ann looked at her hardworking mother with contempt, vowing to become an actress and lead a glamorous life. 

She moved to New York and moved her way up the social ladder, eventually marrying Billy Woodward, Jr., the only son of William Woodward Sr. She and Billy got along well at first, but the thing that attracted Billy to Ann was her lack of refinement and polish. Billy had a mother and four older sisters who were graceful and charming and classy, and he'd had his fill. He wanted authentic and spontaneous, which Ann was initially. But *she* wanted to be like Billy's mother and older sisters, and started taking lessons to become more refined. Their marriage unraveled. 

Billy made a trip out to Kansas to buy an airplane, and ended up getting quite an earful from the townsfolk where Ann grew up. He learned that she had lied to him (most notably, her father wasn't dead) and was thrilled with the information he gathered, essentially wanting to use it to blackmail Ann into giving him the divorce he craved. Not long after his trip to Kansas, Ann accidentally shot and killed Billy one night at their Long Island home. Her story was that she was spooked by the burglar making the rounds in the neighborhood, and when she was awakened in the middle of the night by a strange noise, groggy from the sleeping pills she took, she grabbed her shotgun and went into the hallway, saw a shadow, and fired. Tragically, it was her husband, not the burglar. 

The crime scene was all kinds of sketchy, and Ann was accused of deliberately murdering her husband, but a Grand Jury wouldn't indict her. Billy's mother, Elise, suggested she take an extended vacation in Europe, which Ann did. There she had a run in with Truman Capote. Heated words were exchanged, and while Ann forgot all about the weird little writer, Capote did not. Twenty years after their public fight, he wrote a short story based on Billy's murder, and the scandal was front page news again. Ann ended up committing suicide, she was so embarrassed to be dragged through the mud again. Capote, as we know, ended up making enemies out of his dearly loved inner circle of "swans" with his unfinished book, "Answered Prayers", and became a hard core drug addict and alcoholic, dying in 1984, abandoned by almost everyone he loved. 

The story was just tragic all the way around. So much meanness. So much unneeded cruelty. Whether or not Ann actually murdered her husband in cold blood (see what I did there?) is a question we'll most likely never know the answer to, but what we do know is all the pain could have been avoided if Capote had acted like an adult instead of a petty, jealous blowhard. But if he had, we wouldn't still be talking about him, so there's that. All in all, I enjoyed it. She told the two stories well. 

Cinema Speculation

 

My parents and Quentin's mother had the same philosophy about movies. My parents didn't want to watch kids' movies, so my sister and I watched what they watched. "Beverly Hills Cop", "Risky Business", "48 Hours", things like that. Quentin's mother used to take him to all kinds of movies when he was a kid in the 70s. I really liked her philosophy towards violence: as long as it's in context and not just violence for violence sake, she was okay with him seeing it. He could understand why a father went on a murderous rampage after drug dealers killed his family. Logically we get it, even if we know he really shouldn't. 

I'm not a giant movie buff (shockingly, I prefer reading), so I didn't know a lot of the movies he discusses in this book, but his passion for them and the art of making movies came through loud and clear and I was able to enjoy his appreciation. I really enjoyed it, and I think someone who is a big movie watcher would like it even more. Tarantino divides a lot of people at my work. Some of my colleagues think his movies are garbage and others (like me) enjoy the heck out of them. There's no denying (I think) that he's definitely made a lasting impression on the business, for better or worse. 

Spillane: King of Pulp Fiction; Beyond the Wand

 

It's no secret (to the 5 people who read this blog, anyway 😀) that I love Mickey Spillane. So did Max Allan Collins and James Traylor. This biography was lovely. You could tell they really cared about their subject.

Mickey was an only child who spent his early years in New Jersey before his parents moved to Brooklyn. H was precocious and obviously very smart. He started submitting stories to magazines at a young age and ended up getting a job in the early comics. He enlisted the day after Pearl Harbor and ended up becoming a flight instructor. He stayed stateside the whole war and was disappointed he never saw any actual combat. 

He married, had kids, and built an unassuming house in New Jersey, where he started churning out stories. When "I, the Jury" was published it caused quite a scandal for being full of gory violence and sex. The general public ate it up, though, and he became one of the highest selling writers (never author, he eschewed the word) of all time. 

Mickey really was Mike Hammer in a lot of ways. He claimed he was writing an autobiography of his own life (which he started but never finished), and part of the problem was that he'd been writing it all along in his own books. 

He died at the age of 88 from cancer, just six weeks after he told Collins. He told his third wife to give anything she found to Max after he died, saying he'd know what to do with it. Notes, pieces of manuscripts, all of it went to Collins, who's been diligently working to put the meat on the bones of the stories Mickey started. I appreciate the fact that he says he won't continue Mike Hammer once he's done with Mickey's notes. 

I'm totally in the mood to reread "Vengeance is Mine!" now, but alas, I have a million library books to get through. 

It's wild to see how grown up the Harry Potter kids are now, including Tom Felton, who played Draco Malfoy. The youngest of four brothers, Tom got into acting at a young age. Having three older brothers kept him grounded (about fan mail, his brother Chris asked "who the bleep would write to him?" incredulously). He also got to lead a semi-normal life at times, going to a regular school in between movies, getting into normal teenage scrapes. He admits he mostly got the part because he is a bit like Draco in real life. 

It didn't really occur to me, but he didn't spend a ton of time with the three main characters, which makes sense when you think about it. As an adult, he can now appreciate the enormous amount of talent he was surrounded by with all the adults and how lucky he was to work with all of them. 

After Harry Potter, he hit a bit of a slump and ended up moving out to L.A. He's dealt with some mental health issues that he wanted to shine a light on in order to remove the stigma. Sounds like he's doing better now, back in London and working in the theater. It was an interesting read. 

Next Year in Havana

 

I am enamored with the idea of visiting Havana, as I've said before, and a friend recommended this book to me. It was good, but definitely used a lot of clichés. I don't want to spoil anything, but it's one of those things that as soon as you read about two characters doing something in particular, you know what the outcome will be nearly every time. I did, however, learn quite a bit about Cuba, both before and after Castro.

The Perez sisters live in pre-Castro Cuba in 1958. Their father is a wealthy sugar baron and the lives are filled with parties and dancing and correct young men their parents vet for them. Third sister Elisa sneaks out to go to a party with her two older sisters and meets Pablo, a handsome and mysterious older man. The attraction between them is instantaneous, and even though she knows better she starts sneaking out to see him. 

In 2017, Elisa's granddaughter, Marisol, is visiting Cuba to spread her beloved grandmother's ashes. The Perez family fled to Florida after Castro, with the hope that someday they could return to their beloved country. Elisa asked her granddaughter to take her ashes home. Marisol is staying with Elisa's childhood best friend, Ana, and her handsome grandson, Luis, who acts as Marisol's tour guide. The attraction between them is instantaneous. Logically it could never work, but where does logic factor into love? 

It was a bit overwrought, but all in all not too bad. I finished it in one sitting, so it held my interest.