Edgar Allan Poe is credited with inventing mystery fiction, and his own death is still a subject of intense speculation. Matthew Pearl investigates one of the most peculiar puzzles in literary history.
Only four mourners attended his funeral in Baltimore, along with an Episcopal minister, the gravedigger and the sexton. The minister, a distant relation of the deceased, decided not to deliver a sermon to such a small gathering. The grave itself sat unmarked for 25 years. As if fate itself conspired to accentuate the void in the death of Edgar Allan Poe, 15 years after the burial, a train derailed into a quarry and destroyed the stone that was finally being constructed for the grave. The tablet read Hic Tandem Felicis Conduntur, “Here At Last He Is Happy”.
Edgar Poe (the “Allan” was not yet commonly in use) had had a troubled life by the time he died at 40, though a blanket assertion of unhappiness is facile. As a young man, Poe had rebelled against his foster father and jumped headlong into the literary world. He produced some 70 diverse short tales and around the same number of poems, as well as a lesser-known novel and an uncompleted play, and challenged the larger writing community with his harsh, explosive literary criticism. His professional decisions brought him a fair amount of scorn and continual financial hardship, but also considerable personal fulfilment.
Poe was not an icon at the time of his death in 1849. He could disappear without a trace, and he had. At the end of September that year, Poe had been lecturing in Richmond, Virginia to raise money for his new literary magazine, The Stylus. From Richmond, he intended to go to Philadelphia and then home to New York, where he would travel south with his aunt Maria Clemm. Instead, he ended up on an extended stay in Baltimore. The official record loses sight of him for five days before he turns up, incapacitated, inside an inn called Ryan’s.We came close to knowing more. Neilson Poe, a cousin from Baltimore, visited the hospital where Edgar was brought from Ryan’s, but doctors told him the patient was too fragile to be seen. Immediately after Edgar died, Neilson investigated his recent whereabouts, lamenting that he could find no answers. A few weeks later, however, Neilson wrote a letter to Poe’s first (and least friendly) biographer claiming he had come into possession of information about Poe’s death known only to him, and planned to write it all down in a “deliberate communication”. Neilson never wrote another word on the subject.
Today, the story of Poe’s death is a subject of intense fascination. Downtown Baltimore has signs leading tourists to Poe’s burial place. Fresh flowers can be found at the foot of the memorial obelisk built in 1875. Where there was once no gravestone, there are now two: one to mark the original spot of his grave and the other, the obelisk, where the body was later moved to. Every year, Poe’s birthday brings a gathering at the cemetery, which is covered by the national press. By contrast, few Bostonians know where Poe’s birthplace is in Boston, or even that it is in Boston. Poe’s biography may be said, in a sense, to begin with his death rather than his birth.
This was my initial Poe experience, too. The paperback edition of Poe’s tales and poems I read when I was at school said he was found in shocking condition in the gutter (there was no gutter involved in Poe’s actual death, but the gutter tale is at least as old as 1850). The questions over Poe’s fate make his writing more intriguing, his mysteriousness more mysterious. When I began researching the subject, someone asked me if Poe had orchestrated his death to keep us guessing.
This idea has been poed before. Baudelaire called his favourite American poet’s death “an almost suicide” as if Poe plotted death, and unfounded rumours of suicide circulated in America until fairly late in the 19th century. One of Poe’s correspondents, a young doctor named George Eveleth, wondered whether Poe pretended to die as a hoax on his readers.
From early in his career, Poe was seen as excessively morbid and sacrilegious – or, at least, unreligious – about death. Posthumously, when Poe became widely popular, his writing was turned into what contemporaries who bemoaned his lack of moral interests would have never imagined: schoolroom material. There is a telling cartoon I found in a thick archival file of miscellanies. It depicts a housewife asking her friend whether she agreed that Poe’s tales were weird, and her friend responding, “Yes, but they don’t hold a candle to some of those my husband tells me when he comes home late.” Poe had been tamed, marketed, domesticated. A line of cigars was named after him early in the 20th century, with the truly bizarre tag, “Banish Your Cares by Smoking a Fragrant Poe Cigar”.
