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3.11 AVERAGE
3.11 AVERAGE
adventurous
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
A peculiar book, much of it feels derivative (although, admittedly, a somewhat unfair charge because some of it is derivative of more familiar books that were written later and themselves may have derived from this), much of it fails to hang together and the ending is completely abrupt. It features many of the standard nautical devices, a stowaway, a mutiny, a storm at sea, cannibalism, a shipwreck, a previously unknown island--all that plus a mysterious large white humanoid creature that is introduced but not explained in the final sentence of the book.
The book begins with Arthur Gordon Pym's boyhood sailing trip gone awry, followed by his stowing away on an adult voyage that goes wrong in just about every way. Much of the novel is in the form of a journal and it provides minimal descriptions of a few characters and just about no description of anyone else. It is part bildingsroman, part adventure, part science fiction, and depicts equal parts fear and wonder, horror and delight. OK, maybe not equal parts--it is certainly weighted towards the fear and horror side.
I have not read any of Poe's short stories in a long time, but my memory is that the best of them come much closer to perfection than this, his only novel.
The book begins with Arthur Gordon Pym's boyhood sailing trip gone awry, followed by his stowing away on an adult voyage that goes wrong in just about every way. Much of the novel is in the form of a journal and it provides minimal descriptions of a few characters and just about no description of anyone else. It is part bildingsroman, part adventure, part science fiction, and depicts equal parts fear and wonder, horror and delight. OK, maybe not equal parts--it is certainly weighted towards the fear and horror side.
I have not read any of Poe's short stories in a long time, but my memory is that the best of them come much closer to perfection than this, his only novel.
Did you know Edgar Allan Poe wrote a novel? (Actually more than one, but only one that was completed.) I found my way to reading The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket after seeing Pym by Mat Johnson show up as a deal of the day in the Kindle store. I had recently read Johnson’s Loving Day and thought I might like reading something else from the same author, and it turns out Pym is based on this Poe novel. Reviewers insisted you didn't need to read the Poe novel before reading Pym, but it's short and I was just about ready to have to pick a new public-domain book for my Serial Reader app anyway, so I decided to read Poe's novel before starting Pym.
So! This novel! I really liked the first half of it! Arthur Gordon Pym wants to be a sailor, but his family forbids it, so he and his friend decide it would be a great idea if he stows away on his friend's father's ship and waits to reveal himself until after the ship is far enough out at sea that they couldn't possibly turn around to take him home again. There is some questionable logic at work here to begin with, but the friends definitely didn't anticipate a mutiny taking place on the ship. The first half is all about trying to survive at sea. It didn't feel particularly Poe-like most of the time, but it was an engaging story (and does get into some of the ghastliness you expect from Poe further on into the voyage). I was feeling good about my book choice.
Then somewhere a bit past halfway the book gets very, very bogged down in telling you the history of attempted expeditions to the South Pole. It felt very much like the dullest stretches of Moby-Dick, and apparently there are theories that Poe's novel was the inspiration for Melville's. At least with Moby-Dick there is payoff for sticking out (or skipping over) the dull sections, but with The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, what you get for sticking it out is deeply racist and offensive to a modern reader.
In Poe's novel, written before the discovery of Antarctica, there is a temperate region past the ice floes in the southernmost latitudes, and this area is inhabited entirely by black people who are not given a very flattering treatment. Add to this that the novel gets increasingly confusing and nonsensical in this final section, and there really isn't much payoff for continuing to read the last few chapters. The ending feels like an entirely different (and unsatisfactory) short story tacked onto an unrelated novel. I could feel my rating dropping from four to three to two as I made my way through those last few chapters, and the only reason it didn't sink all the way to a one was that I really did like the first half of the book quite a bit.
So there you have it! Now you know that Edgar Allan Poe wrote a novel, and you shouldn't feel any obligation to read it yourself!
So! This novel! I really liked the first half of it! Arthur Gordon Pym wants to be a sailor, but his family forbids it, so he and his friend decide it would be a great idea if he stows away on his friend's father's ship and waits to reveal himself until after the ship is far enough out at sea that they couldn't possibly turn around to take him home again. There is some questionable logic at work here to begin with, but the friends definitely didn't anticipate a mutiny taking place on the ship. The first half is all about trying to survive at sea. It didn't feel particularly Poe-like most of the time, but it was an engaging story (and does get into some of the ghastliness you expect from Poe further on into the voyage). I was feeling good about my book choice.
Then somewhere a bit past halfway the book gets very, very bogged down in telling you the history of attempted expeditions to the South Pole. It felt very much like the dullest stretches of Moby-Dick, and apparently there are theories that Poe's novel was the inspiration for Melville's. At least with Moby-Dick there is payoff for sticking out (or skipping over) the dull sections, but with The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, what you get for sticking it out is deeply racist and offensive to a modern reader.
In Poe's novel, written before the discovery of Antarctica, there is a temperate region past the ice floes in the southernmost latitudes, and this area is inhabited entirely by black people who are not given a very flattering treatment. Add to this that the novel gets increasingly confusing and nonsensical in this final section, and there really isn't much payoff for continuing to read the last few chapters. The ending feels like an entirely different (and unsatisfactory) short story tacked onto an unrelated novel. I could feel my rating dropping from four to three to two as I made my way through those last few chapters, and the only reason it didn't sink all the way to a one was that I really did like the first half of the book quite a bit.
So there you have it! Now you know that Edgar Allan Poe wrote a novel, and you shouldn't feel any obligation to read it yourself!
really weird. i know it's poe but this is disjointed and doesn't make as much sense as his regular stories.
