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3.59 AVERAGE
3.59 AVERAGE
adventurous
funny
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
part parodic satire, part absurdist adventure novel, the novel’s ending is wholly confusing. Still, the satire is great and there are enough redeeming moments to make it worth your while!
A strange novel. It's hard to put into words. I liked it, but it was also a strange journey to go on. I recommend it, with the caveat that you should be prepared to leave convention behind you.
This was a little slow for the first 47 pages - I remember page 47 so specifically because that's when I finally decided that going to the end of the story would be worth it! Was it? Mostly, yes. I can't explain my slight disappointment without giving up the point of the story, or at least what I interpreted to be the point of the story.
Actually, was there a point to the story aside from the obvious social and racial wordplay that made me laugh (because I'm white) and then feel bad that I laughed (because I'm white) only to realize that was Johnson's goal...right? This was a weird, weird ride and I loved (almost) every second of it, after page 47, of course.
Actually, was there a point to the story aside from the obvious social and racial wordplay that made me laugh (because I'm white) and then feel bad that I laughed (because I'm white) only to realize that was Johnson's goal...right? This was a weird, weird ride and I loved (almost) every second of it, after page 47, of course.
this book is hilarious!
unfortunately, it makes me want to read poe's book too.
would recommend to anyone with a sense of (racial) humour.
unfortunately, it makes me want to read poe's book too.
would recommend to anyone with a sense of (racial) humour.
Interesting experimental read that was engaging and thought provoking at the start, but slowly became too convoluted for my taste. I probably wouldn’t have read this had I not been required to for class haha, but I’m glad I did for the thought provoking commentary on consumption, capitalism, and the inescapability of — or perhaps our inability to let go of — racial classifications.
Pym is an interesting attempt to satirize current race relations by loosely retelling "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" the only novel published by Edgar Allen Poe. It's not uncommon for an author to take a beloved work and recast it both as homage and as template for a modern work, and elements of the story (an island near antarctica that is peopled by a black race, strange monsters on antarctica iteself) lend themselves to the task, but it might have been a stretch that's just a stretch too far unless Johnson was counting on a large audience of readers with an affection for Poe's story.
Our modern Pym is the story of a crew of adventurers and opportunists who set out to make a fortune mining ice on antarctica. Their leader is an out of work academic who is convinced that the original Pym is based on fact, and will lead them to the fabled island of Tsalal, his right hand man is in search of Thomas Karvel ( ne Kincaide) the painter of light, who has fled to the continent to live in peace.
What follows is a strange, sometimes funny, sometimes satirical adventure that takes the crew past the end of the world, quite literally.
Johnson's strength is in his characterizations, the wide variety of his black characters, in contrast to the uniform abhorrence of the pale, white monsters; and while the story is a bit absurd, the message within it is not.
Our modern Pym is the story of a crew of adventurers and opportunists who set out to make a fortune mining ice on antarctica. Their leader is an out of work academic who is convinced that the original Pym is based on fact, and will lead them to the fabled island of Tsalal, his right hand man is in search of Thomas Karvel ( ne Kincaide) the painter of light, who has fled to the continent to live in peace.
What follows is a strange, sometimes funny, sometimes satirical adventure that takes the crew past the end of the world, quite literally.
Johnson's strength is in his characterizations, the wide variety of his black characters, in contrast to the uniform abhorrence of the pale, white monsters; and while the story is a bit absurd, the message within it is not.
I loved the beginning of this book - absolutely adored it. I felt that it dragged on in the middle and late bit, but it certainly had a lot to say. Sometimes it was heavy handed with how much it had to say.
(Minor SPOILERS throughout)
A very funny book, especially when the characters aren't getting tortured or otherwise subjected to ruin. The racial allegory is interesting as well, although perhaps a bit too on the nose. Big white monsters attacking a contingent of black explorers who crossed an ocean to arrive at a new land doesn't exactly have the nuance of, say, Colson Whitehead's elevator inspectors. But that lack of nuance is, of course, part of the point. Where better to lay bear the little reassurances white America tells itself to feel better about its sinful past than on the bleak uninhabitable landscape of Antarctica?
The story is told in a picaresque (read: scattershot) style, which makes it hard to latch on to any of the characters or plot elements. Incomplete characterization is always a disappointment, but here it is only a minor one, as the punchy prose and the constant humor keeps this novel readable throughout. A definite recommend to anyone looking for something funny, but not at all light.
