> Were magazines insanely more expensive at the time? What gives?

The standard of living was much lower and people’s expectations of reasonable income were lower too. It was common in those days for blue collar workers to do 12 hours of hard physical labor and live in cramped conditions with multiple people per room. What we would now consider worse than a homeless shelter.

In comparison just working a desk job was already a luxury. Even if you were barely making ends meet

Quick Google search says a newspaper writer would make $400 to $800 per year in Poe’s time. That is about $20k/year in today’s money, which is just above poverty level

Very few people made a living on writing. Poe was one of the first to attempt, and it didn’t go well for him.

What percentage of Condé Nast's or Bertelsmann's gross receipts do you think goes directly to editorial and print workers?

Hmm, what is the psychological label for people who do not distinguish artist from art?

It's one thing for a biographical analysis to look at the person's real life experiences and relationships.

It's another thing entirely when you start conflating the characters in the fiction with the author's own character...

That's terribly bad. Badly written, barely three pages long, bad references... Half of the list of references are of himself, but almost all of the references in the text are just from one book from 1965.

And lots of affirmations of that text aren't unsustained or don't make sense.

Terribly bad angle.

Is there anyone not suspected to be autistic these days? Including me. Personally my finger points more in the direction of Emily Dickinson and James Joyce.

I think you may be missing the point.

This post was an absolute joy to read.