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L I T E R A R Y H U B

VIA R UNNING PR ESS

How to Deal with Rejection

(and Get Revenge) Like Edgar
Allan Poe
Catherine Baab-Muguira on Doubling Down on Your Ambitions

By Catherine Baab-Muguira September 30, 2021

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 

When Edgar Allan Poe was 17 years old, he and John Allan loaded up the family
station wagon with all his clothes, posters, and books, and made the 70-mile trek
west to Charlottesville, Virginia. Among the rolling hills of that town, �omas
Je�erson had recently founded a university meant to serve the sons of the state—at
least, those sons who could a�ord to spend a few years drinking, gambling, goo�ng
o�, and, on occasion, attending the odd lecture, maybe sitting an exam or two. Poe
saw his own place in these ranks, and longed to distinguish himself in this fresh
social and academic setting.

He may have been glad to leave Richmond for other reasons, too. Poe’s teenage
years had seen a certain tension crop up in his relationship with his foster father.
Gone were the relative ease, a�ection, and approval—if not intimacy—of their
relations when Poe was still a child. At some point, Poe probably learned of the
illegitimate children that John Allan had fathered elsewhere in Richmond, which
may have been what prompted Allan to insist that the rumors about Poe’s biological
mother were true—that Eliza’s youngest child had been fathered by another man,
not her husband.

Writing to Poe’s brother Henry in 1824, John Allan pointedly referred to Rosalie as
“half your Sister,” adding piously, in case his point was somehow missed, “God
forbid my dear Henry that We should visit upon the living the Errors & frailties of
the dead.” In the same letter, he complained that Poe “does nothing & seems quite
miserable, sulky & ill-tempered to all the Family.” John Allan was, it seems,
beginning to resent his ward’s reliance on his charity—as in, how come this
assetless teenage orphan just accepted everything he was given? Why couldn’t he
pull himself up by his bootstraps like John Allan had? Sure, John Allan was, about

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this time, being bailed out of a tough spot by his wealthy uncle—whose fortune he
would soon inherit—but even so, he had never enjoyed the kind of advantages Poe
enjoyed. He had never had the chance to go to college.

If Poe relished his escape from these harangues, he may have also realized that he
was being set up to fail. Before leaving him in Charlottesville in February of 1826,
John Allan handed Poe just $110 (or so Poe would claim later). �is when tuition
and fees ran closer to $350.

Jeanette Winterson on How Artificial Intelligence Will Change the Way W…

You know how it goes. You’re on your own for the �rst time. You don’t want to
admit how lost you are, don’t want to beg or turn back the way you came. And so,
to cover the widening gap between your means and your expenses, you start to
borrow. If there had been, in those days, credit-card company reps loitering outside
the UVA student union with their quills and free waistcoats, Poe would have signed

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up on the spot.

As it was, he �rst cadged some credit from merchants in town, and when that
proved not quite enough, he tossed back a couple of peach brandies and sat down at
the poker table, cracking his knuckles and hoping for the best. After a few hands,
he found himself in an even bigger hole, so he just kept on playing and losing, and
losing, and losing, until he was $2,000 in hock—some $50,000 in today’s money.

Now he really couldn’t stay in Charlottesville. �ere was nothing for it but to
trudge home, tail between his legs, creditors nipping at his heels.

John Allan gloated, hard, as bullies do. All he would o�er Poe was an unpaid job in
one of his o�ces. He refused to pay Poe’s debts, and when collection agents arrived
at the ornate family manse, attempting to seize Poe’s possessions, they found there
was nothing to repo—no TV, no Xbox, much less a Corolla. Foster father and
foster son argued bitterly, and Poe decided to quit John Allan’s house before he was
pushed, or perhaps as he was pushed. He left the manse, retreating to who knows
where, and swearing to John Allan in a letter that he would �nd “some place in this
wide world, where I will be treated—not as you have treated me.”

In this same kiss-o� of a letter, Poe requested that John Allan send him some
starting-out money, as well as his trunk and clothes. His foster father did not reply.
�e next day, Poe wrote again, his tone turning desperate. “I am in the greatest
necessity, not having tasted food since Yesterday morning,” he admitted,
abandoning his earlier bravado. “I have no where to sleep at night, but roam about
the Streets —I am nearly exhausted…”

Poe saw his own place in these ranks, and longed

to distinguish himself in this fresh social and

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academic setting.

Once upon a time, rejection by one’s tribe was a literal death sentence. To be
abandoned as an early human meant to starve, freeze, or face the wolves and tigers
alone, whichever came �rst. Unsurprisingly, you and I still �nd it hard to take.
Because social bonds are so necessary to our survival, all our systems evolved to
recoil from rejection. We don’t just experience it in terms of mental, emotional, and
psychological strife—though heaven knows we experience it in those ways fully
enough—but as physical pain.

In fact, researchers have found that OTC drugs such as Tylenol can help to lessen
this pain, as though being told to get out of your parents’ house were the same
thing as a migraine or a strained hamstring. So profoundly does rejection a�ect us,
so greatly do we fear it, that we even experience it secondhand—we can feel rejected
vicariously. �is is why you can’t look away from all those “try not to cringe”
compilations on YouTube, and why reading Poe’s abject teenage pleas makes you
want to clap his Collected Letters shut, toss the book out the window, and go
swimming in a �shbowl of Chablis.