The countervailing pressure to maintain Poe’s darker mystique has remained strong, and that mystique is driven by his death story. In 1899, a female spiritualist claimed that Poe’s ghost dictated a poem to her revealing the truth about his demise. Poe, whose ghost turns out to be a rather bad poet, confesses openly to the drunken debauch that contemporary newspapers blamed for the death: “Oh! Was all my lifelong error crowded in that night of terror?”
Theorists and scholars have used the blank spots in the record of his death narrative to suggest that Poe was the victim, not an agent in his demise – a victim, specifically, of political corruption, robbery, government conspiracy or the enraged relative of a woman he courted. Each has its evidence and its proponents. One of the exhibits at the Poe museum in Richmond features spinning plastic cubes with different theories for the causes of his death printed on each side. Conclusive causes are regularly offered up and just as reliably knocked down, for a true conclusion would threaten the operative mythos of the Poe story.
The Poe museum’s cubes become appropriate symbols for the state of scholarship about Poe’s death. Today, all the theories are considered more or less equally valid and hence interchangeable. This was part of what attracted me to the subject: a need to understand the obstinate stasis of it all. When deciding to work on a novel of historical fiction with Poe’s death at its core, I faced a difficult question: was the story of Poe’s death rooted in history, or in his fiction?
The quieter mysteries in the record of his death suit Poe better than most of the bizarre conspiracies that have been proposed. For instance, the geographic map of his final days leaves him floating almost arbitrarily from one city to another. Poe lived as an adult in Boston, Richmond, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York. The last stage of his life reflects the same sense of the ground shifting uncontrollably under his feet.
Poe’s final extended stopover in Baltimore, though probably a last-minute idea, is not as peculiar as it appears. At the time of his death, he was living in New York with his aunt, and had travelled to Richmond to raise money. However, as usual, he came up far short of his expectations. It would stand to reason that Poe might try to do more to bolster The Stylus before returning home. He had once been part of Baltimore’s literary community and had retained contacts.
When he was discovered at Ryan’s inn in “great distress” (as a witness described him), Poe invoked his acquaintance with Dr Joseph Snodgrass. Snodgrass, wo lived nearby, was immediately fetched to assist, ultimately agreeing to a decision by Poe’s former cousin by marriage, Henry Herring, to send Poe to the hospital. Knowing as we do that he would soon die, it has been easiest to interpret Poe’s call for Snodgrass as a plea for help. But a closer look at the documentary materials suggests that Poe could well have been seeking out Snodgrass, who was an editor, in connection with his new literary venture. In fact, the other person that we know Poe sought while in Baltimore was a man named Nathan C Brooks, also an editor and, interestingly, Snodgrass’s former partner in a short-lived magazine.
In Philadelphia, there was a concrete financial boost awaiting Poe. A piano manufacturer named John Loud offered him $100 to spend a few days in Philadelphia editing his wife’s poems. Poe found the offer irresistible. Considering that Poe earned only $275 for all of 1849, $100 was an enormous sum. It has never been clear whether or not Poe visited Philadelphia in his final weeks. There is tension between the strong incentive for Poe to travel to Philadelphia, and a timeline that apparently traps Poe in Baltimore. In a “memo” that surfaced in the mid-20th century, an acquaintance named Thomas Lane made the (unverifiable) claim that Poe was, in fact, present in Philadelphia in the days before he was found in Baltimore.
More can be coaxed from Neilson Poe than it first appears. Though no evidence exists that Neilson wrote further of what he knew about his cousin’s fate, this should not lead us to assume he did not tell other people. My initial instinct was that he would pass his knowledge on to his daughter Amelia Poe, who became involved with the legacy of her late relative Edgar. In fact, Neilson instead sat down with a friend named Coale who was collecting information for an article about Edgar in Harper’s magazine in 1871, and shared some information to be used “gingerly and sensibly”.
Among other titbits recorded in a document by Coale, Neilson claimed that Edgar did go to Philadelphia in those final days, or rather tried to. His explanation of events, that Poe was incapacitated by “a single drink” on his way to Philadelphia and was put on a train back to Baltimore, is vague and may be fleshed out with other known details. The travelogue is more significant. It makes far more sense that Poe tried to go to Philadelphia, and failed, than that he did not try at all.
