It's Poe-blication day

The story of Poe's first manuscript. Plus, my book is out today, WHAT?

Hey there,

Today’s newsletter is about that underrated yet cardinal virtue, hubris.

So below, you’ll find an excerpted chapter from the book, telling the story of Edgar Allan Poe’s very first poetry manuscript.

Poe actually completed this manuscript at the age of 11, in the time-honored tradition of adolescents scrawling angsty poetry in their journals, and he thought so much of it that he tried to get it published.

At this point in his life, he’d recently returned from several years of living in England with his foster family, and was just starting a new school in Richmond, Virginia. His headmaster at the new school thought Poe was just a little too full of himself—and nixed the manuscript’s publication.

Finito. End of story. Poe never wrote anything ever again.

Well, no, he obviously did. As his own biggest fan, Poe kept going—kept working, and working, and working—until he was composing the masterpieces of his mature career, from “The Raven” to “The Man of the Crowd.”

It’s a lesson to us all. When some gatekeeper tells you no, that’s THE moment to cut the reins, letting your ego streak naked and free.

In fact, if you can, you should seek to develop an even BIGGER ego, so that any and all criticism, now and forever and in perpetuity, just pings right off you like a nerf-gun dart.

I’m only half kidding here. My own first book comes out today, and even as I type this I am stress-eating a cinnamon roll because oh my god who am I to even be talking and they’re all going to find out I’m a massive fraud!!!

The self Poe-motion that goes into Poe-blication has ignited my im-Poe-ster syndrome something fierce. I want to crawl under my desk and hide, dragging the tray of cinnamon rolls down there with me. (In a rare act of self-preservation and forward planning, I bought a jumbo-pack.)

It’s been nearly five years since the idea for this book occurred to me, and I still cannot believe that anyone ever signed on to let me write it. Nor can I believe it’s now alive, lurching about, out there for folks to read.

That’s not to say I don’t still believe in the idea—that Poe was an existential hero, with much to teach us both in terms of what to do and what not to do. I’m more convinced than ever. And I know all the work I put into the book, the primary and secondary and third-ary sources from which I drew the material, etc.

It’s that I’m terrified of (a) running afoul of the internet somehow and attracting some onslaught of super-harsh criticism, as well as (b) what would perhaps be even worse, i.e. the book being greeted by total silence, and in either case, (c) letting down all the wonderful, smart, cool people who’ve dedicated their time and energy to the project, from my agent to my editor to the illustrator to the book designer and PR people.  

Be that as it may. We all have keep going. We have to have faith in our work or that work will never get done. We must buy in wholeheartedly—hook, line, effing sinker—to our weirdest, most grandiose ideas, or we’ll never, ever publish our semi-satirical self-help books based on 19th-century gothic literature. #wisdom #gothicselfhelp

In other words, I’m trying to take Poe’s cue here, and I recommend you do the same, whatever your project happens to be and whatever kind of gatekeeper you’re facing today. Just see the Poe tip at the conclusion of the chapter.

As always, thank you for reading, and all best,

Cat

P.S. I still have eight more of my author’s copies, so if you order the book today, let me know and I’ll send you a bonus signed copy.

P.P.S. The launch party for the book is happening tonight, in-person and online. Hope to see you there, if you’re able to make it.

Hubris, or How to Begin Your Life’s Work

Beginning around age ten or eleven, children experience vast hormonal changes that result in the appearance of secondary sexual characteristics as well as a host of awkward feelings. Along with the pubic hair, they get the angst. And along with the angst, some of them get an overriding desire to express their feelings in verse.

In terrible verse, like Poe did.

When the Allan family sailed back across the Atlantic in 1820, resettling in Richmond, Virginia, Edgar was eleven years old, right on the precipice of that long period of physical, cognitive, and psychological changes that in his day was simply known as “youth,” but nowadays is called adolescence. Edgar was also, once again, the new kid in school. John Allan had enrolled him at one of the best local schools around—a private boys’ academy run by headmaster Joseph H. Clarke.

One day, not long after Edgar started classes, John Allan showed up at the academy carrying a sheaf of papers that today might be worth hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of dollars—if only it hadn’t been lost. This was Edgar Allan Poe’s first poetry manuscript, perhaps the only copy that ever existed. And John Allan’s question for Clarke was straightforward: Did he think these poems ought to be published?

Clarke thought it over. Edgar “possessed a great deal of self-esteem” already, he said. It wouldn’t do for the boy to be “flattered and talked about as the author of a printed book at his age.”

The verses, Clarke would recall, “consisted chiefly of pieces addressed to the different little girls in Richmond.” But because the manuscript was lost, none of those pieces are available to us now. We can only guess something of their quality from the very first lines of Poe’s that do survive, and that appear to date from a few years later.

Last night, with many cares & toils oppress’d,

Weary, I laid me on a couch to rest

It’s just a fragment of a poem, one that the young Poe was apparently too weary to ever finish, and yet it’s all there—the self-seriousness, the clumsy rhyme, the heavy sigh of adolescence rising off the page like fog off a fetid pond. With some slight changes to capture modern diction, the lines would be at home in any tween journal—maybe your journal?—today. Frankly, all that makes this couplet remarkable is the fact that it wasn’t Poe’s last—that he kept writing, and eventually became a much better poet.

Even Poe’s first book, Tamerlane and Other Poems, which he published anonymously at age eighteen, sank like a kettlebell in the ocean when it first appeared. No one at the time caught any whiff of genius. No one started tossing around terms like “prodigy” and “wunderkind.” Hell, no one seems to have read the thing at all when it first came out. Still, if you’re ever at a flea market and come across a small, faded, cheaply bound pamphlet written by “A Bostonian,” be sure you snap it up. Only about fifty copies of Tamerlane were printed, just a dozen or so remain extant today, and in 2009 one sold for $662,500—setting a new record for a work of American literature at auction.

