The norm for reading in 19th century America was communal reading. Our culture had not yet mechanized to the point that we had a lot of rooms in our houses, so people were seldom by themselves, and there was little indoor lighting. Western culture was pushing literacy, yet few people had the money to buy a lot of books, and there were not yet that many books per capita printed. So if there was a book, it would be read — or experienced — by many people, often at the same time in a room, and aloud.
We would call it Living Room Theatre.
So when playwright Bryan Willis approached the subject of Edgar Allan Poe, he did what needed to be done: allow the work to exist in the form it was intended for. An awful lot of his piece “Edgar Allan Poe” is a sophisticated frame for Poe’s own work, which is the center of the evening’s entertainment, and, in the hands of a great actor like Bradford Farwell, a revelation.
Most of us read these works in junior high school. They are indelibly impressed on our memory. Yet our literary tastes were not seasoned enough at twelve to grasp the excellence of Poe. It is a standard, it is omnipresent, it is cultural furniture of the West, so we seldom notice it was made by a man who eked out a living at it while having a precarious daily life that ended at forty.
Poe was not only very good at his craft, he evidently liked his readers. He took great pains to give them a roller coaster ride, and it was merciless.
We can’t help it. We have to come back for more.