Our deep dread of rejection also accounts for why, according to numerous surveys,
public speaking ranks as people’s number-one fear, ahead of snakes, spiders,
heights, premature burial, and the Spanish Inquisition. Even now you may feel the
clammy, phantom wood of some distant lectern beneath your palms as the senseless
drivel pours, uncontrollably, from your gullet. Nothing focuses the mind like that
kind of self-consciousness so awful, so severe you almost want to laugh at yourself
alongside those laughing at you.

Yet all of us will face rejection at some point. No one is exempt, which makes it all
the more important that you understand how to have the right response—that, no
matter your age or exact situation, you harness the gut-searing motivation that

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rejection can provide you, and make an ardent resolution like Poe himself made. “If
you determine to abandon me,” he ranted to Allan in another letter later that year,
“I will be doubly ambitious, & the world shall hear of the son whom you have
thought unworthy of your notice.”

Give up? Hell no. At this key turning point, Poe doubled down on his ambitions,
because if he didn’t, then everything Allan believed about him—that he was an
idler, a loser, good-for-nothing—would be true. But you don’t have to mirror Poe’s
exact playbook, which involved hopping a ship from Richmond to Boston,
Massachusetts, assuming an alias, and, while starving and struggling to �nd work,
paying out of his own pocket to publish his �rst book of poems, Tamerlane. You just
need to nail the larger moves, outlined below.

Step 1.
Decide on revenge-via-success

Revenge, in this age of AR-15s, may strike a scary note. What we speak of here is
nothing so cheap and cowardly, but what Poe himself sought: revenge-via-success
(i.e., showing them all). Whether you are reacting to a rejection by your parents, by a
would-be prom date, by your �rst-choice college or grad school, or if you’ve been
�red from a job or are experiencing a surprise divorce, now is the moment to
become “doubly ambitious” and tackle the huge task of forcing the world to care about
you, at last. It’s time to make your mark, to prove to your foster father and all the
other dim bulbs in your hometown that you are the person you know yourself to be.
Whatever you’d planned to do with your life before, expand the plan. Make your
mission grander, more epic, so that an entire lifetime may be required to ful�ll it.

�is step, counterintuitively, is more about you and your self-respect than it is
anything external. Revenge-via-success is something you do for you, a form of self-
care.

You’re gifting yourself a huge sense of purpose at a moment when you might

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otherwise be �oundering, rudderless. So screw your heart up tight. Suck in your

breath. Swear to yourself that one day they—whoever “they” are—will rue the day
they doubted you. Even if, like a good lapsed Catholic, you long to forgive and you
wish good things for everyone no matter what they’ve done to you, be sure you
nurse a little desire for revenge as well. It’ll keep you warm at night in your single
bed at the hostel, in your cramped seat on the Bolt Bus, and during your overnight
shift in the glass cage at the bodega. Poe would want you to, and, frankly, you’re
going to need it.

Step 2.
Change addresses in a big way

Some folks stay where they are and try to mend the hurt. Don’t. Go! Leave!
Embrace the impulse to run. �e place where you’ve been rejected has become a
psychic prison, and putting it in your rearview is as much as a spiritual step as a
physical one—marking the beginning of your mythic antihero’s journey. �e
anthropologist Joseph Campbell identi�ed such decisive departure as the outset of
your unique, glorious destiny, a literal call to adventure. “�e familiar life horizon
has been outgrown,” Campbell wrote, “the old concepts, ideals, and emotional
patterns no longer �t; the time for the passing of the threshold is at hand.”

Granted, you may think you can’t a�ord to pass the threshold. Of course you can’t.
Few of us can. Do it anyway. Action beats planning. Just pull up stakes, whether
that means moving to the nearest city from your rural county—ah, the bright lights
of Topeka!—or to an actual big city on the coast, where every day you have to
choose between rent and lunch. It hardly matters where. Fail to remove yourself
from the scene of rejection and you’ll miss one of life’s great chances. You may be
broke, yet a new world awaits you. What notions of spectacular vindication will you
nourish? Your life is now either (a) spinning out of control or (b) taking a turn
wilder and weirder than you ever deemed possible.

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�ink of those who’ve come before you and take heart. Generations of theater kids,
queer kids, artists, intellectuals, freaks, and dissidents of all stripes have all left their
hometowns for bigger arenas. Buddha did it, so did Jesus. Poe too. Why not you?
Crucially, such a move will also free you to exaggerate how well you’re doing in the
new location—perhaps even to convince some indi�erent ex that you’re in an
exciting new relationship when you are, uh, not. Lock down all the wins, friend—
real or, you know, invented. You’re in charge of your own narrative now, and only
you get to decide what’s fake news.

Take the Poe tip: If you �nd yourself rejected and humiliated, then adopt a fake
name and �ee town, ideally under cover of night. Return when, and only when,
you’re rich, famous, and successful—or able to convincingly present yourself as such.

__________________________________

Excerpted from POE FOR YOUR PROBLEMS: Uncommon Advice from

History’s Least Likely Self-Help Guru by Catherine Baab-Muguira. Copyright ©
2021. Available from Running Press, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

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Catherine Baab-Muguira

Catherine Baab-Muguira is a writer and journalist who has contributed to, among others, Slate,
Quartz, CNBC and NBC News. A frequent podcast and radio guest, with appearances on NPR and
Lifehacker’s Upgrade, she lives in Richmond, Virginia with her husband and baby son.

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