What illustrating Poe really taught me about fear | Eric Mongeon | TEDxBoston

Eric Mongeon mixes up the highbrow and the lowbrow and conquers fear of uncertainty.

Eric Mongeon is a Boston-based designer, illustrator and creative director. He works as the Chief Creative Officer of MIT's media company, MIT Technology Review, where he is responsible for setting the design strategy vision, and direction for all digital, print and event projects. Previously, he was the creative director of Boston magazine and operated a design studio, working with clients in education, technology and culture sectors.

This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at http://ted.com/tedx.

["First of all I dismembered the corpse.

I cut off the head
and the arms and the legs."]

I read those words when I was fifteen.

In school.

Like most people, I can thank
a high school literature teacher

for introducing me

to the darkly thrilling world
of Edgar Allan Poe.

Ninth grade, third period English.

We read "The Tell-Tale Heart."

Here was a story that was every bit
as thrilling as the comics I was reading.

It was every bit as disturbing
as the movies I was watching.

Here was a story
sanctioned by my teachers,

that scared me,

and it was part of my homework.

Now, the trouble is

we're taught to read
for the kinds of things

likely to turn up on a quiz,

and when you're reading for the quiz,

reading tends to become dispassionate.

The story starts to become
something that you reflect on

rather than something
that you're carried away by.

And let's face it,

you're never going to be scared

by anything that you
can't get carried away by.

So my picture of Poe went from this

to something more like this.

(Laughter)

I would encounter Poe
in other literature classes

throughout high school,

but I would never regard it
as anything more than an assignment.

The thrill was gone,

and I went back to my comic books
and my slasher flicks.

That is, until I was
a senior in art school

looking for some lurid source material
to adapt into a graphic novel.

Now, my interests

still lay in the same basic part
of the pop-culture spectrum.

I'd become a little bit
of a more discerning connoisseur.

But I decided to give Poe another look,

and I was shocked by what I discovered.

My teachers had been absolutely right:

this is literature of the first order,

full of elegant language
and shrewd pacing and profound insight,

but it's also just as full

of thrilling action, disturbing violence
and inspired mayhem.

If the best pop culture
is equal parts highbrow and lowbrow,

then this is pop culture
of the first order.

I decided to do an adaptation
that would honor this.

I wanted to do a treatment
that celebrated the highbrow aspects

while also reveling
in the lowbrow aspects.

I got through four pages
before it was time to graduate.

But I kept coming back to Poe
every few years,

always surprised by how much I'd missed
the last time I read him.

He's really among the first

to write about fear
in uniquely modern terms.

He's writing during the 1830s,

which is right on the cusp

of the second phase
of the Industrial Revolution.

This is a time in American culture

where there is great faith

in reason's ability to liberate us
from superstition and fear.

Intellectual reflection -
so the story goes -

will get you a picture of reality,

which you can then use as a tool
to understand and predict your world.

Now, this works great,

except for when it doesn't,

which is what Poe writes about.

All of Poe's characters experience fear

when their fundamental beliefs

about their social, personal
or practical situation

are somehow invalidated.

The world becomes uncertain

because the picture of reality

falls out of sync
with the experience of reality.

He understands that at the root of fear,

it's uncertainty;

it's not the things we're uncertain about.

And this makes a kind of sense
when you think about it.

It's one thing

to know there's an ax-murderer
hiding in your closet,

but it's something else entirely

to wonder whether or not
that sound you heard

is an ax-murderer hiding in the closet.

(Laughter)

All of Poe's characters
try to deal with this kind of fear,

most of them by doing the same thing:

they attempt to maintain
this picture of reality

by force fitting their circumstances
to fit that picture.

Now, this usually
has horrible consequences.

People wind up condemning themselves,

hurting other people;

they wind up digging up graves.

I mean, this is excellent
material to illustrate.

So 15 years later,

I still hadn't made any progress
on my collection.

I'd torn through a shelf
full of books by and about Poe.

I had assembled a pile of sketches
and composition studies.

I'd even studied
the design styles of Poe's era,

but I still wasn't any closer
to actually making my collection.

I was stuck in a pattern

that I think a lot of creative
professionals will recognize.

Let's call it "the Vortex."

This is a vicious circle
of research, rejection and refinement.

