The Way I Heard It with Mike Rowe - 223: David Keltz—Would You Care to Have Your Head Read?

Episode Date: October 26, 2021

Mike chats with David Keltz, an actor from Baltimore who has assumed the identity of Edgar Allen Poe, and memorized most of his published works.

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and predict your future by analyzing the bumps on your head. This was not a question I expected to hear during my conversation with today's guest, a most unusual actor named David Kelts. But nevertheless, I heard it. What makes David so unusual is not the fact that he's familiar with phrenology, or the fact that people today are willing to pay him in a roundabout way to evaluate the bumps on their head, what makes him interesting and unusual is the fact that unlike most working actors, David Kelts stopped auditioning for theatrical roles many years ago and decided to cast himself instead in just one role for the rest of his life, the role of Edgar Allan Poe.

Now I know what you're thinking, you're thinking, Mike, Edgar Allan Poe, that's not a role because he's not a character. Poe was a real person who wrote spooky stories and died in Baltimore over 150 years ago. And you would be correct. Nevertheless, David Kelts, an actor by trade, has committed his career and his life to keeping the memory of Edgar Allan Poe alive. And he has done so just like an actor would by dressing like Poe and talking like Poe. And he is done so. And he has done so just like an actor would. and talking like Poe and acting like Poe. And maybe most importantly,

by memorizing virtually everything that Edgar Allan Poe has ever written. Poems, short stories, letters, literary criticisms, literally tens of thousands of words all committed to memory. For the last few decades, David has made his living by assuming the identity of Poe and by bringing his many works to life.

for an audience of any size, anywhere, anytime. When I heard about this guy the first time, I thought he'd be perfect for an episode of somebody's got to do it, and I was right. He was. I invited him on the podcast today because I haven't talked to him since then. It's been probably six years,

and I thought it might be fun to check in with the living embodiment of Edgar Allan Poe, what with Halloween, right around the corner, just to see how he's weathered the last year, few years and to find out if Po is still near the center of his universe. Well, spoiler alert, he is. David Kelts showed up for this conversation in full Poe regalia for a podcast. That's commitment, folks. Our conversation is really fun. It's a little strange in places, but strange is good, especially if you're the kind of person who might be inclined to have your

head red. One other thing, to keep in mind as you listen to this. David has no notes in front of him when we speak. When you hear him quote Edgar Allan Poe, either from his letters, poems, or short stories, he's doing it all from memory. Such is his commitment to the role of a lifetime and his desire to keep a great writer

who died in my hometown alive for generations to come. This is the way I heard it. Why let a shred of evidence stand in the way of a good story? I take that license. license sometimes, right? Well, you look terrific. You know, the people on this podcast, they know who you are. I've talked about you before. Where are you sitting right now? Baltimore. Butchers, Brewer's Hill. Brewer's Hill, sure. What's the difference between Brewer's Hill and Butchers Hill? One of them was kind of close to the lyric where I used to work once upon a time. I believe that it is a little

further north and to the west of where we are. If you know where Canton Crossing is, where half a mile from Canton Crossing. If I just took a walk that way, half a mile, it'd be right in the middle of it. Well, try and postpone that walk for at least an hour, David, and that we can stroll. How are things in my hometown, or I should say our hometown, Chuck grew up in Baltimore as well, and I know you've been there for a long time. What's the latest? Well, it's changed, of course, because of COVID.

Sure. There are a lot of differences. A lot of places have shut down because of an increase in crime. There's some areas that I used to go in, and I would not go in there at night now, nowhere near there. Other than that, things are nice. Theater slowed down, of course. I bet. There have been times off and on when we couldn't go to different places.

You know, I thought of you when this whole lockdown started for a couple of reasons. One reason was because I know that the kind of performances you do, or are almost always very small and very intimate. And I remember when I saw you last at the Poe House, you were literally in our faces doing the telltale heart. And I mean, spit flying through the air. And it was such an intimate thing and such a great moment. And that must have been one of the first things to go away, I imagine, through all this.

Well, things have slowed down a lot. Last year, I had only four performances. Two of those were in restaurants. and two were private performances. Usually I'm busy almost all the whole month of October, for instance. And this year, I'm just doing the sort of kind of bare minimum compared to what I was doing before COVID. What were you doing? What was a typical year like in terms of number of performances and travel and just the general market for a guy who does one character, no exceptions, all of the time?

Well, the month of October, for instance, was always very good. Sometimes I would do shows from the first one starting on Halloween Day, 10 a.m. And one year, I started the first one at 10 a.m. Had to do a lot of driving, going through a lot of different places. And the last show started at 1 a.m. They wanted it at midnight. Logistically, I just couldn't get there by midnight. And, well, Library Week was always big.

You know, it's kind of off and on corporate events here in Baltimore, because he's buried here at the grave, and they like to come and see the grave and see Poe and have a performance. Corporate events are always different from other events in that most of them want only the funny stuff, the humorous stories, which is unusual. So I've added that to part of the whole collection of things that I do. People don't think of humor when they think of Po. I certainly don't. No, Chuck, he wrote a lot of funny stuff. Nothing comes to mind. But, David, what are the big ones that are most in demand?