One of the most surprising discoveries I made in my research allowed me to support Neilson’s claim that Poe never reached Philadelphia, and discredits Lane’s claim about Poe having stayed in Philadelphia. Poe, who lost his mother when he was a child, was notoriously dependent on the attention of his aunt Maria Clemm, who was also his former mother-in-law (Poe’s 13-year-old wife was his first cousin, a fact not particularly noteworthy for the time and place).
While travelling, Poe wrote to her often and demanded she do the same. In fact, he pleaded that Clemm send a letter to Philadelphia so that it would be waiting for him as soon as he arrived there to meet the Louds. In a twist that has been left unexplained for a century and a half, Poe instructed Clemm to address that letter to a pseudonym, “EST Grey, Esquire”, and not to sign the letter.
For the first half of the 19th century in America, individuals picked up their post at the post office rather than receiving it in their homes. When a letter was not picked up, the post office advertised in the newspaper with names of those who had letters. On October 3, 1849 – the same day Poe was discovered in Ryan’s inn – the Philadelphia Public Ledger listed a letter for one “Grey, ESF.” This is clearly Maria Clemm’s letter to Poe (the “T” must have been corrupted somehere along the way into an “F”).
When I unearthed this newspaper listing, it meant not only finding a new Poe artefact, but also a revelation. It exposed fresh evidence that Poe had not reached Philadelphia, since the letter he was so anxious for had wasted away at the post office. This was probably the last letter written to Poe in his lifetime.
It may be an odd suggestion from a novelist, but the challenge of refreshing our understanding of Poe’s death is to resist the temptations of narrative. The challenge is so acute in this case because of Poe’s literary impact. Though his immediate contemporaries appreciated him only grudgingly, his writing has transformed our consciousness.
Poe is credited with inventing mystery fiction with his story “The Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1941). The result was not only a new and marketable genre. It was also a storytelling paradigm in which a baffling plot is pieced together in one fell swoop at the very end – revealing a plot that was there all along but which we (the readers) had been too blind to see. This structure of plot revelation instilled us with a sense of closure: anything unknown, we tend to believe, is only in a transitional stage and, sooner or later, will be fully revealed. The fact that this is almost never the case never weakens our expectations.
For The Poe Shadow, my novel tackling Poe’s death, the most authentic path seemed to me one that would present new primary evidence and raw information (including the “Grey, ESF” listing, as well as the first explanation of why Poe used the peculiar alias for that letter), but at the same time to allow the big narratives strung around Poe’s death to come from the characters’ mouths – that is, from fallible sources – rather than be forcibly imposed as authoritative.
On his deathbed, Poe, according to his attending physician, cried out repeatedly for Reynolds. Was Reynolds someone he knew? Was he trying to give us a clue into the cause of his condition? Was he saying something else altogether? Maybe, maybe and maybe. For each question, there are raw facts and competing narratives to tie the facts together. Imagination is required, but it must be led by the facts rather than the other way around.
Among the archived papers and correspondence of the 20th-century Poe scholar Thomas Mabbott, I came across a letter with an amusing request that I always think back to: “I am writing a paper on Edgar Allan Poe for school and I am trying to prove that Poe was insane and that this insanity aided in his writing of such great works of literature.” Not unlike the student manipulating Poe’s life in order to explain his writing, we often want to turn the key moments of a great author’s life into narrative to fit our literary instincts.
Poe’s death stands alongside Christopher Marlowe’s murder as one of the peculiar and impenetrable mysteries in literary history. Unlike Marlowe, who was actually a spy, Poe’s life was, for the most part, excessively normal, despite an element or two that may be read – or misread – as dark and Romantic. We may put pressure on Poe’s death story to compensate for his ordinariness when the latter does not suit our needs. Yet death may be the point at which ordinariness embraces even a literary icon: the time when narrative control is finally out of his, and our, hands.
