Reviews

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe, Richard Kopley

richardleis's review

3.0

I'm not really sure what to make of Edgar Allan Poe's only novel. It has brilliant and adventurous moments, but it also has racist, tedious, boring, deranged, and graphic and gory passages, resulting in an unholy creation with a baffling and abrupt ending (or is it an allegorical ending?) What works is how Poe can't help but to infuse the novel with a sense of the uncanny. What doesn't work are obvious narrative mistakes (uh, Poe, you can't kill that character off after earlier in the story saying he was alive years later) and sudden passages of exposition that read like an early 19th Century Wikipedia.

Nevertheless, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, as baffling as it is, remains a fascinating work.

richardleis's review against another edition

3.0

Useful context and footnotes for a very strange and not entirely successful novel.

gera_mtz's review against another edition

adventurous challenging mysterious tense slow-paced

3.25

kirstin's review against another edition

dark mysterious tense slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

davidbuchmann's review against another edition

4.0

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.

soniapage's review against another edition

3.0

This action-packed story of a young man's sea adventures and misadventures was told in diary form. The minute details of every aspect of sailing, rigging, the flora and fauna seemed to bog the story down a bit. It was a long, long story and, disappointingly, has no ending. I actually have a copy of the book which contains a NOTE at the end which explains that Mr. Pym died before the book was finished and there are missing chapters. I wouldn't have known this otherwise.

megxmi's review against another edition

dark tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.25

hannahbelk's review against another edition

adventurous mysterious tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.5

mdordine's review against another edition

adventurous slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Plot
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.0

taxideadaisy's review against another edition

1.0

[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!