have i told this story yet? idk but itâs good. The Orangutan Story:
my american lit professor went to this poe conference. like to be clear this is a man who has a doctorate in being a book nerd. he reads moby dick to his four-year-old son. and poe is one of the cornerstones of american literature, right, so this should be right up his alley?
wrong. apparently poe scholars are like, advanced. there is a branch of edgar allen poe scholarship that specifically looks for coded messages based on the number of words per line and letters per word poe uses. my professor, who has a phd in american literature, realizes he is totally out of his depth. but he already committed his day to this so he thinks fuck it! and goes to a panel on racism in poeâs works, because thatâs relevant to his interests.
background info: edgar allen poe was a broke white alcoholic from virginia who wrote horror in the first half of the 19th century. rule 1 of Horror Academia is that horror reflects the cultural anxieties of its time (see: my other professorâs sermon abt how zombie stories are popular when people are scared of immigrants, or that purge movie that was literally abt the election). since poeâs shit is a product of 1800s white southern culture, you can safely assume itâs at least a little about race. but the racial subtext is very open to interpretation, and scholars believe all kinds of different things about what poe says about race (if he says anything), and the poe stans get extremely tense about it.
so my professor sits down to watch this panel and within like five minutes a bunch of crusty academics get super heated about poeâs theoretical racism. because itâs academia, though, this is limited to poorly concealed passive aggression and forceful tones of inside voice. one professor is like âthis isnât even about race!â and another professor is like âthis proves heâs a racist!â people are interrupting each other. tensions are rising. a panelist starts saying that poe is like writing a critique of how racist society was, and the racist stuff is there to prove that racism is stupid, and that on a metaphorical level the racist philosophy always losesâ
then my professor, perhaps in a bid to prove that he too is a smart literature person, loudly calls: âBUT WHAT ABOUT THE ORANGUTAN?â
some more background: in poeâs well-known short story âthe murder in the rue morgue,â two single ladiesâa lovely old woman and her lovely daughter who takes care of her, aka super vulnerable and respectable peopleâare violently killed. the murderer turns out to be not a person, but an orangutan brought back by a sailor who went to like burma or something. and itâs pretty goddamn racially coded, like they reeeeally focus on all this stuff about coarse hairs and big hands and superhuman strength and chattering that sounds like people talking but isnât actually. if thatâs intentional, then heâs literally written an analogy about how black people are a threat to vulnerable white women, which is classic white supremacist shit. BUT if he really only meant for it to be an orangutan, then itâs a whole other metaphor about how colonialism pillages other countries and brings their wealth back to europe and thatâs REALLY gonna bite them in the ass one day. klansman or komrade? it all hangs on this.
much later, when my professor told this story to a poe nerd friend, the guy said the orangutan thing was a one of the biggest landmines in their field. he said it was a reliable discussion ruiner that had started so many shouting matches that some conferences had an actual ban on bringing it up.
so the place goes dead fucking silent as every giant ass poe stan in the room is immediately thrust into a series of war flashbacks: the orangutan argument, violently carried out over seminar tables, in literary journals, at graduate student house parties, the spittle flying, the wine and coffee spilled, the friendships tornâthe red faces and bulging veinsâcurses thrown and teaching posts abandonedâpanels just like this one fallen into chaosâdistant sirens, skies falling, the dog-eared norton critical editions slicing through the air like sabresâthe textual support! o, the quotes! they gaze at this madman in numb disbelief, but he could not have known. nay, he was a literary theorist, a 17th-century man, only a visitor to their haunted land. he had never heard the whistle of the mortars overhead. he had never felt the cold earth under his cheek as he prayed for godâs deliverance. and yet he would have broken their fragile peace and brought them all back into the trenches.
my professor sits there for a second, still totally clueless. the panel moderator suddenly stands up in his tweed jacket and yells, with the raw panic of a once-broken man:
WE! DO NOT! TALK ABOUT! THE ORANGUTAN!
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