Well, the one that is most in demand that I do today that audiences will understand. About half of his stories were humor stories, but they were written for scholars of the 19th century, and so a lot of it wouldn't really work today. But there's one that's my favorite that goes over very well. It's called The Spectacles, and it's about a young man who has inherited one fortune and slated to inherit another. He's doing very well. He's very good-looking and very proud of his fortune and of his looks. He has a very handsome face, and nothing is wrong except for the weakness of his eyes.

It says that he always avoided wearing glasses. because he felt that nothing so disfigured the countenance of a young person. And the end result of all this is not being able to see as well as he thinks he does, he ends up marrying his great-great-grandmother. There's a trick pulled on him by his great-great-grandmother and some friends to show him the error of his ways. And the last line of the poem is, I am never, ever to be met without my...

spectacles. What a naughty granny. Yeah. It's a mistake you make once. Once. That's one that always goes over very well. When I read that, the first time, tested it out. It was an hour in 22 minutes, and I cut it down to 22 and a half minutes.

There are a lot of changes that occur in all these stories. You have to do that partly because people only want a certain amount of time, and because certain parts of it just don't catch the audience. Every word has to really hold the audience, just spellbound with it, and some of the parts of it don't. So I have to edit quite a bit and streamline quite a bit. But what changed, David? I mean, I know that the same was true back in the 1830s. People wanted to be entertained. Is it the modern audience? Is it our short attention span? Is it impatience? Well, it could be quite a lot of those. We live. We like sound bites today. In those times, they really enjoyed reading details about certain things.

Like I remember when I was reading once something in, I think it was Anna Karenina or War in Peace, one of the two of those. It seemed like it took three pages of wide margin and narrow spacing just to describe what this man saw as he walked across a lobby. And we like that. They liked that. But modern audiences wouldn't care for it as much. And a lot of it could be that audiences today would not catch the humor of things that were happening back in that time. And I have to edit things so that they will get it. So it will be appreciated.

For instance, I'm doing a story this Halloween, call some words with the mummy. The readers of the story at the time, if they were well educated, would know who many of these people were and know a great deal about them. But as it is, the way that I have to edit it, I have to explain who they were and which ones were American, which ones were British. And it gives it a lot of variety when I go into the different accents, one who's British, the main narrator, and then there's the Egyptian mummy. That was funny. I had to get the Egyptian accent down well. The way I got that was went to a restaurant where I knew one of the waiters was Egyptian. And I said, you know, you don't have to act this or anything. But I'd

like to see how you, I'd written the script already, how you pronounce these words. And so he read it. So I had the pronunciation then between that and David Stern's dialect tapes. I was able to put it together. And I saw that it was the way David Stern said it was. But Omar Sharif was Egyptian. And I listened to him and he had a great deal of vocal variety. And his was very expressive. A lot of what the Egyptian accent actually sounds like a sort of flat affect, there's very little, any variety in it. Give me an example. I'm having a tough time remembering an Egyptian accent. Let's see, we pick it up from the first time that he speaks. The Englishman says that they took this voltaic battery and he says, at my suggestion, Dr. Panana made a profound incision into the tip of the subject's nose and pulled it

into vehement contact with the wire. The corpse opened his eyes, sneezed, sat upon end, and addressed us in very capital Egyptian. I must say, gentlemen, that I am as much surprised as I am mortified at your behaviour. I really did anticipate more gentlemanly conduct from you. In what light I may to regard your pulling me

by the nose. And that's pretty much what it sounds like. Not bad. Yeah. That's Omar Sharif for sure. Okay. So let me ask you a little bit about the whole experience of doing somebody's got to do it. Because I was kind of making that show up as I went.

I love that day. That was great. I'm glad you had fun. Because I had a ball to. I had an agenda. I was trying to get the crew back to Baltimore. as often as possible to find stories that we could do there. And we came across some stories about you.

But I haven't spoken to you since then. I've seen the show, of course, and I just wanted to get your take on, did you feel like you were able to give a pretty accurate take of both who you are and why you do what you do? Yes, I think that your questions, the things that you were asking me, enabled me to explain a good deal about how I got started with all this.

I had relatives who said that they really enjoyed it and, you know, we're telling all their friends about it. Other people got in touch with me. One person from way back in high school had seen it. One person from way back in the Army 50 years ago saw it and loved it. It was very much appreciated by audiences all around and by me. It was great fun that day going through the graveyard. Yeah. Going to the house, going everywhere.

Oh, had a wonderful time with it. Well, I'm glad. You've talked about hauntings and things of that sort, and some of your podcasts are you've alluded to it. And I was glad that we didn't have any interruptions of that kind on that day because that's a place where, you know, it's supposed to be noted to be pretty haunted. I never experienced any ghost phenomena there myself. Some friends of mine have and were completely blown away, but startled by it. There has been a lot in the Poe House. I experienced one thing there, but I'm glad we weren't interrupted by the.

that as we were doing the show that day. Are you kidding? Had we been interrupted by a phantasm? That's what you call a ratings grabber. That's good TV. Absolutely. There are all those shows where they try to pull up spirits that are speaking and they think, that sounds like a voice to me.

But some of the things that I've seen there, there would be no question about it. Well, David, what was your experience? Well, my experience with that sort of phenomenon was not. in the graveyard. But I was over in the Poe House. I was up on the third floor. It happened that there was a Boy Scout troop coming through that day and they were running around all over through the house. I was keeping track of, it was in the top floor, very small room, people going in front of me behind me. And I felt I knew that there weren't no Cub Scouts or Boy Scouts behind me at that point. But even then, I felt a very hard, a knock like somebody's knuckle on my scapula. I thought, why?

