Complex Numbers

To Die Laughing

This one's been hanging out in my queue since October, but whatever. Poe is timeless.

The Edgar Allan Poe Murder Conspiracy  

Article is from Cracked, so take it with a grain of gothic black salt.

As the original goth boi, it’s only fitting that Edgar Allan Poe’s death was as mysterious and haunting as one of his stories. Just before he died at age 40, he seemed to drop off the face of the Earth for a week, and his death has been attributed to everything from low blood sugar to murder.

There was a movie called The Raven about 10 years ago, starring John Cusack as Poe. Critically panned and engendering lukewarm audience response at best, I felt like it was severely underrated. Not that it was a great movie, but it didn't suck, either. I think most people missed the point. The movie makes the most sense, I think, if you remember the Poe quote, "All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream." Or maybe I'm enough of a fan of both Poe and Cusack to have enjoyed it anyway.

15. Missing Poe-son

Oh, how clever. A Poe pun. Well, I shouldn't complain too much; I have every intention of adopting a tomcat just so I can name him Edgar Allan Purr. Bonus points if I can find a black one.

On September 27, 1849, Poe left Richmond, Virginia, where he’d been busy talking his childhood sweetheart into marrying him, for Philadelphia for a job editing a poetry collection (it needed more symbolism or something), after which he intended to head back to New York, where he lived.

Lots of places claim Poe, and for good reason. He belongs to everywhere, but really, he was a Virginian.

14. October 3, 1849

Four days before his death, Poe resurfaced in Baltimore, if you can call the gutter a surface.

Isn't that just basically Baltimore?

13. Poe’s Death

According to the most likely account, he never got it together long enough to explain how a business trip turned into a disoriented game of dress-up before he died on October 7.

Of course it was October.

For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year

12. Poe’s Cause of Death

Cracked's attempts to fit this story into its usual bite-sized countdown chunks seems forced here, so I'm skipping a few; basically, the next several points involve the various ideas about what might have led to his death. There are a lot of them, and as far as I can tell, none of them really fit.

My personal theory? He fell ill from gothic ennui.

The only person who saw Poe alive after he was brought to the hospital was Dr. John Moran, who kept changing his story.

Keep writing unreliable narrators   and you, too, can have your last days confounded by an unreliable narrator.

You know what would be really helpful here? An autopsy. A death certificate. Any records of any kind. None have survived, if they ever existed, and no autopsy was ever performed on a famous writer who died a bizarrely mysterious death. We don’t know, guys. Our money’s on the hospital administration.

Well, this is America we're talking about. Most likely he died of shock after seeing the hospital bill.

To die laughing must be the most glorious of all glorious deaths!
         —E. A. Poe