Mental Health
Aunt Maria Clemm Nurtures Poe – Part 7
Eddie was a sweet boy who loved me and my young daughter Virginia. He tried to help but except selling a young slave I’d inherited he couldn’t make any money for us despite writing hours a day. Our best prospect was John Allan, and sometimes I wrote him Eddie deserved to do well and would…
Read MoreHenry Poe – Part 6
Not critically but with pride I suggest that for his third book, Poems, Edgar had copied some of my stanzas. I also concede I might have borrowed some of his. I couldn’t guarantee much in the spring of 1831. Once, I had appeared an impressive big brother, donning the uniform of a merchant marine and…
Read MorePoe the Scholar and Soldier – Part 5
In person I may have addressed my foster father John Allan as Pa but in my heart and with others I called him a tyrant who, despite his wealth, denied sufficient funds for dignified survival at the University of Virginia, sentencing me to dress inelegantly and use my own hands to tidy my room. Fellow…
Read MorePoe the Athlete – Part 4
I’m head track coach at a major university and have trained some of the finest young athletes in the world. I don’t recruit anyone lacking potential to place high and score points in important meets. That I explained to members of a literary society when they presented physical data about Edgar Allan Poe. He was…
Read MoreFoster Father of Poe – Part 3
Convinced of my correctness I sailed from Scotland to America at age sixteen and immediately began as a clerk in the Richmond tobacco company of my Uncle William Galt. The old bachelor was the wealthiest man in Virginia but kept me tight to business and doted on his four adopted children and four more he…
Read MoreKeeping Hemingway Alive
Never had I craved anything so much as this strange and alluring task. Thousands of other doctors clamored for the opportunity but most lacked the necessary vigor. Only a man obsessed would be fit to lead this scientific revolution, and I was thus chosen to sacrifice all in the quest to keep Ernest Hemingway alive…
Read MoreEliza Poe – Part 2
In more than thirty years representing actresses I had never received such an astonishing application. At first, naturally, I considered it a hoax. Eliza Poe, claiming to have been born more than two centuries ago in England, wrote that she most urgently needed to meet me. Ordinarily it is difficult approaching impossible to get through…
Read MoreHunter Thompson and Mental Health
Since Hunter Thompson put a gun in his mouth and shot himself last week, I’ve been digging deep into the Internet and reading lots of articles about him. The first wave of stories commended his hard-punching, eye-gouging, “gonzo” style of insightful political writing in such books as “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” and “Kingdom…
Read More- « Previous
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4