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3.59 AVERAGE
3.59 AVERAGE
This was really good! An adventure, imaginative, provocative, funny. I wasn't too sure if it would be good, but I loved reading Edgar Allan Poe's novel, and thought this book might connect me more to it, somehow.
See, if you've read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/766869.The_Narrative_of_Arthur_Gordon_Pym_of_Nantucket[b: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket|70925|The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and Related Tales|Edgar Allan Poe|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1170751037s/70925.jpg|44929398], (and if you haven't you should still read Pym because it summarizes the story for your convenience) you know that the ending is a serious cliffhanger. And I mean serious; there is nothing - nothing! - else to it; it just ends; no follow up; no epilogue; no part 2 - it's a very Twilight Zone-ian ending, and even worse, because it's not the kind of ending where you'd say, "oh no what are they going to do now!?", it's the kind of ending that leaves you wondering, what just happened??
So naturally other authors have tried to address this question of what happened to Pym and his shipmate. Mat Johnson's book is a clever, satirical, goofy at times, but still smart and wonderful approach. The book not only wraps up EAP's tale, it delves into the possible racial implications of his writing and throws modern and old-time ideals together for almost time-travel type humor. I never guessed what awaited Chris Jaynes and his crew when they travel to Antarctica. After discovering the fate of Arthur Gordon Pym they get into a whole mess of trouble in a place so far removed from civilization, it's like they are back in EAP's crazy story - and may be stuck there for good. I don't want to give away any of it, because the surprise of the unfolding story was very enjoyable to me, but it truly is a heart racing adventure filled snort-invoking one-liners. Just how I like fiction - serious, but not too serious, because really, life can be absurd sometimes.
See, if you've read https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/766869.The_Narrative_of_Arthur_Gordon_Pym_of_Nantucket[b: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket|70925|The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket and Related Tales|Edgar Allan Poe|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1170751037s/70925.jpg|44929398], (and if you haven't you should still read Pym because it summarizes the story for your convenience) you know that the ending is a serious cliffhanger. And I mean serious; there is nothing - nothing! - else to it; it just ends; no follow up; no epilogue; no part 2 - it's a very Twilight Zone-ian ending, and even worse, because it's not the kind of ending where you'd say, "oh no what are they going to do now!?", it's the kind of ending that leaves you wondering, what just happened??
So naturally other authors have tried to address this question of what happened to Pym and his shipmate. Mat Johnson's book is a clever, satirical, goofy at times, but still smart and wonderful approach. The book not only wraps up EAP's tale, it delves into the possible racial implications of his writing and throws modern and old-time ideals together for almost time-travel type humor. I never guessed what awaited Chris Jaynes and his crew when they travel to Antarctica. After discovering the fate of Arthur Gordon Pym they get into a whole mess of trouble in a place so far removed from civilization, it's like they are back in EAP's crazy story - and may be stuck there for good. I don't want to give away any of it, because the surprise of the unfolding story was very enjoyable to me, but it truly is a heart racing adventure filled snort-invoking one-liners. Just how I like fiction - serious, but not too serious, because really, life can be absurd sometimes.
i really enjoyed this and continue to think about it months later. a perfect satirical exploration and very sharp with some of its points. gives you a lot to think about. i always love when there are different characters inhabiting different perspectives on an issue that are explored in interactions in the book.
Story of a failed English professor and his obsession to follow in the footsteps of Edgar Alan Poe's literary "hero" Arthur Gordon Pym from his one and only novel. Alternately, funny and gripping, Johnson crafts a story about race, adventure, and one's chosen reality. In some ways the novel mirrors that of Poe's.
This novel takes a group of six African Americans to Antarctica at the behest of a professor who was recently denied tenure. He is trying to track down the real story of Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, the Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, with the help of the recently discovered diary of one of Pym's shipmates. In Antarctica they find large white neanderthal-like humanoids living in large, elaborate ice caves under the surface. They also find Pym who, inexplicably, is around 200 years old, and a landscape painter living in a bio-dome.
The novel is a mash-up of a 19th Century adventure novel, a commentary on race (portrayed in many facets, but mostly starkly in black vs. the whitest of the white humanoid creatures), a comic buddy story, and an exploration of Poe's original work.
It is all enjoyable and parts, like the depiction of the 200 year old Pym who believes all the African Americans are slaves and the Antarctic creatures are gods, is particularly humorous and well depicted. But most of the central characters are really caricatures and much of the plot development feels slightly haphazard. Nonetheless, there are not many other books like this one.
The novel is a mash-up of a 19th Century adventure novel, a commentary on race (portrayed in many facets, but mostly starkly in black vs. the whitest of the white humanoid creatures), a comic buddy story, and an exploration of Poe's original work.
It is all enjoyable and parts, like the depiction of the 200 year old Pym who believes all the African Americans are slaves and the Antarctic creatures are gods, is particularly humorous and well depicted. But most of the central characters are really caricatures and much of the plot development feels slightly haphazard. Nonetheless, there are not many other books like this one.
"On the shore all I could discern was a collection of brown people, and this, of course, is a planet on which such are the majority."
A somewhat-witty satire of both Poe's [b:The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket|766869|The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket |Edgar Allan Poe|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1341387331s/766869.jpg|25789936] & the issue of race. Johnson's book starts out strongly, but bogs down with the fantastical story in the middle of the book. Johnson regains some of his steam for the final few pages & thoughts. Poe pulled-off the weirdness of his Pym tale; Johnson almost did but the story itself was too uneven overall.
