“Why is a Raven like a Writing Desk?”

Lewis Carroll, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, 1865.

Recently, I moved to the Baltimore area. And naturally, alongside Old Bay Seasoning, Edgar Allan Poe ignited my senses. Now typically, I have a strict love affair with British literature, but I’ll make an exception in Poe’s case, particularly as he is certainly a progenitor of sorts to my specific line of study: the British fin-de-siècle fantastic. Poe himself is a historical phenomenon, shrouded in his own mystery, but regardless of personal torments, his nineteenth-century work is astounding. And not entirely by a sheer stroke of instinctual genius, but actually through the painstaking process of precise thought. In his essay “The Philosophy of Composition” (1846), Poe discusses the methodical development of creating significant literature that speaks both to the public and simultaneously to the literary critic. It has been my contention for quite some time that all serious writers write for the critic in conjunction with pleasing the public as well. Writing literature is not too dissimilar to building a house: the architect conceives a plan that will not only provide aesthetic appeal and functionality, but he also then spends hours upon hours with his colleagues in mind, creating a design that speaks both to the public and the critic. A building is a beautiful marriage of creativity and science—and so is a piece of good literature. I talk a lot about form in my work because a proper—well-planned—structure is what keeps a story from collapsing. That is, a literary form is just as integral to the whole work as the imaginative story, just as the scientific structuring of a building is just as beautiful as its aesthetic appeal. You see the correlation? 

Nevertheless, Poe suggests that an artist doesn’t begin with the first sentence and simply writes what comes to mind until the piece is finished but in fact commences with intention: “It is only with the dénouement constantly in view that we can give a plot its indispensable air of consequence, or causation, by making the incident, and especially the tone at all points, tend to the development of the intention” (Poe, “TPC,” The Fall of House of Usher and Other Writings, Penguin, 2003, 430). What is the purpose of the piece? Purpose should drive every aspect of the writing. This statement is good advice in many applications. When I taught undergraduate rhetoric, I continually asked my students for the purpose, whether it be of an assignment, a verbal comment, a paragraph, etc., and when the purpose was settled, I then asked them to always keep that purpose at the forefront. 

Most importantly—for my own selfish reasons here—there’s no doubt that the subjects of my own study—Arthur Conan Doyle, Robert Louis Stevenson, Oscar Wilde, Henry James, and Bram Stoker—both read Poe’s work and subscribed to his theory of artistic design.

With this idea in mind, I’m compelled to discuss Poe’s famous 1844 short story “The Purloined Letter.” The intention of this tale is simple; that is, its main goal is to illustrate the benefit of working smarter rather than harder: meaning can easily be lying in plain sight. Poe keeps this purpose at the forefront; or, as he suggests in “The Philosophy of Composition,” all aspects of the piece “tend to the development of [that] intention” (432). Writing to “suit at once the popular and the critical taste,” Poe conceives his tale around the written word—a letter—as if speaking to the critic about the interpretation of literature itself: “the paper gives its holder a certain power in a certain quarter where such power is immensely valuable” (“TPL,” 283). It is not always necessary to plumb the depths of the language to uncover a cleverly concealed meaning, as many, such as the Prefect of Police, immediately do. In my line of work, we are often trained to consider a text from such a perspective. However, times change, and texts are complex and dynamic. Rather, Poe suggests evaluating the source and patiently observing what could possibly be right in front of your face. Words and structures have meaning; sometimes value isn’t buried or hidden. Perhaps what is on the paper—or even what is absent or ambiguous—is what speaks.

Reading the story many times, or returning to the beginning immediately after a readthrough, highlights Poe’s careful construction from first knowing his intention and working backward toward achieving it. That is, it is very obvious that he has included the exact modes of detection necessary in the beginning of the tale to conclude the intended outcome. For example, the tale opens in the dark, smoke-filled library of the narrator’s dear friend; while the two companions quietly contemplate previous cases at length, a chief police inspector—described as not overly competent—enters to consult the opinions of the narrator’s shrewd friend on a case that’s presented him with some difficulty in solving (if this scene doesn’t sound like the opening of a Sherlock Holmes adventure, it should). When the Police Prefect lays out the background of the mystery, he unknowingly provides the answer to solving the investigation inside of what seems to be rather worthless information. That is, Poe focuses this part of the story on the theft of the paper, which is exactly how the thief himself then deludes the investigators. And if that’s not enough, Poe supplies the reader with an introductory, thematic epigraph. In fact, he sandwiches the tale in between ancient Roman quotations: Seneca at the beginning and Virgil at the end. It’s a mathematical structure that is constructed to send the reader back to the beginning. And I would argue that Poe’s “The Purloined Letter” is a fictious partner to his essay “The Philosophy of Composition.”

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