Wow, that's a big kid. He's rude. I turned around to a look, and there was nobody there at all. And I turned back, I completely lost my thought. The people I was talking to said, what's the matter with you? We had been talking about things of this sort before. And I said, I thought it's just too unbelievable to tell them that I just experienced it. But I said, I just thought somebody was behind me. I didn't tell him somebody tapped me. But that was the experience I had. Do you think Poe genuinely believed in the afterlife, in ghosts, in haunts? Well, he didn't really, he liked to remake all of his stories, as he describes in one of his essays on writing the Raven. He liked to make things within the limits of the accountable, of the real. And the only thing that I can remember in the way of actual ghost was in the end of manuscript found in a bottle where ghosts are walking about on the ship. But other than that, he tended to avoid things like stories about war wolves, zombies, vampires, ghosts, anything supernatural. Everything that he was writing about was very real and human phenomena. And I think he just knew that most people would find that much more frightening than something supernatural.

When you know something really could happen, when you have a psychotic personality or somebody with alcoholic psychosis telling you was story, but somebody that's just driven by revenge to commit murder, that is quite believable. You can get drawn into that. Everybody can relate to that. If he did, he never mentioned it to anyone, and he wrote that only one story that was about them. Ghost phenomenon. Interesting.

So in terms of what is truly terrifying, I suppose it is always a more inward kind of thing. He certainly understood that. And I learned from you a great deal about what he wrestled with. They called it, what they call it in the day, melancholia, I suppose, right? Melancholia. That was their name at that time for depression, just sadness. And it was actually somewhat more involved than that with him, because although most people who met him most of the time would say that he was melancholy or depressed,

there were times when he was not. In fact, the leading authority on bipolar disorder today, that's Dr. K. Redfield-Jamison. She wrote a book called Touched by Fire, and she mentions a number of people who had bipolar disorder. Abraham Lincoln was one. Poe was one. And she gives the backup on that. She gave a talk before one of my performances once about bipolar disorder and how Poe had it. And you can see that in some of, well, if you follow his history, you can see it.

She mentions, for instance, that in the month of September, even though things might have been going very, very well, he would experience a depression. He got a job for the first time in his life, and he got a job as a writer, something that just didn't happen in those times when he was writing for the Southern Literary Messenger. But he said that the whole feeling of gloom pervaded his whole spirit, he said, and he didn't know why. Then there were other times when in the month of January, for instance, he would have a very good, optimistic, high feelings. Once when things were going terribly, he wrote, it would be a pity to despair just now when all begins to flourish. And I think that really it would have killed him. I don't know, he might have just died suddenly of depression or suicide or whatever when his wife. died because he was very, very close to his wife. She died in the month of January. Although he was

depressed, he somehow survived that. Interesting. He wrote a poem that has been analyzed as evidence of his bipolar disorder. That poem is called The Haunted Palace. And the first part of it is it's all about a head or about the mind. The first part is when things were going well, say, the manic phase and the second part of it is the depressive state. And you can see, as you listen to it, how these are a metaphor for the mind. David, how long is the haunted palace? Oh, only a couple of minutes. Would you mind? I could do it right now. Sure. All right. Well, I tell you what, let me throw a quick break right now, pay some bills. And when we come back, David Kelts will perform for the first time, right here on the way I heard it, Edgar Allan Poe's.

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That's net suite.com. NetSweet. David, we're back. The stage is yours. The haunted palace. In the greenest of our valleys by good angels tenanted. Once a fair and stately palace, radiant palace reared its, head in the monarch fought's dominion. It stood there, never seraph's

spread opinion over fabric half so fair. Banners yellow, glorious, golden, on its roofed, float and flow. This, all this, was in the olden times long ago. And every gentle air that dallied in that sweet day, along the ramparts plumed and pallid, a winged odor went away, Wonders in that happy valley through two luminous windows saw, spirits moving musically to a lute's well-tuned law. Roundabout, a throne was sitting porphyrygine, in state his glory well-befitting, the ruler of the realm was seen. And all in pearl and ruby glowing was the fair palace door,

through which came flowing, flowing, flowing, flowing, flowing and sparkling, evermore, a troop of echoes whose sweet duty was but to sing, in voices of surpassing beauty, the wit and wisdom of their king. But evil things, in robes of sorrow, assail the monarch's highest state. Ah, let us mourn for nevermore shall dawn upon him desolate,

and round about his home, the glory that blushed and bloomed, is but a dim remembered story. Of the old times, entombed. And travelers now within that valley, through the red-litten window sea,

vast forms move fantastically to a discordant melody, while like a rapid ghastly river through the pale door, a hideous throng rush out forever. And laugh, but smile, no more.

I like that ends in no more. No more. No more. Never more. Never more. David, you know what? First of all, I think it's great that people pay you today in order to hear the language as it existed 150 years ago. But my question is, what the hell has happened? What has happened to the language? What has happened to people's appetite and desire to simply let it wash over them? the level of education is less. There were many people who were not educated in Poe's time, but those who were tended to be very well educated. And even then, he wanted people to stretch themselves, it seems like.