A very funny book, especially when the characters aren't getting tortured or otherwise subjected to ruin. The racial allegory is interesting as well, although perhaps a bit too on the nose. Big white monsters attacking a contingent of black explorers who crossed an ocean to arrive at a new land doesn't exactly have the nuance of, say, Colson Whitehead's elevator inspectors. But that lack of nuance is, of course, part of the point. Where better to lay bear the little reassurances white America tells itself to feel better about its sinful past than on the bleak uninhabitable landscape of Antarctica?
The story is told in a picaresque (read: scattershot) style, which makes it hard to latch on to any of the characters or plot elements. Incomplete characterization is always a disappointment, but here it is only a minor one, as the punchy prose and the constant humor keeps this novel readable throughout. A definite recommend to anyone looking for something funny, but not at all light.
adventurous
dark
funny
informative
lighthearted
mysterious
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Laugh out loud funny with really good writing and so many memorable lines. I can see why it's so well regarded, and worth a read. On a side note I can finally understand the tiger in life of pi
I had great fun with this novel, for a variety of reasons. For one, I was already a fan of Johnson's work--Incognegro was one of the best graphic novels of 2008 and I still recommend it friends who are willing to read anything other than long underwear comics, for example, and I've been spending a lot of time lately tracking down his other writing, both in and out of print.
I'm also a fan of Poe, however, and of his spiritual and literary descendants in the Weird Tales generation, in particular H.P. Lovecraft. And I recognize the problem that the corpus of work left behind by these Fine White Gentleman represents to modern readers and authors. (Let's just say that the acronym FWG allows you to replace "Gentlemen" with "Guys" and "Fine" with some other adjective that starts with F.) To put it bluntly, these FWG's are virulently racist bastards; they are sometimes virulently racist bastards in the midst of their finest work. Black people in particular take the worst of their foaming-rabies rhetoric and imagery. So if you are a writer of African-American descent--how do you respond?
There are a lot of answers to this question: Pym is one of them. In this novel, Johnson has taken one of Poe's most famous and influential works--The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, a serialized novel which influenced both Jules Verne and Lovecraft to write works that were equally influential on succeeding generations--and he has eviscerated it with a posthumous collaboration. And please do not think for a moment that I choose the verb "eviscerate" lightly; in the opening pages of Chapter II he spills old Edgar's guts on the floor, with a devastating summary of the plot, themes and imagery of the original novel which rips away every shred of doubt that the book is not only a monumentally racist screed, but also pretty badly and sloppily written.
It's a thoroughly punishing attack, and it is neither the first nor the last. Johnson is throwing brutal punches throughout this book, knocking out the FWG's so fast that you'd think his name was Jack.
This laconic summary of the White Man's Contribution to World Art is not Johnson's final word, of course. There are several white characters in this book, and most of them serve in one way or another to expand on this theme. This early glimpse of the view up a Care Bear's ass will certainly not be our last; indeed, you might say that the second half of the novel represents an extended proctological expedition up the rainbow glitter rectum of the White Aesthetic, with Johnson in the boat beside you blasting away at the polyps on either shore.
If there is a downside to this novel, it's the fact that it genuinely IS funny, more often than not. Humor is often unkind, and this book is no exception. The few white characters in the novel, for example, including a stand-in for Poe himself, are not spared the lash. It's both deeply personal and wholly impersonal; none of these people are really human beings in any but the broadest sense of the word. What they are instead are caricatures of Whiteness in general, like the countless black characters in literature who are caricatures of Blackness in general. Their lines and actions serve to forward a general thesis and move the plot rather than to explore the humanity any real human being.
There is no aspect of Whiteness which is not open to ridicule in this book. White art, White literature, White power, White physicality, White cuisine, White marriage, inter-racial sex and love, the White ancestral climate--they all come under fire here. It's a barrage, and it can't even be said that the only people hurt when Whiteness is attacked are White. When any two peoples meet on hostile terms, the ones who are willing to enter the liminal zone and make a separate peace are always caught in the cross-fire, and soonest to be hurt.
In short, this book is what I call a "Turn-About Test", a reversal of standard procedure which lets you really see how far off-balance the system has been. The method usually works quite well with gender, and produces hilarious results; Johnson here proves that it can also be done effectively with race. He hasn't done anything for Whiteness in this book which hasn't been done to Blackness in countless books. It's a highly instructive read to see the dynamic reversed, to see Whiteness simultaneously made the epitome of the monstrous, the mad, the stupid, the weak, the ugly and the uncivilized. Quite frankly I'd recommend the book to anyone on that basis alone.