‘The Poe Shadow’ by Matthew Pearl is published later this month by Harvill Secker at £12.99
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广东省监狱当局对王炳章实施非人道待遇
刘泰
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【2006年5月27日狱委讯】根据与王金环的谈话记录整理/因为王炳章是特殊犯人，其家属探监与其它犯人不同。 需要第一天先去广州，到广东省监狱管理局办理探监手续，然后第二天再去广东省韶关市北江监狱探视，手续是如此之繁琐复杂。
王炳章的姐姐王金环在四月份收到广东省北江监狱会见通知书，其母子俩人于五月十五号去广州，到广东省监狱管理局办理探监手续，然而出乎意料之外，负责此次接待的谢先生说： 现在家属不可以探望王炳章，原因是王炳章在狱中绝食，并且有严重违反监狱的规章制度。 对王炳章实行惩罚三个月，在这三个月当中不准家属探视，更不准与家人通信。
王炳章的姐姐王金环母子俩人一再要求监狱管理局的谢先生，根据她们的具体情况给予照顾：
一、她的父亲刚去世一个多月；
二、她的母亲因心脏病入院，还住在医院中；
三、她本人年岁已大，又路途遥远地从加拿大来到中国，身体状况不好。
她们还建议：监狱当局，如果让她们能去会见王炳章，她们可配合监狱当局做王炳章的工作，还建议监狱当局把对王炳章的惩罚延长一周。 她儿子还说： 如果她们见不到王炳章，她们回去便无法向他姥姥(王炳章的母亲)交待等等……
苦口婆心都无法说服监狱管理局对她们的同情，拒绝她们的请求，袪除而归。
（来源：博讯）
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今天下午公安到孙文广教授家拍照录像，带走电脑，并且对他进行讯问笔录。
今天下午大约5点半钟，我在院子里散步。一位朋友说：下午公安来了一群人，汽车停在37号楼前，问我可知道什么。我说，我什么也不知道。我住27号楼，和 37号楼平行，中间隔了一个大花园。我估计孙文广出事了，因此，我立刻回家，给孙文广打电话，连打几次，都没有人接。我更怀疑是出事了，因为这个时候他不会长时间离开家。我估计他的夫人大约也一起走了。
直到将近7点钟，电话终于打通，情况果真如此。据他说，下午他正在午睡，闯进来了十几个公安，据称是济南市公安局历城区分局的人员，声言要检查电脑。孙文广要他们出示搜查证。他们说有工作证就行，于是，出示了工作证。他们在房间里反复拍照录像，然后把孙文广和他的两台电脑一起带到山东大学公安处办公室，围绕他在网上发表的文章对他进行讯问笔录。前后大约3小时。完毕之后，继续留下电脑，据说要进行检查之后归还，把他用汽车送回家。
他刚刚到家，我就去了电话。原来他的夫人并没有带走，大概是公安把电话线拔出来了。
此事实在出乎意料，因为孙文广教授在文革中因为反革命罪住了8年监狱。平反出狱后，孙文广教授并不气馁，仍然不屈不扰地为中国的民主改革事业，不断地写作，在海外网站发表建言献策，是网络上极为活跃的知名作家。他写的文章都发表在网上，不遮不掩。他先后在香港出版了《狱中上书》《百年祸国》，还有一本书《呼唤自由》也即将出版。他是国际笔会独立中文笔会会员。
2月14日，国务院新闻办公室网络局副局长刘正荣在北京向全世界庄严地宣布：中国公民可自由使用国际互联网，中国与境外的信息沟通是顺畅的。到目前为止，中国没有任何人仅仅因在互联网发表言论而被捕。