But he wanted to write stories that would reach the general public, and yet at the same time caused them to have to think a little and to enjoy the language. He had thought about being a teacher at one time. and applied for many different positions, but never actually got them. There were people who enjoyed it at the time, even if they were not educated, but today it still tends to reach people. I've been told many times when I've performed in schools that, and I think it was true in my case, too, that Poe was the first kind of classical literature that they become acquainted with. It's the first thing that really draws them in.

didn't he ultimately wind up more or less creating the whole genre of literary criticism, maybe by accident? Well, actually, you could say he produced the genre of literary criticism. There was really no opportunity to do it until magazines came about in his time. That's when they began to be published, just small paperback magazines, and they were coming out monthly. but even then there was no real, no genuine actual criticism. What would happen at the time was, if you and I were friends, we would tell each other ahead of time, well, I'll write a favorable review for your poems such as such. You'll write one for mine and we'll either give each other credit or we'll make up a name

and say that it was written by someone else or we'll make it anonymous. us. On the other hand, if we had had someone we didn't like, someone we couldn't stand, even if their poem was good, we wanted to attack them, then we'd write a harsh condemnation of that. And that's what people were doing. And so what was coming out in the magazines was not really reliable. But he was the first one, actually, and this says something about, you know, you get what you pay for. He was the first paid critic like that. And so when he presented something, to use his words, he said, the critic should. The critic should. have the boldness to praise an enemy and the even more unusual courage to damn a friend. He should remember that criticism can be nothing in the world but criticism. A book is written and it is only the book which we subject to review. It is folly to assert that the literature of any age was ever injured by plain speaking. As for contemporary writing, plain speaking about it is simply the one thing desperately needed. it. That was the way he wrote his reviews. He got a tremendous amount of criticism for it. It

made a lot of enemies in the literary world. One of them was named Frederick Thomas. He admired that writer. And we have some of the writing, some of the letters, the advice that he gave to Thomas. I take some of that and I put it in to the shows as if I'm just talking to the audience about what is necessary for good writing. Let us talk about writing for a moment or two. For instance, my friend Frederick Thomas of St. Louis, Missouri, has written two novels, one titled Clinton Bradshaw, the other Howard Pinckney. In the first, he gave himself up to his own nature, which is a noble one, upon my soul.

He was clearly interested in what he was writing and writing pleasantly to please. And for his first novel, he received a very cordial reception from the press, but in the second, having gained a name, the consciousness of reputation, let him write to maintain it, and the effort becomes obvious. If only he would throw the public opinion to the devil, and forgetting that a public existed, and write from the natural promptings of his own spirit, he would do wonders. In a word, Howard Pinckney is wanting in abandon.

And when I say this you know, I mean a high compliment for they to whom this very abandoned may be safely recommended are very few indeed and belong to the loftier order of writers. I tell that to an audience. That's what he said in his letter to Frederick Thomas. So he would never have given Frederick Thomas a negative review other than something like what I just said, what he told him in that letter. So he made it real. He made the business of talking about writing real and provided ultimately a service to the reader who, until that point, couldn't get a straight analysis or an honest assessment of a published work. Didn't he also go toe to toe with Longfellow? Yes.

He accused Longfellow of plagiarism. He felt he had this one poem funny, just right off the top of the head. having a hard time remembering, but Longfellow wrote a... Well, it's because you've got 50,000 words already memorized, David. I mean, I can't ask you to do Longfellow for crying out loud. Right. But Longfellow had written a story called the beleaguered city, and Poe said that that was the whole tone and tonneur, everything about it was like his poem, which I forget the name

of right now off the top of my head. But he felt that Longfellow was a plagiarist, and he had a certain amount of jealousy toward, I guess you'd say writers who held high positions in universities and were able to not have to worry about whether they were making a living with it. Ministers, gentlemen of elegant leisure up until those times were the only ones who really published anything. But when he came along, fortunately he was able to manage some of the time to make a living out of writing. and he didn't think very highly of those who were lauded and praised for their works when they were not really that good. He was far better than most all of them.

Didn't you tell me when we met David that he was the first writer really to make a living by doing nothing but writing? I'd say he and Charles Dickens. The way that that came about again was even with Charles Dickens' works. They came out in magazine form. they were published little by little month by month, and people stood in long lines to find out what was going to happen in great expectations

or in Oliver Twist. Now, Poe didn't write those long versions of stories. You know, maybe he could have done perhaps a little better financially if he did, but he liked to write stories that were very condensed so that when you read the story, He said you should be able to read it in one sitting because if you got up and went away and you had dinner

and you answered the door, you talked to people, you did other things. When you came back, the spell was broken. Spells broken. So he liked to write shorter stories so that he really had the reader in his grip from beginning to end. And that's what he did.

I'm certainly with telltale heart, you know, the way that thing just builds and goes and goes. There's no way you can excuse yourself in the middle of it. No way. I mean, you'll just, yeah, no, you're not even going to the bathroom. Amazing. I read, too, that when Dickens was doing things like Oliver Twist and great expectations and publishing them, I guess, in the London Times or in some of the magazines, it's not like he wrote the book and then published at a chapter at a time. He was writing it

as he was publishing it. And just from a writing standpoint, that just strikes me as about the most incomprehensible thing to do. Because you can't go back and fix any mistakes you might have made. You're married to that narrative and you've got to land the plane at the end of it one way or the other. That's writing without a net. That is. And he had, yes, as you say, Poe did rewrite some things, by the way. There are different versions of the Raven. They're different versions of some of his other stories. And I'm telling. Oh, yes. And I'll pick outlines like in the telltale heart, The beating drove me to uncontrollable terror. And I had been doing it that way for a long time.

