Edgar Allan Poe is famed for his unsettling short stories, but he also wrote a full-length novel, his only one: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Framed as the recollections of an adventurous stowaway, Pym begins as a swashbuckling adventure novel, and after growing increasingly weirder, ends on a surreal note worthy of the best of Poe’s short stories.
<p>Despite Poe himself calling it a “a very silly book,” <i>Pym</i> went on to become one of his most-translated and influential works, coloring the themes of future adventure and weird fiction writers like <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/jules-verne">Jules Verne</a> and <a href="https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/h-p-lovecraft"><abbr>H. P.</abbr> Lovecraft</a>. It continues to influence writers to this day.</p>
Unfortunately antiquated (read: racist) portrayal of other, albeit, imaginary peoples
More deeply enjoyed with the footnotes of this edition, belying the autobiographical elements of the story
More like The Narrative of Arthur Boredom Pym. I did learn a lot about curing sea cucumbers, so I guess I have that going for me now.
[The version I read is in fact part of The Complete Tales and Poems of Edgar Allen Poe (Random House 1938), a book I've been reading from since childhood.]
Let's just say if this was my first taste of Poe there never would have been a second. I chose it because of references in notes to the HPL book I just read, and they're part of the same cultural eddy, sure. A noxious backwater it is, though, to continue the metaphor.
That the seagoing part goes on and on I can forgive. Some stories wax long on description. The racist stuff though is outdated and disappointing... All that "savages" stuff, ugh. It started out in such a promising manner: dated but entertaining.
If you like Poe generally, and don't need to read this for research or studies, I'd definitely give it a pass. It did not age well!
I came across a mention of this in an article and thought "Poe wrote a novel?" This is his only novel and from his own admission he wrote it to cash in on a craze for sea stories.
It is really terrible, but so terrible that it often crosses over into amusing, which is why I gave it two stars instead of three. But I can't really recommend it. I facepalmed and said "what...." a lot while I was reading it, and there is a lot of very deeply awful racism in the last half. Stick to the creepy short stories.
Is this the wellspring of American horror fiction? Poe's novel lays down the tropes -- the individual in extremis, a spirit of scientific speculation in tension with racial panic -- that Lovecraft would develop later (the business with the sea cucumbers must have given HPL a horripilating charge). Curious to know what Melville thought of this. A deeply racist book, perhaps best read in cold blood, in spite of which arises a warm admiration for Poe's inventiveness.
Doesn't make you want to go to sea.
This story is mostly entertaining and the time period and writing style make it a fascinating read. There are some parts that (I hate to say) get a bit tedious. Also, I did not get the sense of an ending. It seems to me that Pym died in the end, and that this narrative was found tucked away somewhere on his person. That might not sound very likely, but I can't think of anything much more plausible. Hmm.
I'm intrigued that there was a dog named Tiger, and a character (man) named Richard Parker, also.