刘正荣说，中国网民的言论十分活跃，内容涉及方方面面，其中包括政治性很强的内容。至于在互联网上的哪些行为要承担刑事责任，《全国人大常委会关于维护互联网安全的决定》里做了明确的表述。
现在对孙文广采取的上述措施，请问刘正荣，作何解释？中国政府说话算数吗？这是为了欺世盗名吗？中国政府什么时候才能做到言而有信呢？难道我们生活在中国的人就这么可悲吗？难道只要不“捕”就可以任意地侵犯吗？难道底线就在一个“捕”字上头吗？
这是一起侵犯人权的事件，希望引起广泛的关注。我们要求立刻给孙文广教授送还电脑。对于这一侵犯人权的事件，公安要作出负责的交代。
（2006-5-26于山东大学附中）
●美国脱口秀名主持奥普拉·温弗瑞将出新书，称出版交易额将超越克林顿新书，创非小说类图书纪录。
●去年在约旦出版受阻后，萨达姆第二本小说《魔鬼之舞》近期在日本上架。
●普利策得主斯塔茨希夫撰写的《富兰克林：法国与美国的诞生》一书获得了第二届乔治·华盛顿奖。
●《指环王》作者J. R.托尔金在一战中使用过的左轮手枪将在伦敦帝国战争博物馆展出。
●投入三亿英镑整修的伦敦北部地标“园屋剧院”将于6月1日重新开放，该剧院曾承办过“大门”和“平克·弗洛伊德”
乐队的演出。
●英国一画廊允许世界各地艺术家在其网站上展示自己作品，目前已有1700多名艺术家参与。
●洛杉矶盖特博物馆馆长称将尽力把该馆收集的部分珍贵的古希腊艺术品归还给希腊。
●大英博物馆向电视游戏节目敞开大门，决赛场将设在马克思当年学习过的阅览室。
创刊人讲叙《十月》创刊的前前后后，披露《高山下的花环》发表细节
时过境迁，如今的张守仁回忆起20年前创办《十月》的情形，心情仍然非常激动。
◇人物名片
张守仁 1933年9月出生于上海崇明岛，1961年毕业于中国人民大学新闻系。从1961年起供职于《北京晚报》副刊部，1977年参与了《十月》杂志的创刊和组建，并一直在该杂志工作。曾任编辑部副主任、副主编，编审。
◇杂志档案
《十月》杂志1978年在崇文门外东兴隆街51号创刊，创刊时为季刊。1980年获得刊号并正式改为双月刊。到1981年，该刊物的发行量已达60万份。
创刊初期的《十月》杂志，问世之初便带动了文学刊物热的兴起。
茅盾为创刊号写发刊词
严格说来，《十月》的创办人是三个：王世敏、我和章仲锷。我们是从1972年起陆续聚集在一起的，原因是“文革”期间，出版社已经不存在了，因为要写北京市劳动模范，就把一些人聚到一起，包括后来成为名家的陈建功、陈祖芬、理由等，我也是其中一个。当时成立了一个北京人民出版社。从沈阳调过来的王世敏担任了出版社文艺室主任，我和章仲锷就是一般的编辑，后来，我们还把刘心武也调了过来，这时他已经发表了《班主任》。
1977年7月份，王世敏、我和章仲锷到济南参加山东文联举办的一个会，山东省委领导做报告。因为夏天很热，我们三个人不愿意听这种很枯燥的报告，就到南郊宾馆外面的花园里聊天。大家就说，国家形势有了很大的变化，文艺形势也会转变，我们应该有所作为，不知道是谁最先提出应该办一个大型文学刊物，大家都表示赞成并开始想刊名。先后想出的名字有“东方”、“东风”、“首都文学”等。后来，王世敏提出“十月”，我们都表示赞同。回来以后，王世敏就调了几个人做筹备工作。
当时仅有的文学刊物只有《人民文学》、《解放军文艺》、《北京文艺》等月刊，没有一家大刊物。我们首先面对的问题是没有刊号，大家就决定以书代刊（《十月》是季刊，到1980年有了刊号，才改为了正式的双月刊）。经过整整一年的筹备，《十月》终于在1978年8月份创刊了。我们用的是“文艺丛书”的名义出版，但是从外观上来说是杂志的样子。杂志社请一个书法家写了刊名，请茅盾为创刊号写了发刊词。在小说方面刊登了陆柱国的《吐尔逊的故事》、刘心武写的冲破当时禁区的《爱情的位置》、郑万隆的《铁石老汉》。