And then I read somewhere that in a later version he wrote to uncontrollable wrath. And I thought, wrath. Yes, that works better there. And he was always. Because from what I read, it was originally the telltale liver. And the raven, of course, was the sparrow. And these were incredible, incredible rewrites. Very few people know.

Let's talk a little bit about YouTube because last week on the podcast, we had a friend Rico, Colin Tony. I don't know if you know him, but he's been acting for all of his life, probably played a hundred different roles. We've had lots of people on who have distinguished themselves in our field. But you've got the one. You've picked Poe. You've memorized, what, 40, 50,000 words?

I don't know how many words. What it comes down to is, let's see, I think, nine points. and six tales, something like that, of his. So I just think it would be interesting to hear a little bit about how that happened to you, because once upon a time, you were an actor with dreams of, well, typical dreams of typical actors. And then all of a sudden, there you are in Baltimore, dressed like this one historical figure, and you've dedicated your life to keeping his memory alive. Well, that makes you different from most of the actors, I know.

Well, there are a few that you'll talk to who came upon circumstances just as I did to, at the time that I came up with or started doing one person shows, I was really working only about four months out of the year and considered myself lucky to be even getting that much. And I happen to think about the fact that producers have to pay a cast, and that's a lot of money going out right there. and when a play is produced, people will want to see it over and over, and they want to have it in other places, but you've got to get a cast together and produce it. And so I did, other actors have done this too. A lot of actors that have found themselves out of work, just said, well, if I had a show that I could pick up and move with, I'm the one actor, they don't have to pay 23 people, they only pay me, I could go from city to city, I could go anywhere.

One time I got a call on very short notice. Fortunately, I happened to be living a half mile away from the Poe grave. I got a call, could I be down there in 45 minutes to do one? And others, like when I did the festival in Prague, that was a three-month run. And I got four years notice on that. The promoter Peter Fawn saw me at the Poe House and asked if I could come to Prague and perform several years later. So I did. And that was the main thing. That was partly that, and it was partly that there are certain historical characters that I've really liked and wanted to meet. Poe is my very favorite of them all. All the audiences like Poe, best of all. I also did one once on D.H. Lawrence and H. L. Minkin and Captain John Smith. And I even have one that's in the works now. I can pull it up. I was supposed to do it except COVID got in the way this year. about a phrenologist and phrenology in the 19th century.

The first one I did was of Orson Squire Fowler, who was sort of the major phrenologist of the time. Phrenology is the study of, it was like the bumps on the head. Yes, it's a pseudoscience. Yeah. Poe was very much into that, right? In the very beginning. He wrote about that stuff.

In the very beginning, he was into it. Yeah. But then he came to see the light way ahead of most people. He wrote in certain letters. He wrote in a letter to someone, have you had your head read? I've had my head read three times, and it was all, you know, very flattering. But then he came to realize, most of the intellectuals didn't realize this until about the 1870s after his death. He came to realize that there was really nothing to this.

And although he was using the language of phrenology and some of his stories at first, he took it out. because he just thought, you know, there was just no truth to it at all. Although some of the people who were doing it were very good at reading character. They knew how to assess a person. You know, like you hear sometimes auditioners say, I can tell if an actor is any good before he's walked halfway across the stage. And he was able to, these people who were able to do it, did it very well.

And so they would, people would become away astonished thinking that they had heard the truth, in many cases, some were not taken in by it. John Quincy Adams was not. It was one who, for instance, he wondered how two phrenologists meeting one another would not be able to just burst into laughter at the way that they were taking the public with this. But it's funny to do. The show that I dend, it's based on, they used to have something like E-Harmony in those times.

In the phrenological magazines, somebody would write. write in and say, I have the organs of benevolence and veneration well developed. And I'm looking for a lady who might also have those well developed. No combativeness. I want no combativeness. Good luck. Yeah. And other people would read these, and they would go looking for mates on that way, and people

would hire them. And unfortunately, if you had the wrong shaped head or the wrong look about you, people might think you were a murderer because this was so very well accepted at the time, especially by about the time of the Civil War. The major phrenologist of the time was one named Orson Squire Fowler. And I took most of his writings, a lot of things there's writing. He wrote a book huge about the size of a large phone book called Creative and Sexual Science. And it was all about how the bumps on your head would tell something about,

you and your character and your sexuality and how good a mate you would make. And so at first this idea is, frank from my thought about doing show based on Victorian sexuality because a lot of people were interested in the fact that Poe married his 13-year-old cousin when he was 27 and they wanted to know about that. And they're very curious. And so I thought, well, I'll do one based on sexuality in the 19th century. And I almost left out the part about phrenology. I almost thought this is too, this would be

uninteresting to people today. It turned out to be the one thing they were most interested in. They weren't interested so much in any of the sexuality, anything like that. In fact, a lot of audiences seem to be, you know, just about as prudish as the Victorians were in that way. So I did one just on linking the two ideas, how to find your perfect mate through phrenology.

