Among those gentlemen in Virginia who expressed the greatest interest in my statement, more particularly in regard to that portion of it which related to the Antarctic Ocean, was Mr. Poe, lately editor of the Southern Literary Messenger, a monthly magazine, published by Mr. Thomas W. White, in the city of Richmond. He strongly advised me, among others, to prepare at once a full account of what I had seen and undergone, and trust to the shrewdness and common sense of the public–insisting,
with great plausibility, that however roughly, as regards mere authorship, my book should be got up, its very uncouthness, if there were any, would give it all the better chance of being received as truth.

The beginning, if there ever was one, can be described as a dark humid narrow cavern behind the coal shed that uncouth monsters visited on rainy days and dark nights…

That is how began this interest in Gordon Pym. It was a tale my grandfather repeated so often until it became a game recounting part of it as though for the first time, discovering the truth, as you went along.

The near vision of a film version of The Raven transformed everything a decade later, in Venice, California. It was as though stepping through the mirror, into the other world.  Henry Miller lived up on the bluff overlooking the Pacific ocean. You spent enough time to make living beyond the mirror plausible.  That is when you are able to cut it  together as a collage lead by daily inspiration. An empirical knowledge. Ja.