It is unrelenting,
and it is self-perpetuating

because you feel like
you're actually making something.

(Laughter)

You collect new information,

throw out old information,

rework your plan.

You are constantly busy
working on the project.

Except doing isn't
the same thing as making.

I realized that this had become
an implicit form of excuse-making for me.

I was afraid to actually make the work

because I was afraid to risk
getting the work wrong.

Because I've got a picture of reality too,

and my picture of reality
includes a picture of myself

as the kind of person
who doesn't get Poe wrong.

I was hiding out in the homework.

And when I fessed up about this,

I stopped doing and I got busy making.

I started making the drawings.

I started making the layouts.

The anxiety wasn't gone,

but it was no longer
getting in the way of doing the work.

There was still no guarantee
that I would get it right,

but I was making.

I looked back on this 15-year
period of research,

being stuck in the Vortex,

and realized it had just been
a protracted coping mechanism.

I was attempting to protect
my picture of reality

by launching kind of a preemptive strike
against uncertainty.

The thinking goes,

"If you never put your picture
of reality to the test,

you never risk having it invalidated."

But as the slogan goes,

"You can't win if you don't play."

So, I still was faced
with a practical problem.

How do I get the work out there?

[Commerce is Scary]

During the time I was stuck in the Vortex,

I had become attached to a certain picture

of what a grand edition
it's supposed to be.

This book was supposed to have
hard covers, leather bindings.

It was supposed to be printed
on handmade paper.

Really, a beautiful edition
for fine collectors

who were seeking an antidote
to digital media.

I didn't have the kind of money
to pay for that kind of production.

And I've got a day job,

so I don't even know if I have the time
to coordinate that kind of a production.

So I was commiserating about this
with a friend of mine

over coffee one day,

and we were reminiscing
about collecting comic books,

and I remember the thrill I would get

every time the new issue
of the Amazing Spider-Man

would show up unexpectedly in my mailbox.

And he said to me,

"Why does your Poe project
have to be a grand edition?

Why not break it apart
into individual stories

and sell subscriptions -

like a comic book or like a magazine?"

And it made a kind of sense.

I mean, why did a fine-press edition

have to be grand?

Why couldn't it be broken
into collectible periodicals?

It made sense conceptually:

Poe didn't write grand editions.

Poe's work appeared in magazines.

And it made sense practically

because I could sell subscriptions

in order to raise the money
I needed to launch the project.

So I built a simple website,

sort of an overview of the project.

It included a page that allowed people
to buy subscriptions via PayPal.

I would do four stories,

design and illustrate each individually,

mail one out roughly every 12 weeks
over the course of a year.

Subscribers wouldn't know
exactly when the new edition was coming,

and I wouldn't tell them
which four stories I was going to do.

Hopefully, they would be thrilled

when the new volume
arrived unexpectedly in their mailbox.

Now, the project got blurped about

on Boing Boing,

which I'm told has a readership
that rivals that of thenewyorktimes.com,

(Laughter)

and, uh, well, guess which month -

this is a chart of traffic to my website -

guess which month
saw the Boing Boing post?

Lot of people came from Boing Boing,

shared it on Twitter, shared on Facebook,

blogged about it.

Word got out, and by the end
of that first week,

I had raised enough money
to produce my first volume.

So, great.

Now that there are people paying for it,

I'm accountable.

I had to produce.

Because if I didn't, it would be no more -

it wasn't just personally embarrassing;

it was fraud now.

(Laughter)

But none of this would have occurred to me
if I'd clung to that rigid picture

of what a fine-press edition
is supposed to be.

I would have totally missed out

on the possibilities
of the internet and social networking,

and this edition would never
have happened.

It's easy to run from fear
when you're not accountable to anyone,

and other people will hold you
accountable to the work.

Your friends, your family,
clients, colleagues -

it's their involvement

that encourages you,

or causes you

to deal with the fear
that would otherwise get in the way

of actually getting down
to making the work.

But way before there's anyone
to be accountable to,

you have a simple decision to make.

It's a choice between
uncertainty and certainty.

You can either decide
to give the work your best shot

and risk that it won't make you happy,

or you can decide
not to give the work your best shot

and guarantee that it
won't make you happy.

So here's a case where the uncertain path
is actually the more attractive one,

and I think Poe would have loved that.

Thank you for listening.

(Applause)