Afterward, people did want their heads read. And so I do that, and that's a big hit. I was doing it at a convention one time in a restaurant. And so I gave the opening talk and then started reading people's heads, and they were fascinated with it. They're all sitting there saying, there is something to this. You know, person after person saying there is something to this. Then I had to go take a 10-minute bathroom break.

And I thought, well, when I go out, the crowd will have dispensed. And I'll have to do the opening again, explaining what phrenology is and about it and things of that sort. Came back and nobody had lost their place in line. Everybody really wanted their head red. Well, this is the future then. I mean, I think you've really far as gumped your way right into the whole second act of your career here. I mean, look, everything old is new again. You and I are old enough to remember the psychic friends network.

Yes. How is this any different, really? Well, a lot of it is the same. I look at a lot of things that I once was so much into metaphysics that was studying anything having to do with ESP research, things of that sort. And I was fascinated with it and was pretty much a believer in a lot of it in the beginning. Then I would go there and watch things that would happen and came to decide, wait a minute, what everyone's saying they're so astounded with?

didn't really happen. I mean, I was there. I knew what happened. And so I became disenchanted with a lot of that movement. I'm still interested in it. I'm still interested in things like ghost phenomena and telepathy and things of that sort. I think people can occasionally, you know, do have experiences that could fall into that classification of being telepathic or psychic. but so much of it is overrated.

I became convinced I thought, this is not just me. But I remember years ago, oh, way back in the 70s when it was at its peak, a magazine came out that said something about all these psychics predict what will happen in the next six months, check back. So they all wrote something, and I thought somebody would get something right, but nobody did. and that's the ones that are supposed to be the best in the country.

They were making predictions on world trends. But it is fascinating anyway, just the idea of doing this. And, you know, I always like people. I'm interested in people. And I like to read people, their body language. It's a fun opportunity to do this. But it'll never replace Poe. I mean, I just love doing Poe best of all, of all the characters I've done.

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And I have to think that sadness informed a lot of what he wrote. I mean, did he ever have a good time? Well, yes, he did, and he liked some people. He had a lot of bitterness in his like him, because he had a lot of hardship in the earlier years. But more particularly, his relations with women were better than with men. Somewhere, he wrote, Women have been angels of mercy to me, and have tenderly led me from the verge of ruin, while men stood aloof and mocked. And I think a lot of that came from the way that John Allen treated him as he was growing up.

And his father had really deserted the family when he was about one year old. John Allen was his stepfather. John Allen was like a foster father. Both of his parents died. and because he had heard so many wonderful and complimentary things about his mother and maybe even had some slight memory of her, he always said that he was proud that she was an actress. Being an actress at that time was considered, say, one step away from being a prostitute. In fact, in some cases they were expected to be prostitutes as well.

he said, I myself and the son of an actress, and have always been proud of that fact. No man could be more proud of his mother than I am of mine. A woman who, although well-born, he was exaggerating about that, although well-born did not hesitate to devote her brief career of genius and beauty to the theater, when shall the artist assume his proper place in society in a society of thinking beings how long shall he be enslaved how long shall the vermin of the earth

who crawl around the altar of mammon be more esteemed than the gifted men whose exalted thoughts and creative works link the rest of mankind to the mysteries and beauties of heaven like Brutus I pause for reply So you can see if like his mother was a template for the way that he related to women.

It was very good and he really loved women and they loved him. He had a lot of conflicts with men throughout his life that were very like what he'd experienced with John Allen. He didn't cut them any slack when it came to his reviews. He was known as the Tomahawk man or the Comanche of Literature. Paul was. He was... Oh, because he would say things like, for instance. Regard James Finnawa Cooper for a moment.

Poor Jim, misguided champion of the noble savage, whose novels are so silly and so badly done that they've caused the public to suspect a radical taint in his intellect, an absolute and irreparable mental leprosy. His fictions are a flashy secession of ill-conceived and miserably executed literary productions each more silly than its predecessor. For instance, one I have before me,

the last of the O'Leakins. What a disappointment. For a moment, I thought Mr. Cooper was making us a promise. Well, no wonder he didn't have a lot of friends. Wow. Mm-hmm. Yeah, and many of them were like that. I use a lot of critical reviews for humor in shows where I wouldn't do that at a kid's birthday party.

But at places like the Lyceum in Alexandria, where I'll be next Saturday, I do a lot of the critical reviews every year. Sometimes, you know, different ones are not always the same. But there's a wealth of them from which to choose. So to kind of start to sum some of this up is the main goal to entertain. or inform or keep the memory of this guy alive, not just on Halloween, but year-round, ideally. What do you want the masses to know of Poe that they don't? Well, you probably have talked to literature majors who will often ask each other the question, if you could have a conversation with any writer out of history,

if you could have them as your dinner guest, who would you choose? And one will choose one author and then another and another. And if they find it interesting, I personally would like to meet people from out of history like Po. And so I wanted to present something. Now, he did travel, by the way, and he gave talks.

He evaluated other writers. He spoke about his theories of writing. And so what I want to create for the, audience, when they go into the theater, I'd like for them to have the experience of feeling, of taking the back in time. What I really prefer is to create the zeitgeist of that time and have them feel as if they have met Poe. Some of the requests that I get, that's not quite possible because in some cases they want something interactive and sometimes they want Q&A. and at the end, they will ask questions that both simply either wouldn't have answered or...