一炮打响带动文学刊物热
第一期出来以后，影响很大，北京文艺圈的人奔走相告，新华社发了通稿。《爱情的位置》在电台广播之后，作者收到了5000封来信。半年之后，《收获》复刊，1979年秋，《当代》创刊。当时那些月刊一期就十几万字，所以发一个中篇就了不得了，而我们一期就发三四个。从“五四”以来，还从来没有刊物这样做。
可以说，《十月》引发了中篇小说的第一个高潮。同时，我们抓紧时机，召开了一个中篇小说座谈会，把很多作家都请来参加，推动中篇小说这个题材的发展。我们把很多人介绍到中国作协的文学讲习所。像江西的文联主席兼作协主席陈世旭，他的第一个短篇小说《小镇上的将军》就是在《十月》发表的，我们就推荐他到文学讲习所。当时，蒋子龙、王安忆等近40人，都是文学讲习所第一期的，我们的关系非常好。
当时的《十月》非常光彩，《人民文学》的一位副主编和我很熟，由于我们刊发了大量的好作品，他很吃惊，问我说，守仁，你们这个刊物是怎么办的？有时，我到内蒙古鄂尔多斯、四川峨眉山出差，都能看到我们的《十月》。当时，我们的杂志在国外的发行量就有2000份。我到中国驻苏联大使馆去，发现那里有三份。
我们最得意的一件事情是，当时几乎每一家刊物都要和我们交换，因为办得太出色了，刊物发表的作品被改编成电影、电视剧的非常多，我们也首创了出版社办文学刊物的模式。
约到《高山下的花环》
1982年4月，济南部队歌舞团创作员李存葆来京参加总政召开的军事题材文学创作座谈会，我也参加了。会议期间，大会组织与会作家乘车到河北高碑店去看当地驻军战士打靶演习。在大巴车上，李存葆和我坐在一起，我向他约稿。李存葆向我讲了三个题材，其中一个就是《高山下的花环》（以下简称《花环》），围绕着一个边防连队战前、战中、战后的生活，反映了当时社会上、军队内部存在的种种尖锐矛盾。我听了他的三个题材，对《花环》最感兴趣。于是把自己的家庭地址抄给存葆，邀请他到家里长谈。在交谈中，李存葆讲了在前线的所见所闻；还讲了后来在《花环》中详细描写的三个细节（军长因为在战前有领导把儿子撤向后方而甩帽骂娘、梁三喜留下了血染的账单、两发没有发出的臭弹）。我听了认为这三个精彩的细节内涵丰富。我想，对这三个细节加以开掘、延伸、纠结、交错，将会给这部小说展示一个广阔的社会背景。我建议他放开手脚去写，冲破清规戒律，跨越好人好事的写作水平，把严酷的战争真相、鲜活的战士心灵，淋漓尽致地展现在读者面前。
会议结束后，李存葆留在北京参加了《解放军文艺》社举办的小说读书班。他边读边构思，给未来的小说列了个人物表，就躲在文艺社图书楼里写起来。他从1982年5月20日动手写作《花环》，因为人物和情节已经烂熟于心，所以写作比较顺利，到6月19日就完成了初稿。并于7月18日改写、誊抄完毕。当天傍晚，李存葆拿了一大摞原稿送到我家里，希望我尽快处理。当晚我连夜阅读。翻完最后一页稿子，如同淘金者终于觅到了大金块那样，我判定这是一部难得的突破之作，这是一部我早就盼望的好稿，这是一部能给《十月》带来巨大荣誉的力作。
清晨，我带着这部稿子到了杂志社。当我详细介绍了《花环》的情节并宣读了我的审读报告后，整个编辑部立即行动起来，互相传阅，只花了两天时间，就全都看了一遍。
一致决定把它作为重点稿放在头条推出。1982年8月10日，我躲在家里编《高山下的花环》。
《花环》发表内幕