Poe's only novel, this is a unique mix of seafaring adventures & misadventures (many to the point of horror), travel narrative/diary with the sort of flora/fauna/navigational notations that were popular on exploration trips of the day, fantastical locations/peoples/creatures, allegory, allusions, & a very strange, abrupt ending, all built on Poe's special scaffolding of creeping dread. Though I've read conflicting reviews on this book (& I agree that parts of it are uneven), there is no doubt that it has certainly inspired & influenced many famous literary works (ranging from [b:Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|153747|Moby-Dick; or, The Whale|Herman Melville|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1327940656s/153747.jpg|2409320] to [b:Life of Pi|4214|Life of Pi|Yann Martel|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320562005s/4214.jpg|1392700]); I think this book should be categorized as a 'lost' American classic, one that needs a bigger audience than it seemingly has. A riveting, hard-to-categorize book.
(Even though I had extremely mixed feelings about Life of Pi, I loved that the tiger was named Richard Parker. How can you not love a tiger with a name like that? Turns out, Yann Martel named the tiger after one of Poe's characters. Also, for the Borges fans here, apparently Borges touted The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym... as "Poe's greatest work".)
In addition to Jules Verne writing a book that continues the story ([b:An Antarctic Mystery|719181|An Antarctic Mystery|Jules Verne|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347912560s/719181.jpg|2434448]), H.P. Lovecraft also crafted a sequel ([b:At the Mountains of Madness|32767|At the Mountains of Madness|H.P. Lovecraft|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320561014s/32767.jpg|17342821]). My copy of Poe's book (Penguin Classics) had a very abridged version of Verne's story in the back. (That's what it seemed to be....) So, I think I've got the gist of Verne's continuation of the story, even though I still plan to read the full-length version. And, of course, all this was started by my wanting to read the contemporary satire [b:Pym|8501708|Pym|Mat Johnson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320435734s/8501708.jpg|13367639] by Mat Johnson. Not sure about tackling Lovecraft's book (maybe too much horror for me), but I might consider it for October reading.
(Even though I had extremely mixed feelings about Life of Pi, I loved that the tiger was named Richard Parker. How can you not love a tiger with a name like that? Turns out, Yann Martel named the tiger after one of Poe's characters. Also, for the Borges fans here, apparently Borges touted The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym... as "Poe's greatest work".)
In addition to Jules Verne writing a book that continues the story ([b:An Antarctic Mystery|719181|An Antarctic Mystery|Jules Verne|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1347912560s/719181.jpg|2434448]), H.P. Lovecraft also crafted a sequel ([b:At the Mountains of Madness|32767|At the Mountains of Madness|H.P. Lovecraft|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320561014s/32767.jpg|17342821]). My copy of Poe's book (Penguin Classics) had a very abridged version of Verne's story in the back. (That's what it seemed to be....) So, I think I've got the gist of Verne's continuation of the story, even though I still plan to read the full-length version. And, of course, all this was started by my wanting to read the contemporary satire [b:Pym|8501708|Pym|Mat Johnson|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1320435734s/8501708.jpg|13367639] by Mat Johnson. Not sure about tackling Lovecraft's book (maybe too much horror for me), but I might consider it for October reading.
La mayor parte del libro es absolutamente brutal y perfecta, imposible mejorarla. El tramo final, a pesar de ser apasionante, tiene algunos problemas de ritmo (malditos infodumps) que se notan aún más después de la maravilla (el horror, según se mire) que lo precede, y por eso le escatimo una estrella. He leído quejas del final. A mi me gusta lo enigmático que resulta... por más que maldiga a Poe por no seguir explicando las aventuras de Arthur...
Este libro es una joya.
Este libro es una joya.
adventurous
dark
reflective
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Yes
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Between 1* and 4* depending upon which passage you are currently reading...
A jarringly disjointed novel alternating between the gripping, the tedious, and the incomprehensible. It certainly casts a long and influential shadow, obviously to [a:Herman Melville|1624|Herman Melville|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1495029910p2/1624.jpg] and [a:Jules Verne|696805|Jules Verne|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1322911579p2/696805.jpg], but also to those wonderful early 20th.C weirdos [a:William Hope Hodgson|51422|William Hope Hodgson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1246727581p2/51422.jpg] and [a:H.P. Lovecraft|9494|H.P. Lovecraft|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1299165714p2/9494.jpg]. I'll err on the side of 4* in gratitude for that deranged legacy, and mad as it is it is not one I'll forget.
A jarringly disjointed novel alternating between the gripping, the tedious, and the incomprehensible. It certainly casts a long and influential shadow, obviously to [a:Herman Melville|1624|Herman Melville|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1495029910p2/1624.jpg] and [a:Jules Verne|696805|Jules Verne|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1322911579p2/696805.jpg], but also to those wonderful early 20th.C weirdos [a:William Hope Hodgson|51422|William Hope Hodgson|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1246727581p2/51422.jpg] and [a:H.P. Lovecraft|9494|H.P. Lovecraft|https://images.gr-assets.com/authors/1299165714p2/9494.jpg]. I'll err on the side of 4* in gratitude for that deranged legacy, and mad as it is it is not one I'll forget.
Individual sections of this book went unreasonably hard but the parts in between made this almost a bit of a slog to get through.
As a whole, this seems like a hugely influential book that is more fun and exciting to talk about then to read
As a whole, this seems like a hugely influential book that is more fun and exciting to talk about then to read