He wouldn't have answered. They wouldn't even know about it. And they'll say things like a common one is they won't know when he lived, and they'll say, what side did you fight on the Civil War? Of course, he died 11 years before the Civil War. But really, my preference is to take an audience back in time, and I get a lot of good comments on that, that they have. Audiences have told me that they felt completely transformed and that they would remember it the rest of their life. And that's what I want that audience to feel.

Poe can't be here to speak for himself anymore. So I want to speak for him. Why do you think his words hold up as well as they do all these years later? Part of it is so much of the language is just so beautiful. beautiful, to hear the rhythm of some of his poetry. Some extreme critics would say, it's so beautiful that it's vulgar. Something like Yule Lum, Aldous Huxley said that. But for the most part, most people, they like it because of the language, and they like it because of the characters, the feelings of these narrators.

There's so much in it in many of his stories that I think people can relate to that people have felt. There's something I think universal in it. We've have felt these things or we've known people who were like these characters. And I think

people love the atmosphere of his stories. His stories really have atmosphere. Yeah, and you can't write atmosphere. You can create it with words and music.

In a lot of ways, I think what he wrote was musical. It was, yeah. There's a lot of music. Well, my favorite person to read about acting and how it works, says Michael Chekhov of the Moscow Art Theater, and he talks about how important atmosphere is, and when you're working on a play, you find, if you don't find the right atmosphere for the scene,

it'll come across as wrong or ludicrous or whatever. And he said, did you have to find the atmosphere of the scene or the play and your character? and think of that atmosphere as being like a color, almost like light, that fills you up and fills up the whole reaches of the theater, and just radiate that out in all of your movements, your voice, everything that you're presenting. And I think that very probably when Poe sat down to write,

he did the same thing with a pen. He always said he wanted to create an effect upon the reader. And I think that they just pictured that effect coming right out the end of his pen and capturing the audience, drawing the audience in. All right, well, if there's one piece that you would wish every American could hear, whether a Halloween or any time, what would it be?

Well, the one most enjoyed is the telltale heart. I think anybody reading the telltale heart is going to be just as I was, they're going to think, wow, Who is this person? When I read that story, I had to know everything about him and read as much as I could find about him. So in the sense of wanting the audiences to know about it,

that would be the one. That or the black cat. Black cat has the same effect, I think. But as far as expanding people's knowledge of Poe and what he's like, I would like for everyone to read the spectacles, the one that I told you about, the odd man who unwittingly marries his great-great-grandmother. But everything in Poe, I really like, enjoys critical reviews, everything. Where can people listen to you do this? Is there a site? How do people find you?

Well, it's amazing. Most of the jobs that I get are people who actually go to the show and see a performance, and then they think, well, I've got to have this person come to my university. or whatever. But I do have a website and there are some things on there, David kelts.com or on YouTube. It's David kelts.com, d-A-V-I-D-K-L-T-Z dot com, and David Keltz on YouTube. That's correct. And I put part of the Raven on there because in the beginning, when I was first doing YouTube, I thought that you only got 10 minutes, so I didn't have the whole thing. really what I enjoy is a fine version of the cask of a Monteado. But last year, people so much missed having me at the Lyceum in Alexandria that they wanted to know if I would have something filmed that people could look at. And so that's on my website right now.

And it's on YouTube, too, I think if you go to YouTube. And that kind of comes close to giving sort of a comprehensive view of his personality. They'd really take about two hours to give a pretty comprehensive view of his life and work. God bless YouTube. Where would we be without him? Hey, one of the things I did after we met was I gave it a shot myself. I read Telltale. Yes, I heard that.

Very good. I heard that. On Halloween. It just seems like there's so many ways to come at it. The guy loses his, he's clearly lost his mind. But it seems like over the course of the story, he becomes increasingly. bananas. I didn't really know what I was doing, but I gave it a shot. Did I get any of it right as far as you know? Yeah. It was kind of different from the way I generally interpret it.

I haven't looked at it just recently as I can't remember exactly what they were. But I remember a couple of points I thought, hey, that's nice. That's different. Like that, you know, that's got a nice mood to it or nice atmosphere. Yeah. Yeah, I enjoyed hearing it. I was trying to throw it away a little bit at the top. Like he was as sane as he could be and not make it so creepy right out of the gate. I mean, it's been done so many times. Vincent Price did a pretty good take on it.

That end, he also did the pit and the pendulum, I guess, right? Yes. Of all the people who have done, different ones, the one whose voice I feel, you know, in manner and everything feels closest to being like Poe to me was Ray Maland in the premature burial. To me, that really says. seem a lot like Post. I never heard him do

Telltale Heart, but yeah, they're all different. One way of doing it that doesn't resonate with me is I hear many people who think that the Telltale Heart or many of those stories are funny. So they do it kind of with like a grin and a laugh and a joking manner about it. And to me, that's not the atmosphere of it. Yours I liked. I have seen. many that I did like. We all have a different take on a different attitude. Oh, that's the fun of it.

Yeah, I've seen some that were very good. The interpretation. You mentioned premature burial, and since it's Halloween, we might as well land the plane around that cheery topic. This was a thing that really happened more often than not once upon a time. And personally, I can't imagine a more terrifying thing. But Poe wrote about it. He wasn't the only one to write about it. How popular is that theme when you're out in the world bringing these stories to life? Well, they are very much interested in that and interested in how people would do things like have a hole cut in the coffin with a rope coming through it and tied on to their wrist and going up to the top of the mausoleum so that if they began to wake up, you know, they could move it and ring the bell.

