I visited the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site

Wuthering Expectations is back from its peripatetic, baby-centric American vacation. Babies have little to do with 19th century literature, unfortunately. I did make one stop, though, that I am compelled to mention here, at the Edgar Allan Poe National Historic Site in Philadelphia.

The site, a few blocks north of the core of 18th century buildings around Independence Hall, is in a plain house of the 1820s, the only survivor of several houses Poe and his wife (and mother-in-law) inhabited in Philadelphia. The house itself is nothing too special,* aside from the orangutans in the closet, presumably a prop for the guided tour. Don't miss the "Black Cat" basement.

The materials - the short film, the photos and testimonials, the interactive displays - do their best with a difficult job. An impossible job. How many ways are there to experience Poe, really? One can read his work, or listen to someone else read it. Everything else is peripheral. The Poe site has to find some way to include the visitor with only the vaguest sense of who Poe was along with enthusiastic amateurs and real experts, the person who knows "The Raven" from The Simpsons and the American literature professor and me. Hopeless.

Still, it's a struggle worth some effort, and I have no suggestions for improvements. I learned a few new things and enjoyed immersing myself in Poe's real world (meaning family life, changing houses, badly paying publishers, and so on) for a bit. And it could be worse. Heaven knows what goes on at the Eugene O'Neill National Historic Site in Danville, California. Visitors staggering about in sleveless tee-shirts yelling "Stella! Stella!", polite park rangers calmly suggesting that they might be thinking of someone else.

One room was a surprise. Earlier this year I wrote about Poe's story or sketch or curiosity "The Philosophy of Furniture" (1840/1845), the climax of which is a detailed description of the ideal room, including every painting, decoration, and stick of furniture, down to Poe's friend asleep on the sofa. The reading room, left, reproduces that room. I mean, to the limited extent possible. The original is much larger, and oval, and as you can see the sofa is unoccupied. Readers of Roberto Bolaño will remember that one of the writers in Nazi Literature in the Americas also reproduces the room, and that Bolaño simply plagiarizes Poe in his description. So it was great fun to see an attempt at the same thing. Ridiculous, hilarious, inspired. Too bad they couldn't really do up the whole thing. My photo gives no sense of how beautifully crimson the room is, just like the story specifies.

Poe Calendar Rob used to work here. Rob, I mentioned to the two genial, informative rangers that I read your blog. They said nice things about you. The link, by the way, goes to a nice bit of enthusiasm that Rob mischaracterizes as "gushy." No, spot on.

* The rooms are unfurnished, the walls stripped. As a result, wandering through the empty rooms, one is presented with fantastic abstract masterpieces that could serve as illustrations to Eureka.