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True, nervous - very very 
dreadfully nervous - I have 
been, and am, but why will

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you say that I am mad? 
The narrator grabs 
you right in the first

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sentence - something like, 
"Mad? You think I am mad? 
You know, people say I'm

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mad - I'm not mad." And then 
he's clearly mad, and yet 
he's telling you this story

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that's mad and sane at the 
same time. Poe is talking 
about the subject that

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makes it so universally 
interesting. Except for 
sex, you can't get anything

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more human and fundamental 
than fear. Poe wanted Americans 
to understand what was

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strange about their own 
culture. He saw that 
strangeness - the strangeness

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that most people didn't see.

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I scribble all day and 
read all night so long as

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the disease endures.

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I intended to put up with 
nothing I can put down.

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To be appreciated, you must 
be read. Most of the people

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that Poe loved died of 
consumption. It is the sad 
tragedy of human existence in

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nineteenth-century city. 
How melancholy an existence. 
Once Upon a midnight

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dreary while I pondered 
weak and weary over many a 
quaint and curious volume of

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forgotten lore...

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in C. Auguste Dupin, Poe 
invents the detective that we've 
been living with ever since.

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Holmes is a rip off of 
Dupin and so is pretty much 
everybody else - so is Hercule

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Poirot, so is House, 
on television.

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It seems very strange that 
a man like Edgar Allan 
Poe could just vanish but

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that's exactly what happened 
for about five days. Who 
was the real Edgar Allan

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Poe? I feel like he slips 
further away from me the 
more I know about him.