Ed Simon is the Public Humanities Special Faculty at Carnegie Mellon University and editor-in-chief of Belt Magazine.
Latest by this author
Jacques Collin de Plancy’s Dictionnaire infernal blends Enlightenment rationalism with occult superstition, providing detailed entries and striking illustrations of Hell’s most infamous demons, from Astaroth to Belphégor.
More about this author
Ed Simon is the Public Humanities Special Faculty in the English Department of Carnegie Mellon University and the founding editor of the Pittsburgh Review of Books. He serves as the editor-in-chief for Belt Magazine, a contributing editor to the Montréal Review, and the Creative Nonfiction Editor at Carnegie Mellon University Press.
Simon is a former staff writer at the Millions and a regular columnist for 3 Quarks Daily and Literary Hub (LitHub). His critical work was notably featured in Ryan Ruby’s Vinduet essay, which highlighted a new generation of writers treating criticism as an art form. His essays have been recognized in The Best American Essays and have appeared in major outlets including the Atlantic, the Paris Review Daily, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.
He is the author of more than a dozen books exploring the intersections of history, religion, and literature, including:
- Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain (Melville House), named one of the best books of 2024 by the New Yorker.
- Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology (Abrams).
- An Alternative History of Pittsburgh (Belt Publishing).
- Printed in Utopia: The Renaissance’s Radicalism (Zero Books, 2020).
Currently, Simon is working on a defense of “purple prose” for Princeton University Press and a series of essays on the apocalypse for Bloomsbury Academic.
A specialist in early modern and early American literature, he holds a PhD from Lehigh University. And with over 20 years of teaching, he has instructed students in journalism, rhetoric, and political science at institutions ranging from American University to Duquesne.
Beyond the page, Simon is a film consultant for Good Hero and a dedicated advocate for the Pittsburgh literary community. He serves on the boards of Autumn House Press, the International Poetry Forum, and the Teetotal Initiative, an organization dedicated to reducing the stigma of substance abuse disorders in Western Pennsylvania. After stints in New York, Boston, and D.C., he has returned to his native Pittsburgh.External
America is Faustian
Los Angeles Review of Books | October | 2024
Gregory Laski interviews Ed Simon about his publication of Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain. Simon pursues what he argues is “the most alluring, the most provocative, the most insightful, the most important story ever told.” That story is the human temptation to part with our principles in exchange for dominion, money, artistic inspiration, or knowledge. In short: To sign and seal Satan’s contract for a promise we cannot resist.
As Simon’s 12th book, Devil’s Contract delivers dazzling readings of subjects, ranging from Marlowe and Goethe, to the Rolling Stones and AI. It is an approach that few others could pull off. But Simon balances dexterity with specialized knowledge and the writer’s attention to craft.
The Millions | February | 2022
In “The Lost Art of Not Knowing Something,” Ed Simon explores the erosion of intellectual humility and the sense of mystery in an age defined by the digital omniscience of the internet. He argues that our constant access to instant information—the ability to look up any fact, location, or person in seconds—has stripped away the productive state of “not knowing.” Drawing on philosophical and literary traditions, Simon suggests that the absence of knowledge was once a fertile ground for wonder, imagination, and the pursuit of deeper truths, rather than just immediate data.
Simon further contends that the pressure to have a definitive “take” or a perfect answer at all times has made us less comfortable with ambiguity and nuance. By contrasting modern digital certainty with the classical virtue of curiosity, he posits that true wisdom often begins with the admission of ignorance. The essay serves as a defense of the blank spaces in our understanding, urging readers to reclaim the ability to sit with unanswered questions as a way to preserve our humanity and creative spark in a hyper-informed world.
The Millions | March | 2022
In “Mephistopheles in the Anthropocene,” Ed Simon uses the Faustian legend to diagnose the spiritual and ecological crisis of the modern era. He argues that our relationship with technology and fossil fuels mirrors a “devil’s bargain,” where humanity has traded the long-term stability of the planet for the immediate, god-like powers of industrialization and digital convenience. By examining Goethe’s Faust, Simon illustrates how the drive for infinite growth on a finite planet represents a form of Mephistophelean “striving”—a relentless pursuit of mastery that eventually results in environmental devastation.
Simon further connects this literary theme to the experience of the digital age, comparing doomscrolling and the hollow consumption of data to the empty promises made by Mephistopheles. He posits that the Anthropocene is not merely a geological epoch but a theological one, characterized by a loss of sacred connection to the natural world. The essay serves as a warning that, like Faust, humanity faces a reckoning where the true cost of our material and technological advancement is the very soul of the Earth itself.
Why Fascism and Illiberalism are So Seductive to Writers
Lit Hub | June | 2025
In “The Dark Magic of Words,” Ed Simon explores the unsettling historical attraction between high-style literary aesthetics and illiberal politics. He argues that the very qualities that make for great literature—hierarchy, order, mythic resonance, and a rejection of the mundane—often overlap with the psychological appeals of fascism. By examining figures like Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, and W.B. Yeats, Simon posits that writers are often seduced by the dark magic of a totalizing worldview that promises to rescue language from the perceived flatness and vulgarity of liberal democracy and commercialism.
