Of Poe and Pigs

 

Since 1949 someone has marked the passing of Edgar Allen Poe’s birthday, January 19, by mysteriously leaving items by the writer’s grave in Baltimore, Maryland. This year was no different with a little extra mythologizing thrown in:

From the AP:

Undeterred by controversy, a mysterious visitor paid his annual tribute at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe early Saturday, placing three red roses and a half-filled bottle of cognac before stealing away into the darkness.

Nearly 150 people had gathered outside the cemetery of Westminster Presbyterian Church, but the man known as the “Poe toaster” was, as usual, able to avoid being spotted by the crowd, said Jeff Jerome, curator of the Poe House and Museum.

The visitor did not leave a note, Jerome said, electing not to respond to questions raised in the past year about the history and authenticity of the tribute.

Sam Porpora, a former church historian who led the fight to preserve the cemetery, claimed last summer that he cooked up the idea of the Poe toaster in the 1970s as a publicity stunt.

“We did it, myself and my tour guides,” Porpora, a former advertising executive, said in August. “It was a promotional idea.”

Porpora said someone else has since “become” the Poe toaster.

Jerome disputes Porpora’s claims and says the tribute began in 1949 at the latest, pointing to a 1950 article in The (Baltimore) Evening Sun that mentions “an anonymous citizen who creeps in annually to place an empty bottle (of excellent label)” against the gravestone.

You can read the rest of the story here; it all reminds me of another famous writer’s grave in Maryland, that of F. Scott Fitzgerald over in Rockville, and the strange visitations it receives.

And speaking of literary items to file under “P”, Kitty Myers sends word via the New York Post that the infamous “Squeal like a pig” episode in the film adaptation of “Deliverance” was completely unscripted:

January 19, 2008 — BURT Reynolds says the infamous scene where a hillbilly rapes Ned Beatty in “Deliverance” went way too far during filming. “All that ’squeal, piggy, piggy’ was not in the script. Two camera operators looked away during the scene because it was getting so hairy,” Reynolds tells next month’s Maxim. “Finally, it went too far and I ran into the shot. I asked John Boorman, the director, ‘Why did you let it go that long?’ He said, ‘I wanted to take it as far as I could with the audience, and I figured you’d run in when it got too far.’ “

If you don’t know why that is important to us here at Carver’s Dog, then you haven’t read The Ned Beatty Factor.