"Coffee with Poe" Interview by Andrew Barger

"Coffee with Poe" Interview

(October 28, 2003)

Andrew is a sustaining member of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore.
Coffee with Poe is his first novel.

Q1: Let’s start with the title. Why Coffee with Poe?

A1: There’s a funny story behind that because I don’t drink coffee, but I love the smell. My wife, who did the great cover photography for the novel, tells me that doesn’t count. She has an entire kitchen cabinet devoted to her coffee paraphernalia. I’m banned from looking inside because of my jokes about all the sifters, grinders, roasters, and foamers. Anyway, I could think of no better coupling than books and coffee … well, actually I can. In truth, the title is derived from a letter that Sarah Helen Whitman (one of Poe's fiancées) wrote to John Ingram on December 13, 1874, which speaks of Poe's penchant for coffee: "Mr. Bartlett has never seen him inspired by any more dangerous stimulant than strong coffee, of which he was very fond & of which [he] drank freely. MacIntosh says that the measure of a man’s brain is the amount of coffee he can drink with impunity."

Q2: Coffee with Poe is one of the only novels about Edgar Allan Poe’s life viewed from his own eyes. What made you write Coffee with Poe from Poe’s first person perspective?

A2: I wanted readers to get inside the head (however frightening that may be) of one of America’s best-loved and most mysterious writers. I wanted readers to live Poe’s life instead of learn about it. That’s the only way you can truly understand his stories and where he’s coming from. There are so many boring biographies out there.

Q3: And what an interesting and tragic life it was. You use a number of actual letters to and from Poe, including letters from Nathaniel Hawthorne and Washington Irving. How did this come about?

A3: In researching Coffee with Poe I was surprised to learn that there were so many conflicting accounts of his life, so I went straight to the letters and used these as a framework to construct the novel. I was able to incorporate many of the people mentioned in the letters as characters. The novel to me is more compelling when you read Poe’s letters from his pen after experiencing the events that prompted the letter.

Q4: The letters of his three fiancées are especially interesting.

A4: Poe got around!

Q5: In one chapter Poe meets Charles Dickens. Was that hard to write?

A5: It was difficult to capture the personalities of both these great writers as they would have interacted at this point in their careers, but it was a lot of fun, too. When they met in Philadelphia, Dickens was finishing a trip to the U.S. He was as popular across The Pond as he was in England. Poe, on the other hand, had yet to write The Raven and was not nearly as well known. Poe solicited Dickens at this time to get his works published in England but it never panned out. We also know that Dickens was fascinated that Poe guessed the ending to his serialized novel Barnaby Rudge before he published it. So I included conversations about Poe’s deductive reasoning that he used so well, like in The Gold-Bug.

Q6: Where did Poe get his idea for The Raven?

A6: Many think it was from Dickens’s use of a talking raven in Barnaby Rudge. Poe felt the bird should have had a much larger role and I imagined Poe gently telling him such in Philadelphia. Dickens’s in turn based the raven in Barnaby Rudge off his own pet raven named "Grip." There is a hilarious account of Grip’s death that Dickens gave in a letter to a friend and I included that statement as he retells it to Poe.

Q7: Was Poe strung out on drugs when he did most of his writing?

A7: It’s doubtful. Even Poe’s bitter literary enemies—and he had quiet a few—never accused him of taking drugs. Many of these enemies were also medical doctors, so they would have detected this state. I believe people over the years have confused narrators in Poe’s tales, many of whom are crazed or tripping on drugs, to be Poe himself. What these people are doing is taking credit away from a highly talented author and assuming he could only have experienced these states to write about them. Poe also wrote about being buried alive, but that never happened either!

Q8: What about drinking?

A8: Poe most certainly drank, but a medical condition caused him to have a sensitivity to alcohol. One or two drinks a day in our society, which is acceptable in certain circles and even claimed good for the heart by the medical community, would have branded Poe as being prone to excess over a hundred and fifty years ago. As you know, I have my own theory regarding Poe’s drinking problem in Coffee with Poe and how this sensitivity came about.

Q9: Why did Poe write such horror?

A9: Because he could. There is a fine art to scaring people to death and Poe took it to levels unseen. The time was ripe for his tales. Snake oil salesmen roamed the country. Prominent doctors of the day routinely practiced bloodletting and people were buried alive because their faint pulse could not be detected. Then you have everyone frightened of reanimation by galvanic batteries thanks to Mary Shelley. Poe thoroughly enjoyed getting a rise out of people. This was evidenced by his many pranks as a child, his biting reviews of the "Literati of New York," and, of course, his horror. Poe had a very humorous side despite his circumstances and many people don’t realize this.

Q10: A few more questions?

A10: Okay, but I’m about to turn into a pumpkin and orange is not my color.

Q11: Speaking of horror, who do you think are the Big Three?

A11: In order of appearance: Edgar Allan Poe. H. P. Lovecraft. Stephen King. The problem is that the first two died in abject poverty and Stephen King has made slightly less money than God. Not that I’m taking anything away from King, but the other two should also have been rewarded handsomely for their work. Poe only made $15 off the entire publication history of The Raven. There are injustices in this world, and then there are outright tragedies.

Q12: Going back to your comment on Poe using deductive reasoning to craft some of his stories, he obviously used this in his mystery novels.

A12: Poe is actually the inventor of the mystery genre. Many people overlook this and focus only on his horror. The first three mystery stories were The Murders in the Rue Morgue, The Purloined Letter, and The mystery of Marie Roget. Sir Conan Doyle got his idea for Sherlock Holmes based partly off Poe’s mysteries. Poe wrote many comedic stories, too. He was good in any genre that he wrote.

Q13: What were Poe's favorite things?

A13: Color-Black; Drink-Strong coffee; Song-"Come Rest in this Bosom"; Animal-Cat (Poe had one named Catterina with his wife Virginia and also had a black cat that he wrote about); Poet-Byron; Author-Likely Nathaniel Hawthorne; Place-Richmond, Virginia and the South in general.

Q14: By the way, happy birthday!

A15: Thanks, now let me eat cake.

Q15: See, that wasn’t so bad.

A15: That’s what my dentist claims too.