In the beginning he was full of energy and eagerness, thinking, I suppose, that his fortunes could yet be made by his genius if only he could figure out where to market it, the one right place where an editor’s ear would be tuned to the frequency of Poe’s hard-chosen words.
But as manuscript after manuscript was pushed to the side, and the evidence of his failure piled higher and higher, his spirits sagged again, a slow but ineluctable descent of hope, as graceful to my eyes as a leaf’s slow fall from a high branch down to salty water.
Virginia saw it too. She had been watching him as closely as I had, of course. And now she began to weep. It was the first acknowledgment any of us had made to the mire of their situation. She made barely a sound, yet Poe heard. He lifted his head and looked to her, and a moment later he was at her side. They sat holding hands for several minutes, his head against hers.
“My Eddie,” she said then and stroked the back of his head. “I am so sorry for all the darkness I have brought into your life.”
“Beloved,” Poe told her and laid a hand to her scarlet cheek, “you are light itself. You are my only illumination in this black, black world.”
They fell asleep like that. And Mrs. Clemm, bent over her knitting, did likewise. And I dozed off as well, though fitfully, because each crack of lightning or quick rumble of thunder jerked me up out of my dreams. As did, sometime well into the night, a steady knocking sound, crisp and quick and brittle. I sat awake for half a minute before I identified the source, and then I rose and went into the bedroom and crossed to the window and saw there the crow perched outside on the sill, its plumage as shiny as ink, its eyes bright yellow. The bird was pecking at its own warped reflection in the rain-blurred pane, and I shooed the lank visitor away before its incessant tapping could break the glass.
Poe was awake, though not fully, when I came back into the sitting room. “Is there someone at the door?” he asked.
I told him, “It was nothing. Don’t worry.”
He must have heard the shudder in my voice, the chill I could not suppress, for now he gazed about the room, blinking slowly, as if he had never seen this room before, as if all were unrecognizable.
“What is it?” he asked in a hoarse whisper. “Who’s come?”
I spoke softly to him then, because I did not want Virginia to hear, not even in her sleep. “Just a crow at the window is all. It’s gone now, don’t worry.”
He looked down at his wife; he fingered a strand of her hair. “She should stop feeding those birds,” he finally said.
“She’s a gentle soul, all right.”
He nodded, then laid his head down beside his wife’s again.
I pulled my blankets into the corner, close to the stove, and I curled around myself, and I too fell asleep eventually, exhausted by the storm.
It must have been nearly 3:00 a.m. when I awoke to a familiar sound. I looked up to see Poe there at the table again, bent low over a manuscript, his fingers already stained with ink, his pen scratching quick across the paper. And in his eyes as he wrote there was that familiar bright fire again, not extinguished at all but only suppressed for a while, now flaring as bright as ever with the heat of a new idea. I could almost hear the throbbing rhythm of his mind as the pen unfurled his sentences. The man had a metronome for a pulse.
He paused after a while and, searching his mind for a particular word, happened to glance in my direction, and saw me watching. I wished for all the world that I could give him what he needed.
A moment later a smile came to his mouth. “Respite,” he whispered as if trying it out, testing its sound, and a moment later, the fire in his eyes flared once more, “respite and nepenthe,” as if he had just then discovered it, something important, the answer, or maybe just the elusive phrase, and he went back to his work then, mouth set in a thin, hard smile, head bowed as in prayer, while the rain drummed and his pen scratched on and a single lock of hair as black as a raven’s feather hung over one bright and restless eye.
For more Randall Silvis check out
the Ryan DeMarco Mystery series
Two Days Gone
On sale now
For more Randall Silvis check out
the Ryan DeMarco Mystery series
Two Days Gone
On sale now
READING GROUP GUIDE
1. On Night’s Shore begins with a very startling scene as Augie witnesses a young woman tossing her child out of a window and jumping after into the river below. How does this scene set the tone for the novel? What does it foreshadow?
2. Why do you think Poe takes to Augie so quickly and adopts him as his protégé? What qualities in Poe does Augie admire, and vice versa?
3. If you were choosing a protégé, what qualities would you look for in that person? What if you were choosing a mentor? What are the benefits of these types of relationships?
4. Augie gets the benefit of learning from one of the greatest American authors of all time—Edgar Allan Poe. If you could be the companion of one author, who would it be? What would you ask them, and what would you hope to learn?
5. Do you think artists need to understand suffering to produce great work? What do you make of Poe’s depression and alcoholic tendencies? How does Augie care for him?
6. Describe Poe’s relationship with his wife, Virginia, and Mrs. Clemm. How do you think Virginia’s sickness affects him? How does Augie view the two women?
7. If you were to become a famous writer, like E. A. Poe, what kind of writing would you be famous for? How do you think your fame would affect your life? Why do you think Poe struggles with his own brilliance?
