Publishers Weekly
04/19/2021
Historian Tresch (The Romantic Machine) sheds light on Edgar Allan Poe’s engagement with science in this intriguing biography. In 1838, Tresch writes, Poe arrived in Philadelphia, “the nation’s most active center for scientific research,” and his immersion in the conversations among journalists, scientists, and artists who were discussing prominent scientific concerns, such as the tension “between hardheaded empiricism and controversial speculation” informed many of his best-known works. Tresch carefully reads Poe’s poems, stories, and essays, illustrating the ways that Poe balanced the literary with the scientific. “The Fall of the House of Usher,” for example, combined elements from gothic and fantastic tales with imagery from alchemy, and featured “the ethers, atmospheres, and energies of experimental science.” “The Purloined Letter,” meanwhile, sees Poe critiquing empirical and mathematical sciences: they were narrow, he argued, because they left no room for awe. While Tresch addresses the common impression of Poe as a “morbid dreamer” and a penniless writer, he takes things further by offering a nimble account of the emerging science of Poe’s day. Fans of Poe’s work—and science enthusiasts—will appreciate Tresch’s fresh angle. (June)
From the Publisher
"A splendid new biography . . . Poe’s manic omnivory, his intellectual passions and professional struggles, is the heart of the book . . . Weaving private letters and published works into a broader history, Tresch uses Poe as a drunken Virgil, through whose hazy eyes we catch glimpses of abolitionism and the Mexican-American War, new technologies and the Second Great Awakening." —Henry M. Cowles, Los Angeles Review of Books
"Tresch’s approach manages to open up the world of Poe’s writing in an unexpectedly fascinating way. What emerges is how Poe’s interest in—and sometimes misunderstanding of—science drove some of his greatest works of horror." —Colin Dickey, The New Republic
"Ingenious . . . a rich assemblage of biographical vignettes, brief story analyses and mini-essays on the era’s scientific beliefs." —Michael Dirda, The Washington Post
"Superb . . . John Tresch’s astonishing book also makes Poe exemplary rather than exceptional . . . It is Tresch’s great accomplishment to have given us our fullest contextualization of Poe’s technoaesthetics, its deep roots in the science of his day." —Jonathan Elmer, Public Books
"Tresch has produced a steady, clever, engaging literary biography that provides an excellent survey of an overlooked aspect of Poe’s writing." —Bob Blaisdell, The Christian Science Monitor
"Richly engaging... [Tresch] succeeds in placing Poe’s life story and the development of his art in the context of the maturation of science... a moving, insightful biography." —Robert J. Scholnick, Poe Studies
"Tresch draws alluring connections between Poe’s cosmological vision and his fiction, noting the “staggering unity of purpose” that defined both." —The New Yorker
"John Tresch gives Poe the wide-ranging, all-rounder's biography he deserves . . . [His] narrative is studded with the colorful and colorfully named." —Max Carter, Air Mail
"Tresch offers a thorough, beautifully developed, long-overdue exploration of Poe’s lifelong affinity for science and its pervasive influence on his art . . . In its combination of suspenseful narrative, elegant structure, impressive research, imagination and appeal to both popular and academic readers, The Reason for the Darkness of the Night is a worthy tribute to Poe’s own literary craft." —Susan Elizabeth Sweeney, Literary Review
"Tresch is not the first to comment on Poe’s many connections with science, but his new biography succeeds in giving the full view, combining an ample tour through the major scientific ideas of the early 19th century with deft and frequently profound readings of Poe’s large body of work . . . The book is valuable reading for anyone drawn to the strange beauty within and just beyond science, and who wonders, as Poe did, what role a poet has to play." —James Dinneen, Undark
"One of the many compelling aspects of this book is its treatment of the first half of the 19th century as a distant mirror of our own times . . . It’s taken a long time to set things right. This book helps to do that. A reader comes away not only with admiration for Poe but affection, too." —David Brown, The American Scholar
"[Tresch] situates [Poe] in a maelstrom of competing tides, as a new class of engineers and experimentalists splashed up against philosophers, theologians, and cranks . . . Tresch suggests [Poe's writings] can be seen as endorsements of a synthesis of science and Romanticism." —Daniel Engber, The Atlantic
"[Tresch] helps readers see afresh the creative achievements of Poe . . . [His] book is chock-full of fresh insights that will delight Poe enthusiasts . . . Splendid." —Travis Montgomery, The Edgar Allan Poe Review
"[A] luminous study . . . Tresch brilliantly illuminates the process by which Poe synthesized his scientific knowledge in his works of the imagination." —Bill Kelly, Booklist
"[A]n admiring, intellectually stimulating portrait . . . Edgar Allan Poe's status as a major American literary figure is long established. But John Tresch's Reason for the Darkness of the Night now should encourage the curious and open-minded to devote fresh attention to the artist's contributions to the advancement of scientific thought." —Shelf Awareness
"Tresch sheds light on Edgar Allan Poe’s engagement with science in this intriguing biography . . . While [he] addresses the common impression of Poe as a 'morbid dreamer' and a penniless writer, he takes things further by offering a nimble account of the emerging science of Poe’s day. Fans of Poe’s work—and science enthusiasts—will appreciate Tresch’s fresh angle." —Publishers Weekly
"[Balances] insightful discussions of Poe’s literary works alongside his intriguing scientific pursuits. A surprising side of Poe splendidly revealed." —Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
“This biography is a masterwork on a master, and one of my favorite reads in years. John Tresch lets the reader see how Poe’s imagination was not only wild but also procedural, not only unbounded but also formal. In these pages, we meet the engineer of horror, the trickster of reason, and the mutinous captain of mystery.” —Rivka Galchen, author of Everyone Knows Your Mother Is a Witch and American Innovations
