Ironically, given its emphasis on images of loss of breath and premature burials, sections of Robert J. Tally Jr.’s Poe and the Subversion of American Culture read like a breath of fresh air in Poe studies. It is refreshing to read, for example, Tally's keen analysis of a piece like “The Black Cat” (1843), reminding us of one of that story's most absurd moments: the narrator's attempt to convince his audience that a helpful neighbor threw a dead cat through a window to alert him of a fire. Though Tally is not the first critic to point out just how hilarious an idea that is (Susan Amper's excellent analysis comes to mindFootnote ¹ ), by positioning this moment in a larger discussion of Poe's oeuvre he succeeds in his overall project of repositioning Poe in both American literature and American studies. When we read pieces like “The Black Cat” not merely as works of Gothic horror, but rather as part of Poe's systematic take-down of the entire project of American literature, we see anew the contributions his voice makes to such discussions. As Tally reminds us, “a rhetoric of ascent” (1), a sort of master narrative of progress and improvement, looms large in both American literature and the critical discussion surrounding it. In contrast, Poe's rhetoric is one of descent and the product of a uniquely “nomadic” strain of thought that, through satire and fantasy, both critiques and subverts key tenets of the dominant narratives of American literature (5).

Key to Tally's argument is his concept of Poe's “nomadic” thought, both a product of his biography and a feature of his work. Tally shows how the writer's life and career are marked by an unsettling placelessness at odds with the prevailing culture's narratives of settlement. Even readers familiar with the details of Poe's life might have overlooked a simple fact that Tally points out: after Poe moved from Richmond to Charlottesville in 1826, he would never again live in a single city for more than five years, illustrating a kind of peripatetic existence uncommon among other writers. In contrast to men like Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne (associated with, respectively, Concord and Salem), Poe belongs to no one place and so, too, do his writings resist any movement towards teleology and conclusion. Thus, “Against the optative mood of the American Renaissance, Poe posits a terrifying perversity. Against the manifest destiny of movement directed towards settlement, Poe insists upon perpetual, unsettled movements. Against the narrative aims of knowledge and understanding, Poe offers inscrutability” (47).

Tally illustrates that Poe's works repeatedly rise up to challenge readers’ expectations of purpose and genre. “MS. Found in a Bottle” (1833), for instance, serves to unsettle the personal narrative, providing a story that undermines that genre's claim of enlightenment and substituting in its place confusion and uncertainty. In Poe's “perverse vision,” Tally writes, “these familiar elements are made strange and perplexing, and the progressive march of knowledge becomes a descent into greater obscurity” (49). Similarly, in his readings of “Ligeia” (1838), “The Fall of the House of Usher” (1839) and “The Man of the Crowd” (1840), Tally shows how Poe employs the grotesque and arabesque because these genres resist clear understanding and resolution. Especially interesting is Tally's description of Poe's relationship with his reader, one that is almost antagonistic, with the reader “captured, captivated, and manipulated by the writer” (8). From here, Tally moves to possibly his most unique and complex argument: that perhaps the “ultimate generic mode” uniting all of Poe's works (fiction, poetry, criticism) is the practical joke (106). Here his analysis of “William Wilson” (1839) stands out, as Tally argues that, from the very start, the story reads as an elaborate joke, leaving the audience “comically, and terrifyingly, lost in the tale's cosmopolitan wilderness” (120). Also significant, he links the laughter of satire with another genre – fantasy, with alterity as its distinguishing characteristic.

Poe and the Subversion of American Culture places Poe's dissenting voice right in the center of the American tradition, but that voice, full of derisive laughter, continues to resist easy classification or control. As Tally writes, “Poe's subterranean noises continue to trouble the sleep and dreams of American literature” (11). Ultimately, this impressive book reminds us of just how much complexity Poe offers to readers, continuing to undercut and mock every prevailing narrative of American literature. As such, the book is essential for anyone interested in Poe studies, American literature, and American studies.