Reviews - Pym | The StoryGraph

197 reviews for:

Pym

Mat Johnson

3.58 AVERAGE

operatic_owl's review against another edition

5.0

Simply, one of the funniest and most unexpected books I've ever read. Going to go right back to the beginning and read it a second time.

beckyswanson's review against another edition

4.0

I read this book based on the recommendation of my friend Stefan - also a Goodreads member. It's a quirky little book with what I find to be a great combination of satirical social commentary, imaginative world making and great writing.

euphoria777's review against another edition

3.0

adventurous challenging dark emotional mysterious reflective tense medium-paced

davidabrams's review against another edition

4.0

adventurous dark emotional funny mysterious tense medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

A satiric take on E. A. Poe's only novel, "Pym" is biting, thoughtful, and thrilling in its late-in-book action sequences. If you enjoyed Poe's Pym, this one will pique your interest in going deeper into his fictional arctic paradise.

barnesstorming's review against another edition

3.75

adventurous dark funny mysterious fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Plot

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: No

Diverse cast of characters: Yes

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

Not a comedy, but it's laugh-out-loud funny in places, particularly in the first half. And it's a fascinating companion leave to Edgar Allan Poe's very flawed "Arthur Gordon Pym" book. But: with the exception of the narrator and his best friend, Garth, the characters are cardboard thin. And this becomes particularly problematic with the events that transpire toward the end of the novel.

Opening passage:
Always thought if I didn't get tenure I would shoot myself or strap a bomb to my chest and walk into the faculty cafeteria, but when it happened I just got bourbon drunk and cried a lot and rolled into a ball on my office floor.

Closing passage:
Whether this was Tsalal or not, however, Garth and I could make no judgments. 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.

p_t_b's review against another edition

4.0

I suspect that my (ongoing) ignorance of Poe's original Pym blinds me to some of the gags/moves Johnson uses, but he does good work to explain enough through the narrator that I bought in. What a weird, enjoyable book. I've been hiding in it instead of doing work for a week or so. Basically, an African-American scholar gets fired for not being black enough/being obsessed with Poe's only novel, inherits money through a groaning plot device, then uses the money to fund an expedition to Antartica to find ... I don't remember what ... but then he finds a race of weird ultra-white hominids who semi-accidentally enslave him (and all the other people on the mission, who are all not coincidentally fellow African Americans). And then kind of an action movie ensues, which involves a satire of the painter Thomas Kinkade who lives in a biosphere in Antarctica. Also at some point the rest of humanity dies off-camera. It's very funny, not as weird as it sounds when you're in the middle of it. The novel mechanics were a little slapdash, and some of the characters seem like coathangers for jokes, but i actually laughed while reading it and was very sad when (spoiler alert) ....

the one sympathetic ice monster accidentally died from eating rat-poison-laced pudding. RIP augustus

erotic_gimli_fanfic's review against another edition

3.0

3.5/5. I had an American Lit professor at Queens College who taught this in tandem with Poe’s Arthur Gordon Pym and it taught me more about the history of American storytelling (of both the literary and cultural varieties) than any other class I took in my scholastic career.

This book might distract you with how funny it is, but it is one of the most profoundly insightful literary and social critiques I have ever read. Poe’s Pym has very little value as a literary artifact: it is sloppy and inconsistent and just generally shitty. But it is of immense value in illuminating how arbitrary and strategic American racism has always been in practice. Poe’s story is an absolute mess and a demonstration of his limitations as a writer and as a man, but his failures here reveal more to us than he would ever have been capable of through his triumphs.