The book's highlights/strengths are its skewering of Poe's work & of Thomas Kinkade (contemporary, popular 'painter of light'), along with some of the thoughts on race & race relations. The weakest points are the fantastical storyline & some of the characterization.
I wanted to love this book & did love the sections where Johnson nailed the satire. However, there were just too many uneven/fantastical parts that detracted from the crux of the message for me to fully love the book.
The book's highlights/strengths are its skewering of Poe's work & of Thomas Kinkade (contemporary, popular 'painter of light'), along with some of the thoughts on race & race relations. The weakest points are the fantastical storyline & some of the characterization.
I wanted to love this book & did love the sections where Johnson nailed the satire. However, there were just too many uneven/fantastical parts that detracted from the crux of the message for me to fully love the book.
This book is one wild ride. A modern, irreverent, race-bending retelling of Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, the book tells the story of recently fired English professor, Chris Jaynes, and his literary crusade to find the real-life locations depicted in Poe's book. At once a literary critique, a farcical dark comedy, and genuine horror tale worthy of a Jordan Peele adaptation, Pym absolutely swings for the fences and hits it out of the park.
Rarely have I been so entertained and genuinely reviled by the content of a novel. Jaynes' iteration of the Pym adventure, which involves an all-black crew setting out to Antarctica once Jaynes discovers one of the characters in Poe's novel really existed, is full of twists, turns, and literal monsters, some of which aren't human. The racial commentary is brilliant, pointing out time and again how absurd the social construct of race is: we are frequently reminded Jaynes is light-skinned enough to pass for white, yet his lived experience is as a black man. This facilitates a number of encounters in the book that demonstrate the real horror was white supremacy all along. Very reminiscent of Mexican Gothic in a way that I loved, though with more unapologetic humor. I think pairing those two novels together would be a great experiment, as they're grappling with many of the same themes.
He is joined by a hilarious cast of ensemble characters, each of them dealing with being black in different ways: Angela and Nathaniel try to embody the myth of "black exceptionalism," Booker Jaynes is all about fighting the "white power" of the monsters they meet on the ice until he is (literally) seduced by it, Jeffree and Carlton Damon Carter try to commodify their experiences and chase fame, and Garth Frierson is at once both the most earnest character and blinded by his love for the famous (and super racist) painter, Thomas Karvel.
The retelling of Pym's story, despite having the script flipped at every turn, still manages to faithfully follow the format of its preceding novel in ways that continued to surprise me again and again. In that way, the novel warns you many times over of its abrupt and unsatisfying end, so that .
I can't recommend this novel enough to anyone interested in horror, dark absurdist comedy, and reckoning with the racist past, especially in literature. It seems lately Lovecraft has been a popular punching bag for the racism in his books, but Pym rightly points out that tradition certainly predates him, and challenges it in a smart, hilarious, and genuinely scary way.
Rarely have I been so entertained and genuinely reviled by the content of a novel. Jaynes' iteration of the Pym adventure, which involves an all-black crew setting out to Antarctica once Jaynes discovers one of the characters in Poe's novel really existed, is full of twists, turns, and literal monsters, some of which aren't human. The racial commentary is brilliant, pointing out time and again how absurd the social construct of race is: we are frequently reminded Jaynes is light-skinned enough to pass for white, yet his lived experience is as a black man. This facilitates a number of encounters in the book that demonstrate the real horror was white supremacy all along. Very reminiscent of Mexican Gothic in a way that I loved, though with more unapologetic humor. I think pairing those two novels together would be a great experiment, as they're grappling with many of the same themes.
He is joined by a hilarious cast of ensemble characters, each of them dealing with being black in different ways: Angela and Nathaniel try to embody the myth of "black exceptionalism," Booker Jaynes is all about fighting the "white power" of the monsters they meet on the ice until he is (literally) seduced by it, Jeffree and Carlton Damon Carter try to commodify their experiences and chase fame, and Garth Frierson is at once both the most earnest character and blinded by his love for the famous (and super racist) painter, Thomas Karvel.
Spoiler
Truly, no place on earth seemed more horrifying to me than Karvel's gas-guzzling BioDome utopia, blasting Fox News commentary all hours of the day and painted with an American flag on its roof.The retelling of Pym's story, despite having the script flipped at every turn, still manages to faithfully follow the format of its preceding novel in ways that continued to surprise me again and again
Spoiler
right down to the dog that inexplicably appeared and disappeared at various points in the plotSpoiler
I was not surprised that we never are sure whether Chris Jaynes and Garth reached Tsalal, the mythic black utopia, or rather just found one of many possible inhabited places, given that the majority of the world are people of color. I found that a fantastic note to end on, one last dig at Poe's overtly racist undertones in his workI can't recommend this novel enough to anyone interested in horror, dark absurdist comedy, and reckoning with the racist past, especially in literature. It seems lately Lovecraft has been a popular punching bag for the racism in his books, but Pym rightly points out that tradition certainly predates him, and challenges it in a smart, hilarious, and genuinely scary way.
dark
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
Content Warnings
Graphic: Body shaming, Fatphobia, Genocide, Racism, Slavery
Moderate: Homophobia, Sexual content, Violence, Excrement, Vomit, Grief, War