In A Series of Unfortunate Events there's a character named Mr. Poe. He's a banker who is in charge of the fortune that the Boudelaire parents have left behind. And so he's in charge of both the money and of the circumstances of the three Baudelaire orphans who are the heroes of the story. He's inept and well-meaning, although his well-meaningness seems of less and less comfort as his ineptitude grows and grows. The short answer is that I named him Poe just because I named all of the characters in that series after authors that I admired in one way or another. But also in the case of Poe I- I liked the fact that Poe himself with many apparently romantic ideals in mind, put characters into terrible circumstances and that is more or less what Poe does is that with- with something good in his heart, with a philosophical foundation, he ends up putting the Baudelaire orphans through all these trials and tribulations. So it seemed like an appropriate name.
What I like about gothic fiction is that something is always happening. It's always eventful. It's always a series of unfortunate events in gothic fiction. I mean the wonderful thing when looking through the stories by Edgar Allan Poe is that they all just have great things happen in them. I remember so clearly reading "The Fall of the House of Usher" and realizing that there was actually going to be a fall of the house of Usher. Not a fall as in the decline and fall of Roman Empire, but a fall like a guy falling off a cliff. And for me as a young reader there were so few books that seemed to contain that kind of adventure that weren't unbelievably cheery, which was the other thing that used to irritate me in kind of boy's adventure stories that there would be so much cheer. And so for me gothic fiction is melodramatic things happening and then this tone unending woe and and pain and suffering not only in the circumstances but in the very language of the stories. And certainly that's what's so wonderful about Poe is that all of the characters and all of the narrators, and it seems the author this unbelievably morbid sadness from the get go, from- from the very moment. It's never, I was a happy person and then this happened to me. It's always, I should have know from that very day when I was in this terrible place meeting with this mysterious stranger that it was only going to get worse. And that's such an appealing way to begin a story in my mind.