8. Poe seems to be a pariah of the newspaper world, having to sell his stories door-to-door to make any sort of living. Compare this with Augie’s own neglected upbringing. How are the two characters similar? Do you think Poe sees himself in the mistreated Augie?
9. Describe Augie’s mother. How does Augie overcome his upbringing? Do you think she got what she deserved? Does her death ultimately help or harm the young boy?
10. What do you make of Johnston Hobbs? Is he better or worse than the violent, low-brow criminals Augie encounters in Five Points? Explain.
11. How do Poe and Augie go about solving the Mary Rogers murder? Which of the suspects do you trust? Which do you not? Why?
12. How does Johnston Hobbs initially get away with murdering Mary Rogers? How is he finally brought to justice?
13. Throughout On Night’s Shore, Poe repeatedly brings Augie into dangerous situations with crooked people. However, he also serves as an almost father figure to the neglected child. Do you think Poe is a good influence on Augie overall? Why or why not?
A CONVERSATION WITH THE AUTHOR
When Poe meets Augie Dubbins, he tells the young boy that he has the instincts of a writer. As a child, did you have the instincts of a writer? Did you always write?
Looking back, I can see that I did have a storyteller’s instincts. I was the kid who entertained the others in the neighborhood after a night of hide-and-seek or some similar game. I made up stories about aliens or wild beasts or whatever sprang to mind. We passed many nights sitting in the grass, watching the stars, me spinning outlandish tales.
On long trips in the car with my parents and siblings, I would huddle up against a window and tell myself stories, even assuming different voices. Eventually, my older brother would punch me on the arm and tell me to shut up.
So I never recognized this ability as anything unusual, or as anything useful. No adults ever commented on it. I was twenty-one years old before an adult suggested I had talent as a storyteller.
If you had to give aspiring writers one piece of advice, what would it be?
If a writer is meant to write, and wants nothing but to write, he/she will find a way to write. Success or failure doesn’t have anything do with the degree you get or the how-to books you read or
the advice other writers press upon you. Passion, talent, and discipline are the only determining factors.
You do a great job at bringing to life the complicated character of Poe. How did you go about understanding this enigmatic man?
Before I wrote a word of the first novel, I reread most of Poe’s stories and books and poems, plus all of the biographies available. Only then did I feel sufficiently informed to write about him and his family and the New York of 1840. Along the way, I came to recognize that he and I share many traits: the driving ambition and hunger, the imp of perversity, and so forth. I tried to be as sensitive to his nature as possible and to interpret his actions with a brotherly eye.
We see that Poe is an investigative journalist, a poet, and a fiction author, among other things. Do you dabble in other genres and writing projects?
Like him, I have a wide-ranging interest in literary forms and genres. I’ve written a lot of creative nonfiction in many of its subgenres, have written in five or six genres of fiction, have published a few poems, am a produced playwright and screenwriter. I enjoy the challenge inherent to not doing the same thing over and over again. The only genre I haven’t written is criticism, probably because I don’t read it.
How would you describe your writing style?
I like to vary my voice as much as possible to suit the story, but in a general sense, I do love descriptively rich language that also carries a lot of subtext, and maybe a little humor.
At the heart of On Night’s Shore, we have the mystery of Mary Rogers’s death. Is mystery the genre you enjoy reading?
Not exclusively, but it is one of the genres. I also love magical realism, mainstream/literary fiction, and creative nonfiction.
Who are your favorite authors?
Among the masters: Ernest Hemingway, William Faulkner, Gabriel García Márquez, John Steinbeck, Eudora Welty, Flannery O’Connor. More contemporary favorites include William Gay, Karen Russell, and James Lee Burke.
Both Augie and Poe have been through hard times: Augie with his family and rough upbringing, Poe with Virginia’s illness. How do you think these events influence their writing?
Individuals react to hard times in one of two ways: either by becoming sensitized to the travails of others, or by becoming cynical and hard themselves. I like to think that Poe and Augie and I belong to the former group.
What does your writing process look like?
It looks like a man sitting at his desk for three or so hours every morning, alternately staring into space and scribbling illegibly in a notebook.
How much of On Night’s Shore is fact, and how much is your own story?
Mary Rogers’s death is a historical fact, but none of the incidents in the novel are factual.
Are you working on anything new?
That’s like asking a chicken if it’s working on another egg. I always have two or three or four eggs germinating at one time. Right now, I’m working on two crime novels, a mainstream/magical realism novel, and a memoir.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My Poe novels, On Night’s Shore and Disquiet Heart, would not be enjoying this second life were it not for two wonderful women: my agent, Sandy Lu, and my editor, Anna Michels. Both are among the best at what they do. I wish I had a hundred languages in which to express my gratitude, but only one sadly insufficient language will have to do. Thank you.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Randall Silvis is the internationally acclaimed author of over a dozen novels, one story collection, and one book of narrative nonfiction. Silvis’s many literary awards include two writing fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Fulbright Senior Scholar Research Award.
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On Night's Shore Page 37