稿子编完，我们这里一个搞评论的同志，就说这个作品这么尖锐，要给作协党组书记冯牧看一下。冯牧读完，认为这是一部难得的好稿，但由于他处在文艺工作领导岗位上，觉得有些地方过于尖锐，提出了几条意见，建议作者做点删改。对于文学前辈冯牧的忧虑，我和存葆都能理解。存葆感到为难，问我怎么办。
我于是想了一个办法，把编好的稿子复印一份。存葆和我在复印稿上做了些删改，送给冯牧同志。冯牧看了删改稿把评论文章写了出来，送给编辑部。但当我发稿时，发的仍是没有删改的原稿。（此事我一直隐瞒着他）此事只有我和存葆知道，我不敢告诉出版社的领导。因为当时我已经打听到，当李存葆在《解放军文艺》社图书楼上写出了初稿时，文艺社小说组的同志和文艺社的领导曾拿去看过，都因为作品太尖锐而未敢表态。于是我在发稿时叮嘱编务，此稿的校样不要传出去，要严格控制。我最担心的是校样传到了某些胆小的领导手里，他们下令撤稿，使这篇作品中途夭折，不能和读者见面。冯牧的评论稿是1982年8月30日写出的。我们拿到评论稿后，于9月初把全部稿子送到车公庄新华印刷厂排字、印刷。
接着发生了一件怪事。此稿发往新华印刷厂不到十天，就有北影一位姓张的导演找到我家里，提出来北影要把这部作品改编成电影。我感到纳闷，那期刊物要到11月初才出版，我作为责任编辑，还未拿到初校，那位导演是怎么知道作品内容的呢？后来经过调查，才知道新华印刷厂的工人们排字时，因受了作品内容的感染，提前偷偷多印了校样，带回家里给亲友们传阅。校样又经过复印，于是此稿在社会上不胫而走，迅速传开。那位导演看到的就是工人偷印的校样。有关领导听到风声后要看校样，我说校样只有一份，并对编辑部的人说，校样不能给任何人。
刊物刚刚出版，我就陆续听到来自各处的消息：贺敬之在北京和平宾馆报告文学座谈会上说，《十月》发表的《高山下的花环》，是一部突破性的作品；《文艺报》副主编唐因称赞《花环》是解放30年来第一部写军队内部矛盾的优秀之作；南京召开的当代文学研究会第三次学术讨论会上，称《花环》是爆炸性的作品……
《高山下的花环》，还被改编成电影、电视、歌剧、话剧等，有的改编者通过我找李存葆，我把李存葆的联系方式告诉谢晋之后，他每两个小时给李存葆拍一个电报，要求自己来拍。两年后，我又向李存葆约了《山中，那十九座坟茔》，但消息被走漏了，解放军文艺社《昆仑》杂志的编辑追到烟台，要求把稿子给他们。李存葆把这一情况通过电话告诉了我。我考虑他是军人，今后长期在部队工作，就同意了。
这些虽然是二十多年前的事情了，但回想起来我和当时《十月》杂志同事们一起工作的情形，心情仍然很激动。
口述：张守仁（曾参与创办《十月》杂志）
■记者手记
一本文学杂志的兴起，直接取决于它所发表的作品。
《十月》在上世纪80年代的文学刊物中如日中天，主要原因在于，它最大程度地表达了时代的呼声并顺应了读者对文艺作品的诉求。当时最有影响的文学双月刊号称“四大名旦”：《当代》为正旦，《收获》为老旦，《花城》是花旦，《十月》是刀马旦。
所谓刀马旦，实际上是说发表的作品相对比较尖锐———事实正是如此，《十月》发表的《飞天》、《春雪》、《公开的情书》、《晚霞消失的时候》等作品，都引起过争论。按照创刊人之一章仲锷的说法，“其中《飞天》可说是第一篇触及高级领导腐败特权丑恶行径的小说，震动很大……”引起争论的前提乃是揭示问题和矛盾，而争论则会引发关注。从事后的结果来看，从作品的发表，到引起争论，然后引发读者的关注，三种过程形成了一种良性互动，它直接推动了文学创作的繁荣，同时也激发了读者的热情。
说到今天文学创作和文学刊物的现状，张守仁不胜唏嘘。作为一个资深的文学编辑，他对个中原因有着自己的看法。尽管没有明言，但他的看法显然与蔡恒平的说法“文学的需求会越来越少”明显不同。
