> With a peak circulation of forty thousand—enormous for its time
How was it possible to make a living - I imagine a full editorial team, writers, printers, office workers - with this volume of sales, while today, magazines with zero distribution cost, and with millions of subscribers are going under. Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?
> Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?
The standard of living was much lower and people’s expectations of reasonable income were lower too. It was common in those days for blue collar workers to do 12 hours of hard physical labor and live in cramped conditions with multiple people per room. What we would now consider worse than a homeless shelter.
In comparison just working a desk job was already a luxury. Even if you were barely making ends meet
Quick Google search says a newspaper writer would make $400 to $800 per year in Poe’s time. That is about $20k/year in today’s money, which is just above poverty level
Writing professionally was basically gambling in the 19th century. An “advance” was a loan from your printer and you paid it back even if the book failed.
I was reading about 19th century Russian writers recently. Very few of them made much money and some like Turgenev and Tolstoy were personally wealthy.
Poe's life had many complications due to poverty and jealousy that made his being a literary genius almost irrelevant. Researching his death produces even more questions than answers, as a strong case could be made that he was made to appear to have died of a morphine overdose in a ditch.
> what is the psychological label for people who do not distinguish artist from art?
There isn't one because you can dislike a person and/or their works for literally any reason you want.
Is there a label for insisting that people put aside their feelings and engage with something because you have deemed their reason for not doing so invalid?
while I agree that an artist can not be separated from his art (forget Poe, see Vrubel), there is also a label for people that put their faintest feelings above everyone else, and that label is: a despised snowflake.
I only implied that implied psychological traits of a fictional character are not evidence of the same psychological traits in the author. It's merely evidence that the author is capable of observing or imagining such traits in others.
That's terribly bad. Badly written, barely three pages long, bad references... Half of the list of references are of himself, but almost all of the references in the text are just from one book from 1965.
And lots of affirmations of that text aren't unsustained or don't make sense.
Amazed to see it's from TCD. I don't think posthumous psychological diagnoses are particularly helpful. To diagnose someone you need to interact with them, observe them etc.
Is there anyone not suspected to be autistic these days? Including me. Personally my finger points more in the direction of Emily Dickinson and James Joyce.
A little tangent, but
> With a peak circulation of forty thousand—enormous for its time
How was it possible to make a living - I imagine a full editorial team, writers, printers, office workers - with this volume of sales, while today, magazines with zero distribution cost, and with millions of subscribers are going under. Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?
What percentage of Condé Nast's or Bertelsmann's gross receipts do you think goes directly to editorial and print workers?
> Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?
The standard of living was much lower and people’s expectations of reasonable income were lower too. It was common in those days for blue collar workers to do 12 hours of hard physical labor and live in cramped conditions with multiple people per room. What we would now consider worse than a homeless shelter.
In comparison just working a desk job was already a luxury. Even if you were barely making ends meet
Quick Google search says a newspaper writer would make $400 to $800 per year in Poe’s time. That is about $20k/year in today’s money, which is just above poverty level
Writing professionally was basically gambling in the 19th century. An “advance” was a loan from your printer and you paid it back even if the book failed.
I was reading about 19th century Russian writers recently. Very few of them made much money and some like Turgenev and Tolstoy were personally wealthy.
> Writing professionally was basically gambling in the 19th century.
Plus ça change...
Very few people made a living on writing. Poe was one of the first to attempt, and it didn’t go well for him.
Poe's life had many complications due to poverty and jealousy that made his being a literary genius almost irrelevant. Researching his death produces even more questions than answers, as a strong case could be made that he was made to appear to have died of a morphine overdose in a ditch.
OK so there is a better angle to look at all this, there really is:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/357868645_Edgar_All...
Hmm, what is the psychological label for people who do not distinguish artist from art?
It's one thing for a biographical analysis to look at the person's real life experiences and relationships.
It's another thing entirely when you start conflating the characters in the fiction with the author's own character...
> what is the psychological label for people who do not distinguish artist from art?
There isn't one because you can dislike a person and/or their works for literally any reason you want.
Is there a label for insisting that people put aside their feelings and engage with something because you have deemed their reason for not doing so invalid?
while I agree that an artist can not be separated from his art (forget Poe, see Vrubel), there is also a label for people that put their faintest feelings above everyone else, and that label is: a despised snowflake.
‘Shoulding’?
I said nothing about like or dislike.
I only implied that implied psychological traits of a fictional character are not evidence of the same psychological traits in the author. It's merely evidence that the author is capable of observing or imagining such traits in others.
That's terribly bad. Badly written, barely three pages long, bad references... Half of the list of references are of himself, but almost all of the references in the text are just from one book from 1965.
And lots of affirmations of that text aren't unsustained or don't make sense.
Terribly bad angle.
Amazed to see it's from TCD. I don't think posthumous psychological diagnoses are particularly helpful. To diagnose someone you need to interact with them, observe them etc.
I think you may be missing the point.
This post was an absolute joy to read.
Reducing people to [ ] vetted and [x] refused boxes seems to have become a favorite pasttime worlwide.
Is there anyone not suspected to be autistic these days? Including me. Personally my finger points more in the direction of Emily Dickinson and James Joyce.