In [the] second paragraph [of Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe], Poe is 'complex, inspired, limited, pretentious, uncompromising, banal'; on page three his art is 'strange, haunted, tawdry, inexorable, remote yet inescapable'. And we've still got a long, long way to go. (p. 97)

Needless to say, Hoffman is a man obsessed, so much so that at times he apes his subject's manias: '… my chronicle of Poe's life and work and reputation and influence and how Edgarpoe wormed his way into my guts and gizzard and haunted my brain and laid a spell upon my soul which this long harangue is an attempt to exorcise'.

Now as Hoffman admits, a lot has been written about Poe. He is generous in his avowed indebtedness to fellow soul-critics such as Richard Wilbur, but crude in his dismissal of earlier biographers and analysts. Recounting Poe's marriage at 27 to his cousin...