1. Was the very first man who helped me develop my rapid love of reading (and created the believe that genre fiction can have an immense amount of literary merit)
2. Is among the ranks of Shelley and Hunter S. Thompson for forever instilling the image of the drunk writer in our collective unconscious.
And that man is...
I don't have to say much about Poe, because I would venture to say that most people did not escape their K-12 schooling without reading Poe. Brilliant, maudlin, and tortured, the man is a staple of our literary canon.
Disagree? Well, then, I ask you this: Why else would John Cusack be playing him in an upcoming film that I can't wait to love to hate?
