biolog

How is Edgard Allan Poe’s body of work after 200 years fairing in our educational system? According to sci-fi/horror author Nick Mamatas, what he sees is as jaundiced as the man himself.

A quick Google search is illuminating. On the wiki for the classes of one MsCKelly, we can read the sort of Poe-related assignment kids are made to suffer through:

Students will research information and discuss their thoughts on whether Edgar Allen [sic!] Poe died from Alcoholism or Rabies. [capital letters sic] Students must include a minimum of three posts with thoughts and ideas that are supported and linked to website resources. At least one post must be your informed position on the discussion topic and at least one of your posts must be to refute another classmate’s stance based on a post that they contributed to the discussion topic.

In a better world, grade-schoolers would be excited to argue over alcoholism or rabies all night long, but the bright kids must have trouble taking seriously an assignment with the author’s name misspelled, the ridiculous demand for “thoughts and ideas” in a Web post, and the notion that Poe’s death was the result of one of only two possible causes. The average student will just resent having to look stuff up.

He continues.

So how should we read Poe? In our banal little classrooms, we’ve all read his stories for multiple-choice questions about theme, or as a reflection of “our society” (our society? include me out!), or as a biography arrayed in a patchwork of prose and poems. But we should read Poe for the sheer bloody-minded pleasure of knowing the truth: Some motherfuckers just have it comin’.

By stating the obvious–that there are varieties of experience that stray far outside the coloring lines–Mamatas is making the classic appeal to art for art’s sake and so bemoaning the attempt to whitewash that literature which frequents darker quadrants. In a sentence: The problem is in confusing the metaphor that Poe is as American as apple pie to Poe is as wholesome as apple pie.