Simon further contends that the contemporary “critic-as-artist” must remain vigilant against the ways in which beautiful prose can be used to mask or beautify cruelty. He suggests that the aestheticization of politics, a hallmark of 20th-century authoritarianism, remains a potent threat in the digital age, where the pursuit of sublimity can lead writers away from ethical reality. The essay serves as both a historical survey and a modern warning, urging a humanistic approach to letters that values the messy, pluralistic reality of human life over the seductive, polished magic of absolute power.
Annotated
JSTOR Daily | February | 2023
In his annotation of Jonathan Edwards’s famous 1741 sermon, “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God,” Ed Simon recontextualizes this cornerstone of the Great Awakening by exploring its surprising relationship with Enlightenment science. While the sermon is often remembered purely for its “hellfire and brimstone” rhetoric, Simon demonstrates how Edwards used the new physics of Isaac Newton to craft his metaphors. By comparing the precarious state of the human soul to a spider held over a fire or the weight of lead falling through the air, Edwards was applying the laws of gravity and fluid dynamics to theology, making the spiritual laws of divine justice feel as inescapable and natural as the physical laws of the universe.
Simon further explains that Edwards was not merely a reactionary preacher but a sophisticated intellectual who sought to bridge the gap between ancient faith and the New Science of the 18th century. The annotation reveals that the sermon’s power came from its sensory and empirical approach; Edwards wanted his congregation to “feel” the reality of their spiritual danger with the same scientific certainty one feels the pull of the earth. By deconstructing the text, Simon highlights how early American identity was forged at the intersection of intense religious revivalism and the burgeoning Age of Reason.
Publications by this author
The History of the Faustian Bargain
Melville House | July | 2024
From ancient times to the modern world, the idea of the Faustian bargain—the exchange of one’s soul in return for untold riches and power—has exerted a magnetic pull upon our collective imaginations.
Scholar Ed Simon takes us on a historical tour of the Faustian bargain, from the Bible to blues. He illustrates how the impulse to sacrifice our principles in exchange for power is present in all kinds of social ills, from colonialism to nuclear warfare, from social media to climate change to AI, and beyond. In doing so, Simon conveys just how much the Faustian bargain shows us about power and evil...and ourselves.A Visual History of Demonology
Cernunnos | February | 2022
A spectacular visual encyclopedia exploring the art of hell and its minions, Ed Simon’s Pandemonium: The Illustrated History of Demonology presents—for the first time—Satan’s family tree, providing a history and analysis of his fellow fallen angels from Asmodeus to Ziminiar.
Throughout the book, there are short entries on individual demons, but Pandemonium is more than just a visual compendium: It also focuses on the influence of figures like Beelzebub, Azazel, Lilith, and Moloch on Western religion, literature, and art.
Ranging from the earliest scriptural references to demons through the contemporary era, when the devils took on a subtler form, Pandemonium functions as a compendium of Lucifer’s subjects, from Dante’s The Divine Comedy to John Milton’s Paradise Lost, and all the points in between.
Containing rarely seen illustrations of ancient treatises on demonology, as well as more well-known works by the great masters of Western painting, this book celebrates the art of hell like never before.Belt Publishing | April | 2021
Ed Simon tells the story of Pittsburgh through this exploration of its hidden histories—the land surrounding the confluence of the Allegheny, Monongahela, and Ohio rivers that have supported communities of humans for millennia. Over the past four centuries, however, it has been transformed countless times by the many people who call it home. In this brief, lyrical, and idiosyncratic collection, Ed Simon follows the story of America’s furnace through a series of interconnected segments, covering all manner of Pittsburgh-beloved people, places, and things, including:
- Paleolithic Pittsburgh;
- The Whiskey Rebellion;
- The attempted assassination of Henry Frick;
- The Harmonists;
- The Mystery, Pittsburgh's radical, Black nationalist newspaper;
- The myth of Joe Magarac; and
- Billy Strayhorn, Duke Ellington, Andy Warhol, and much, much more.
Reflections on the Great Unraveling
Bloomsbury Academic | January | 2026
All of American literature is a tragedy. What we are living through now is not a tragedy, however—it is a horror novel. Why bother writing when the world is on fire?
Rising authoritarianism. Covid. Inflation. Wealth disparity. War. Climate change. While every time period is marked by apocalyptic fears, it certainly seems like our current anxieties are not ill-placed. And yet, art and literature persist.
In captivating and culturally savvy prose, Ed Simon grapples with the notion that writers and their work ought to distract readers from the dire situation we face in these fetid days of the Anthropocene. He also addresses the wider question of what it is like to write during what the last decades of human civilization could be, arguing that to craft imaginative spaces through the magic of words is not superfluous. Instead, it exists at the core of human experience, as it always has and always will.