What puts the icing on the snack cake is that this is also a beautifully paced and well-written little novel. It bounces right along without any parts that drag, its images are clear and beautiful, it's always entertaining, and most of the major characters have at least a moment or two of genuine charm or sympathy in the course of the book. What's more, the novel is not so mean-spirited that you can't the joke.
I'd give it the full five stars, but I can't.
'Cause, you know.
The man called me a snow monkey.
I'm also a fan of Poe, however, and of his spiritual and literary descendants in the Weird Tales generation, in particular H.P. Lovecraft. And I recognize the problem that the corpus of work left behind by these Fine White Gentleman represents to modern readers and authors. (Let's just say that the acronym FWG allows you to replace "Gentlemen" with "Guys" and "Fine" with some other adjective that starts with F.) To put it bluntly, these FWG's are virulently racist bastards; they are sometimes virulently racist bastards in the midst of their finest work. Black people in particular take the worst of their foaming-rabies rhetoric and imagery. So if you are a writer of African-American descent--how do you respond?
There are a lot of answers to this question: Pym is one of them. In this novel, Johnson has taken one of Poe's most famous and influential works--The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, a serialized novel which influenced both Jules Verne and Lovecraft to write works that were equally influential on succeeding generations--and he has eviscerated it with a posthumous collaboration. And please do not think for a moment that I choose the verb "eviscerate" lightly; in the opening pages of Chapter II he spills old Edgar's guts on the floor, with a devastating summary of the plot, themes and imagery of the original novel which rips away every shred of doubt that the book is not only a monumentally racist screed, but also pretty badly and sloppily written.
It's a thoroughly punishing attack, and it is neither the first nor the last. Johnson is throwing brutal punches throughout this book, knocking out the FWG's so fast that you'd think his name was Jack.
"Garth pulled out this print of a painting, all scrolled up, and dropped it in my lap. I unraveled it and saw a syrupy sweet landscape of the Catskills, the kind of vista painted on how-to shows in half and hour. The kind of painting Garth adored, done by that artist he idolized.
'It's called Stock of the Woods,' he said. 'It's a Thomas Karvel Hudson Valley School Edition. A tribute to the painters they used to have here. I have an original signed print. That's part of my nest egg, and you're they laughing at it. Look at it. Really look at it, you need to. Don't it make you all peaceful just looking into that world?
'Looks like the view up a Care Bear's ass.'"
This laconic summary of the White Man's Contribution to World Art is not Johnson's final word, of course. There are several white characters in this book, and most of them serve in one way or another to expand on this theme. This early glimpse of the view up a Care Bear's ass will certainly not be our last; indeed, you might say that the second half of the novel represents an extended proctological expedition up the rainbow glitter rectum of the White Aesthetic, with Johnson in the boat beside you blasting away at the polyps on either shore.
If there is a downside to this novel, it's the fact that it genuinely IS funny, more often than not. Humor is often unkind, and this book is no exception. The few white characters in the novel, for example, including a stand-in for Poe himself, are not spared the lash. It's both deeply personal and wholly impersonal; none of these people are really human beings in any but the broadest sense of the word. What they are instead are caricatures of Whiteness in general, like the countless black characters in literature who are caricatures of Blackness in general. Their lines and actions serve to forward a general thesis and move the plot rather than to explore the humanity any real human being.
There is no aspect of Whiteness which is not open to ridicule in this book. White art, White literature, White power, White physicality, White cuisine, White marriage, inter-racial sex and love, the White ancestral climate--they all come under fire here. It's a barrage, and it can't even be said that the only people hurt when Whiteness is attacked are White. When any two peoples meet on hostile terms, the ones who are willing to enter the liminal zone and make a separate peace are always caught in the cross-fire, and soonest to be hurt.
In short, this book is what I call a "Turn-About Test", a reversal of standard procedure which lets you really see how far off-balance the system has been. The method usually works quite well with gender, and produces hilarious results; Johnson here proves that it can also be done effectively with race. He hasn't done anything for Whiteness in this book which hasn't been done to Blackness in countless books. It's a highly instructive read to see the dynamic reversed, to see Whiteness simultaneously made the epitome of the monstrous, the mad, the stupid, the weak, the ugly and the uncivilized. Quite frankly I'd recommend the book to anyone on that basis alone.
What puts the icing on the snack cake is that this is also a beautifully paced and well-written little novel. It bounces right along without any parts that drag, its images are clear and beautiful, it's always entertaining, and most of the major characters have at least a moment or two of genuine charm or sympathy in the course of the book. What's more, the novel is not so mean-spirited that you can't the joke.
I'd give it the full five stars, but I can't.
'Cause, you know.
The man called me a snow monkey.