For hundreds of years, artists, scientists, and Malcolm Gladwell have debated whether geniuses are born or made. Does innate talent or diligent practice matter more? Can 10,000 hours of dedicated cramming really transform a rando into a Beatle or an NBA baller? Eh, maybe. In Poe’s case, his artistic genes, his early life with his theatrical parents, and his fancy, language-focused education all help to explain his later achievement, and must matter at least as much as the hours of scrawling he began putting in as a youth. Yet it’s possible we’re still overlooking the most important aspect of his development: What if the “great deal of self-esteem” the young Poe possessed was the secret to his eventual success?

Poe himself phrased the question this way: “When did ever Ambition exist or Talent prosper without prior conviction of success?” In his formulation, “conviction of success” comes before ambition, before talent.

Self-esteem + conviction of success > talent + ambition

The same goes for you. In your own path to an epic, Poe-like life, it’s not enough to be obsessively mournful and incredibly neurotic. You’re going to need a good deal more oomph to get you over the gap between your inevitably humble, juvenile beginnings and your eventual triumph. And the best source of that oomph is unreasonable, extravagant, Poe-like self-esteem (i.e., hubris).

Of course, this advice slaps the face of thousands of years of Western thought. The Greeks saw hubris as a fatal flaw, which could bring about even a great hero’s downfall. Jews and early Christians weren’t too hot on excessive self-confidence, either. “Pride goeth before destruction,” warns the Old Testament, “and an haughty spirit before a fall.” The New Testament is likewise peppered with statements on the desirability of a humble nature and putting others before ourselves.

But maybe you’re not so much aiming to enter the Kingdom of Heaven right now as you are attempting to join the ranks of the famous, the powerful, and the highly paid. Pride goeth before earthly achievement, too, as Poe knew, and a haughty spirit can beget a rise. Whatever you see as your life’s work, it’s crucial to set out from a place of overconfidence.

Overcompensation is the operative idea, as is an inaccurate estimate of your capacity for excellence. No matter your chosen field, the task ahead of you is so daunting, so complex and huge, that if you really knew what you were getting into you’d probably never get started at all. This is all the more true if you’ve ever been encouraged to know your place and stay in your lane.

Are you:

• Young, and everyone’s telling you you’re too young?

• A lonely teenager desperate to survive until adulthood and freedom?

• A twenty-something struggling to find your footing (and a job and a partner and a place to live that you don’t hate)?

• A midlife wage slave staring down decades of some forty-hour- a-week grind?

• Supposedly over the hill and worried that trying anything new will make you look ridiculous?

Well, then. Take it from Poe: you need to go ahead and get high on your own supply. Get proud, get downright arrogant, and get ready to become exceptional. It doesn’t matter if other people think you’re a no-talent ass-clown, à la Office Space. You must believe you have inordinate ability, that you are more than qualified, only baby steps away from greatness. Go beyond the usual cutting yourself a break and actively give yourself credit you don’t deserve. Don’t deserve yet, anyway.

The trick of it is to hide your excessive self-belief from your teachers, your parents, your bosses, your friends—lest they try to prevent you from publishing your terrible poems or auditioning for Broadway just because you can’t carry a tune. Far better to tune out their voices. Encouragement is always better coming from within than without, and not least because other people’s pesky feelings might get in the way. Do the people who would bring you down, who tell you to be meek and humble, really have your best interests at heart?

Given the chance, plenty of people will discourage you for no better reason than because they were discouraged—and they’re still discouraged now. Sometimes, too, there’s a widespread cultural belief in not getting ahead of yourself, as exemplified in the “tall poppy syndrome” thought to pervade former British colonies. Essentially, it’s a society-wide diktat that says the tall poppy will get chopped down. Or, put in American English, You think you’re better than me, huh? Huh?! But the syndrome isn’t just confined to New Zealand and Singapore. It may be present in your family culture, your school culture, your church culture, your work culture, and/or your shitty-sublet-with-nine-roommates culture.

Kept secret, hubris is a kind of lightness of step. It lets you feel vindicated ahead of time, to imagine your own first book of poems one day setting new records at auction. It offers the same thrill you get from imagining how regretful and ashamed folks will be—weeping, wringing their hands, gnashing their teeth—at your funeral. You can luxuriate in vengeful fantasies of your frenemies being given the news, of everyone in your crappy hometown finding out at once that you are actually among the world’s greatest at—well, whatever you’re going to be among the world’s greatest at. In hindsight, they’ll all see it. They’ll all have seen it all along.

So take the Poe tip:

Do not attempt to rein in your own bullshit. Buy wholeheartedly into your deepest self- delusions and take outrageous pride in your work—no matter who denigrates it.

Hindsight, not coincidentally, seems to have helped make Poe’s early talent clear to his headmaster, Clarke. “While the other boys wrote mere mechanical verses, Poe wrote genuine poetry: the boy was a born poet,” Clarke told those who came searching for anecdotes from Poe’s school days. Which may’ve been true to some extent, sure, but was all too easy to say years after Poe’s death, by which time he was widely acknowledged to be a genius. Way to bet on the winning horse, bucko, the day after the goddang race!

Good thing Poe had so much hubris that he never required Clarke’s approval. If he had, you might not be reading this now, or be on your own stealth march to greatness.

Excerpted from POE FOR YOUR PROBLEMS: Uncommon Advice from History's Least Likely Self-Help Guru by Catherine Baab-Muguira. Copyright © 2021. Available from Running Press, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.