Examining creativity as it has manifested in similarly dire circumstances in human history across a broad range of authors and texts (such as the Bible, Boccaccio’s Decameron, Voltaire, Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower, and Stephen King’s The Stand), Writing During the Apocalypse eschews the easy defeatism of nihilism. Instead, it offers a hopeful perspective on the various ways that literary expression can endow a meaningless world with meaning and generate a spark in the darkness.
With the infamous four horsemen as its guide, Writing During the Apocalypse honors the literary life even during the end of the world.A Visual History of Angelology
Cernunnos | October | 2023
Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology is a gloriously illustrated overview of angels across art, religion, and literature from scholar Ed Simon.
Ineffable, invisible, inscrutable—angels are enduring creatures across Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and human experiences of the divine as mediated by spiritual emissaries are an aspect of almost every religious tradition. In popular culture, angels are often reduced to the most gauzy, sentimental, and saccharine of images: fat babies with wings and guardians with robes, halos, and harps. By contrast, in scripture whenever one of the heavenly choirs appears before a prophet or patriarch, they first declare, “Fear not!” for terror would be the most appropriate initial reaction to these otherworldly beings. Angels are often not what we would expect, but it is precisely in that transcendent encounter that something of the strangeness of existence can be conveyed.
Elysium: A Visual History of Angelology is a follow-up volume to Pandemonium: A Visual History of Demonology, offering an account of the angelic hierarchies as they have been understood across centuries and cultures, and of the individual personages, such as the archangels Michael, Gabriel, and Uriel, who have marked the mythology of the West.Educational Activities and Resources
Creative Writing, Pre-Modern Studies and Literature and Cultural Studies
Writing, Literature, Religious Studies, Political Science and Journalism
Media by this author
Feature | September | 2024
Alongside Mark Lilla, scholar and author of Devil’s Contract: The History of the Faustian Bargain Ed Simon discuss the Faustian bargain that has plagued our collective imaginations from time immemorial. A fascinating and accessible narrative of the Faustian bargain throughout the ages, Devil’s Contract juxtaposes humanity’s choices with the history of the Devil and suggests how we arrived where we are today. From ancient times to the modern world, the idea of the Faustian bargain—the exchange of one’s soul in return for untold riches and power—has exerted a magnetic pull upon our collective imaginations.
Simon takes his audience on a historical tour of the Faustian bargain, from biblical themes to bluesman Robert Johnson, and illustrates how the instinct for sacrificing our principles in exchange for power models all kinds of social ills, from colonialism to nuclear warfare, and even social media, climate change, and AI. In doing so, Simon conveys just how much the Faustian bargain shows us about power and evil...and about ourselves: “Marlowe staged Dr. Faustus at the very beginning of what is increasingly being called the Anthropocene, the geological epoch in which humanity was finally able to impose its will upon the earth. There are costs to any such contract, as the wisdom of the legend has it, so that it’s worth considering after five centuries of human domination of the planet that we might now be facing our own collective appointment at Deptford. We seem to finally be facing the final act, the apocalyptic tenor of our times, from climate change to nuclear brinkmanship making the continued survival of humanity an open question, our sad predicament the result of hubris, and greed, and vainglory. It may be appropriate to rechristen this age the Faustocene. Because whether or not the Devil is real, his effects in the world are.”
Interview | February | 2023
Ed Simon and David Bentley Hart conduct a dilatory exchange on prose style, hating Strunk & White, religion and literature, the numinous within the arts, atheists new and old, French bulldogs and their elfin origins, Harold Bloom, and so much more. Simon and Hart discuss at greatest length the literary style and the tyranny of journalistic parsimony in style-manuals.
Interview | February | 2026
Scholar Ed Simon takes his audience on a historical tour of the Faustian bargain, from the Bible to blues. He illustrates how the impulse to sacrifice our principles in exchange for power is present in all kinds of social ills, from colonialism to nuclear warfare, from social media to climate change to AI, and beyond. In doing so, Simon conveys just how much the Faustian bargain shows us about power and evil...and ourselves.
Interview | February | 2026
In the Christian tradition, “apocalypse” simply means revelation, or unveiling. Yet, somewhere along the line, the word came to be associated not just with prophecies about the end of the world, but with the end of the world itself—or at least, with vast catastrophes and the fall of civilizations. And for some reason, people love stories about such catastrophes. This fascination with the apocalypse is not confined to fringe religious groups waiting for Jesus to return, or preppers hiding out in bunkers. It is not even confined to people of faith: Apocalyptic themes can be found across the gamut of our entertainment, from pop culture to more highbrow offerings. Whether through nuclear war, climate catastrophe, alien invasions, lethal pandemics, or hostile artificial intelligence, envisioning the world we know it being snuffed out appears to be prime entertainment.
On this episode of “Glad You Asked,” the hosts talk to author, scholar, and educator Ed Simon about the concept of apocalypse, whether humans have always obsessed over the world ending, and why we are so interested in the end times anyway.
Retrieved from "https://observatory.wiki/w/index.php?title=Ed_Simon&oldid=13812"
