We all know Edgar. The Mystery Writers of America even named their prestigious awards after him. Edgar Allan Poe is hailed everywhere as 'the father of detective fiction' on account of his short story <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Murders_in_the_Rue_Morgue" target="_blank">The Murders in the Rue Morgue</a></em> . It came out in 1841 and was described by Poe as one of his tales of 'ratiocination' (a posh word for reasoning -- he does like to show off a little does Edgar).

The storyline sounds familiar today. A strange double murder occurs in Paris. The police are baffled. A couple of smart civilians come along and solve the riddle. Cue any number of imitators from Conan Doyle through to the present day. The detective story has been invented. Edgar is the father of the genre.

Unfortunately there are a few problems with this idea.

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The principal one is Edgar himself. He was a journeyman wordsmith, a brilliant hack who would turn out pretty much anything that paid the bills. He wrote <em>Rue Morgue</em> while working as a magazine editor in New York. It paid him an extra $56 for the story, a lot of money for the day. Another of his tales, the deeply scary poem <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Raven" target="_blank">The Raven</a></em> , got him just $9 (if you will write poetry, what do you expect?) There's a clue here. <em>The Raven</em>, if anything, is horror. Poe also wrote satire, humour, opinion pieces and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Balloon-Hoax" target="_blank">one spectacular public hoax</a>.

Worship him as the father of crime fiction if you like but ask yourself this question: what would he have thought of that title? My guess is he'd have felt it odd and confining. Imagine if the magazine that printed <em>The Murders in the Rue Morgue</em> had turned to him and said, 'You're a writer of detective fiction. That's all we want from you now.' What would we have been denied? Well <em>The Raven</em> anyway, since it came after, and the piece you'll find below, <em><a href="http://feedbooks.com/book/765" target="_blank">A Descent into the Maelström</a></em> for sure<em>.</em>

Poe was a man of catholic tastes and interests. The detective side of <em>Rue Morgue</em> probably appealed to him because it demonstrated how the human intellect can overcome brute force. But he wasn't content to play that tune and nothing else. In 1838 he'd published the decidedly weird novel <em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Narrative_of_Arthur_Gordon_Pym_of_Nantucket" target="_blank">The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket</a></em>. I find this pretty much unreadable to be honest. But there's something very strange indeed going on in this narrative of an ocean journey that turns, very slowly into something close to fantasy and then ends abruptly in a way that leaves the conclusion open to interpretation.

Poe loved dabbling in stories that would today be labelled science fiction. His work inspired Jules Verne's wonderful SF tales. But he caught the imagination of other writers too. The French translator of <em>Arthur Gordon Pym</em> was none other than Baudelaire. So is Poe both the father of crime fiction <em>and</em> science fiction? Maybe. But I doubt he'd find that idea terribly interesting. Does it matter? Poe clearly read very widely. Nothing else can explain the breadth, intensity and intellectual complexity of some of his work. If he were alive today could you really imagine he'd be content to focus his talents on a single, narrow stream of fiction? A <em>genre</em>? I can't.

Here is something of his that's a million miles away from <em>Rue Morgue. A Descent into the Maelström</em> came out around the same time and is closer to SF or fantasy if you must have some kind of label. An old man tells the story of his accidental descent into a Norwegian whirlpool, the maelström of the title. But this is no mere geographical feature. It's a fissure in the fabric of the earth, a glimpse into another world. A reminder to puny little human beings that the universe is vast, uncaring and ever-present, waiting to engulf the unwary.

Poe was not alone in pursuing a bright and varied career as a writer. Robert Louis Stevenson, for one, refused to be classified, producing what would now be called the young adult fiction of <em>Treasure Island</em> and <em>Kidnapped</em> as well as the horror of <em>Jekyll and Hyde</em>, the novel <em>The Master of Ballantrae</em> and travel books. Arthur Conan Doyle may be best known for Sherlock Holmes but he wrote science fiction, historical novels and romances too without anyone, as far as I'm aware, accusing him of 'dissing the genre'. Whichever it was.

Let me depart before I labour the point. The notion of genre is fine in its place. But it should stay there, and not be used as a straitjacket to confine authorial creativity in general. I now leave you to Edgar, on top of a mountain in Norway, a country he never visited of course. And that's the last you'll hear from me on the subject of genre for a while.

<a title="Poe - A Descent into the Maelstro?m.pdf" href="http://www.davidhewson.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Poe-A-Descent-into-the-Maelstro.pdf">Poe - A Descent into the Maelstrom</a>