This was a real thing. Yes. And there was a real thing. And there was. were certain types of life-preserving coffins because many people were very much afraid of being buried alive at that time. It was quite common. In fact, even with our sensitive medical devices today, it can happen. There was a time about 15 years ago, I think it was, when a woman had been pronounced dead and actually taken down from the hospital into the morgue there. And one of the attendance, one of the people there looked and saw that inside the bag, that the bag was going in and out, tore it open and actually the person was alive. But you couldn't really detect it. Their stethoscopes, whatever instruments they had did not pick up on that. And so that could

have likely happened to her. She did die about a week later of the same thing that she was supposed to have died of, but it is possible even today that you could wind up being cut open and bombed or the victim of an autopsy, perhaps if you really weren't dead. It's a little scary to think about it, you know. A little scary. I mean, that's it. It's the sum of all fears. To wake up six feet under inside of a padded rectangle and knowing with absolute certainty

where you are and there's no way out. I just, when that gets in my head, in the middle of the night, it's an endless feedback loop. I just get up and make coffee because I'm not going back to sleep. I'm finished with it. I try not to go too far into that. It's sort of like... Have you freaked yourself out before? In the course of doing so many of these readings for so many decades now,

do you... What kind of dreams do you have? Well, actually, I've never had nightmares related to any of the poem material. I think I just enjoy it too much for that to happen. What I'd love to hear is the black... cat, but it's 20 minutes so we can't. So why don't you just set up the story, give us the basic bones of it, and then maybe hit us with the last couple of paragraphs? Yes, I could do that. The character in it is writing from his jail cell, and it's his last confession. And he tells

about the circumstances that led him to the crime of murder. And he begins telling about how in the beginning he loved animals and how he and his wife had pets and particularly loved a black cat. But then he says that his drinking caused him to almost lose his sanity. And he became cruel to everyone around him, including the cat, cuts the cat's eye out when he comes home and he can't find the cat and tries to find him and the cat scratches him. Then he hangs the cat. Then he's interested in killing another one of the cats when his wife interrupts him. and he withdraws his arm from her grass and buries the axe in her brain,

and he walls the corpse up in the cellar. And he's very proud of the fact that the police have never found it as they researched. But then toward the end, it's four days after the murder, a group of police came very unexpectedly to the house and proceeded again to investigate. They insisted that I accompany them in their search. At length, for the third or fourth time, we descended into the cellar. I wasn't in the least concerned.

My heart beat calmly as I walked the cellar from end to end with folded arms. The police were thoroughly satisfied and prepared to leave. I burned to say something by way of triumph. Oh, are you leaving? Gentlemen, gentlemen, this is a very well-constructed house. These walls, these walls are very solidly put together. And here, through sheer bravado, I wrapped heavily with a cane upon that very portion of the brickwork behind which stood the corpse of my wife. Oh, God!

No sooner I had the reverberations of my blows sunk into silence than I was answered by a voice from within the tomb by a cry at first muffled and broken like the sobbing of a child and then quickly swelling into one. long, loud, and continue a scream, utterly inhuman, a howl, a wailing shriek, half of horror, half of triumph, such as might have arisen only out of hell. I staggered to the opposite wall. The police were motionless in terror and awe. Then a dozen stout arms were toiling at the wall. It fell bodily. The corpse already greatly decayed and clobes. with gore, stood erect before the eyes of the spectators. Upon its head with red, extended mouth and solitary eye of fire sat. The cat!

The cat! The hideous beast whose craft had seduced me into murder and whose informing voice had consigned me to the hangman. I had walled the monster up within the tomb. So that's the end of that one. Good choice. And you never had a nightmare, huh? I don't know, David.

I don't know. It's an interesting theme, though, right? At the end, you've got this guy, the narrator, who is haughty. He's sure. And he wants to sort of lord his triumph over the authorities. It's very similar to Telltale Hart. Yes, it is. The only difference, the narrative that tells Tell Hart does become frightened and he's driven insane by it.

The other one is just, as you say, cocky and arrogant about it, you know. Yeah. So it's a little difference in there. Yeah. This cask of Amontiato, of course, too, had a person walled up alive in that case, which is also scary chained to the wall and left to die. Yeah. As he builds the brick wall in front of him. Yeah.

Dark. Dark, David. Look, I'm sorry, I waited to Halloween to chat with you, but you were on my mind, and it's good to know that you're still there in Baltimore doing your thing. Here as we come out of this pandemic, I hope more people can see Po in the flesh as you bring him to life in your travels. Good on you, man. You're a unique soul. Well, thank you, and so are you. Everyone I know says that.

We talk about you quite a lot, everybody who's seen you. And we're very grateful for everything that you're doing. Well, thanks. the show you're doing now, the ones I was in, and the ones before that the dirty jobs, and a lot of other things that you're doing out there in the world. Look, I'm just trying to stay busy and try not to get buried alive. It's a goal I have. Good.

Thanks, David. You take care, okay? Thank you for having me. All right. If you've ever wondered what combat actually feels like, not the headlines, not the movies, but what it was like to be there. This is Combat Story. I'm A.J. Peschuti, a retired force recon Marine and scout sniper, and this show is for anyone

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