Poe's Pervasive Influence

For Poe's Pervasive Influence, Cantalupo (Pennsylvania State Univ., Lehigh Valley) selected ten essays, an interview with Japanese mystery novelist Kiyoshi Kasai, and poems from presentations at the Third International Edgar Allan Poe Conference in 2009. She notes in her introduction that this volume builds on Lois Davis Vines's Poe Abroad: Influence, Reputation, Affinities (CH, Mar'00, 37-3793), still the important basic source for Poe's early and later international influences. Cantalupo's choices reflect many of the changes and new geographies of a decade of accelerated transnational interests in the literary world. Three essays make solid connections between Poe and Japanese fiction writer Edogawa Rampo. American gothicism, including fiction by Lafcadio Hearn and William Faulkner, has been an interest in Japan for some time; Orientalism had its influence on Poe (for example, "Tamerlane," 1827) and on other American writers. In addition to Asia, the essays reach to Russia, Portugal, and back to the US. The noted Daniel Hoffman, who died in March 2013, discusses Poe's presence in work by Angela Carter, Joyce Carol Oates, and Mary Oliver. Many of the writers have previously published on Poe or the genres in which he worked. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty. -- T. Bonner Jr., emeritus, Xavier University of Louisiana CHOICE