Emily Ogden at Harvard Book Store
Harvard Book Store, 1256 Massachusetts Ave, Cambridge, MA
Harvard Book Store welcomes Emily Ogden —professor of English at the University of Virginia and acclaimed author of On Not Knowing and Credulity— for a discussion of her new book, Darkness Becomes Bright: On the Brief Life and Immortal Art of Edgar Allan Poe . About Darkness Becomes Bright A fascinating and intimate inquiry into Edgar Allan Poe’s shadowy life and horrifyingly compelling work—and why we are drawn to darkness in art. Since Edgar Allan Poe’s mysterious death in 1849, his stories and poems have captivated millions of readers around the world. Two centuries later, why do we continue to descend into the darkness of his imagination—and of the genres, from horror to crime, that he pioneered? In this spellbinding and singular book, Guggenheim Fellow and Whiting grant recipient Emily Ogden plumbs the darkness within Poe and enters it alongside him. She interweaves stories from his mysterious and tragic life—from his strange disappearances and tortured romances to his nearly fatal use of opium—with those of his most famous readers and translators, including poet Charles Baudelaire, writer Julio Cortázar, and psychoanalyst Marie Bonaparte, a descendant of Napoleon and a…