NOT LONG AFTER my book Edgar Allan Poe Revisited was published, the manager of a Montblanc boutique contacted me about giving a talk to tie in with their new Meisterstück Edgar Allan Poe writing instrument. Eager to promote my book and secretly hoping for a deep discount, I gave her a copy to use as part of a window display and spent a half hour telling her about Poe's interest in autography, his own meticulous penmanship, his dreams of anastatic printing allowing writers to self-publish without typesetting, the implications of Poe's titling his prospective magazine first the Penn, then the Stylus, and so on. The relationship never got past that meeting: my hopes of owning a Montblanc pen were unrealized, the manager kept a copy of my book but never displayed it, and there was no public lecture on Poe and pens. More recently, a middle school teacher asked if I would come talk to two hundred seventh graders about Poe; after discussing a few possible dates, we settled on October 31. Then she asked if I generally dressed up as Poe for these occasions.