“In this original and moving biography, John Tresch brilliantly integrates Poe the man and the writer with his deep engagement with the sciences of his day. He lucidly reveals the content of these fascinations, and convincingly illuminates their powerful influence on Poe’s writings and thought. Tresch discerns Poe’s privileging of mind and mystery over frigid empiricism and his terrifying perception that only spiritual darkness lay beneath the surface of the material knowledge that was transforming the world. A transfixing and eye-opening portrait.” —Daniel J. Kevles, professor emeritus of history at Yale University and author of In the Name of Eugenics and The Physicists
“At last, a biography of Poe that places him in the thick of the philosophical and scientific investigations of his time, reclaiming the rigor of his thought, the inventiveness of his writings, and a personality as visionary as it is audacious. John Tresch gives us the Poe whose deepest preoccupations became a threat to the smug morality, highfalutin cant, and ‘doggerel aesthetics’ of his contemporaries. An astonishing feat of research and beautiful prose, this book gives Poe what he has long deserved.” —Colin Dayan, author of In the Belly of Her Ghost and Animal Quintet
“This marvelous time machine transports us deep into the nineteenth century and the company of its most fascinating citizens. Poetry, mesmerism, the rise of American science—it’s all here, as vivid as can be.” —Fred Turner, Harry and Norman Chandler Professor of Communication at Stanford University and author of The Democratic Surround
“Poe’s devilish analytical wit and radical aesthetic genius through John Tresch’s marvelously informative biography. The great poet’s delirious cosmological artifices, Tresch shows, are in dialogue with his wide-ranging knowledge of technology, empirical method, materialism, and the newly forming scientific institutions—and trickster spectacles—of his time.” —Charles Bernstein, professor emeritus of English at the University of Pennsylvania and author of Near/Miss and A Poetics
“John Tresch juxtaposes Poe’s biography with the rise of American science to turn a familiar story into a mesmerizing narrative, cast like a magic lantern show. Almost everything the author wrote takes on stunning new meaning. This is Poe wrestling with the big questions—and Tresch unfolding the history of a momentous cultural revolution.” —J. Gerald Kennedy, author of Strange Nation
“John Tresch’s The Reason for the Darkness of the Night is a lively and learned investigation of the life of Poe through his literary engagement with science—an accessible and exciting exploration.” —Richard Kopley, author of Edgar Allan Poe and the Dupin Mysteries
“John Tresch’s engaging biography of an enigmatic genius puts Edgar Allan Poe right where he belongs: present at the creation of American science.” —Richard R. John, author of Network Nation
Library Journal
06/01/2021
Tresch (history of art, science, and folk practice, Warburg Inst.; Romantic Machine) situates Poe's work within the 19th century's science in flux. Poe hadn't the time nor the money to pursue extensive scientific study, but he did receive practical scientific training at West Point and kept up with the latest developments via general magazines, several of which he wrote for. In these magazines, phrenology and mesmerism flourished alongside astronomy and electricity, and Tresch proves that Poe wasn't above penning provocative hoax science articles, whether as ironic critique or to earn money. Tresch focuses on Poe's texts about exploration, medical curiosity, and the relationship between science (reason) and nature (imagination). These culminated in Poe's little-read cosmological work Eureka, which applied his theory of fiction (every work should have a singular effect) to the universe. Poe has been painted as an extraordinarily prescient man who foresaw much of quantum theory and cosmogony, but Tresch makes the more modest claim that Poe posited a unification of humankind, imagination, and the physical universe. VERDICT Fans of the literary Poe will be intrigued by this lesser-known side of the author, and scientists will appreciate an accessible biography.—Wade Lee-Smith, Univ. of Toledo Lib.
Kirkus Reviews
★ 2021-03-20
The prolific fiction writer, poet, and literary critic viewed through a scientific lens.
Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is synonymous with the grotesque. Tresch, professor of the history of art, science, and folk practice at the Warburg Institute, wants us to think of Poe as a scientist, as well. Tresch’s expansive biography takes the chronological road, with Poe “at the center of the maelstrom of American science in the first half of the nineteenth century.” Enamored by science as a young man, Poe wrote “Sonnet—To Science” in 1830. Arguing against other critics, who claim that the poem criticizes science, Tresch argues that Poe writes in praise of science. In fact, the sonnet “laid out a program for Poe’s life’s work.” At West Point, he studied mathematics, geometry, and astronomy, all of which “decisively shaped his career as a poet, critic, and author.” In Baltimore in 1833, Poe won a fiction contest for “MS. Found in a Bottle,” in which he balanced scientific language with catastrophic revelation. Near starvation, he was saved by a job at the Southern Literary Messenger in Richmond. His stories and essays on science were warmly received, but he was soon let go. In New York, he wrote The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, a novel about the “quest for discovery and its costs.” In 1839, he secured a position at The Gentleman’s Magazine in Philadelphia, where scientific innovation was thriving. Testing “new literary formulas,” he wrote his most distinctive tales, solidified his “reputation for scientific acumen,” championed the art of photography, explored code cracking, and wrote a scientific textbook, The Conchologist’s First Book. Surprisingly, it was his only bestseller. Meanwhile, Poe’s drinking and his wife’s death were affecting his health. He hoped his ambitious new book and lecture tour on cosmology, Eureka, (a “serious mess, a glorious mess, but a mess”) would help him gain back his popularity. He died a year later. Throughout, Tresch does a fine job balancing insightful discussions of Poe’s literary works alongside his intriguing scientific pursuits.
A surprising side of Poe splendidly revealed.
