The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Penguin Classics)

by Edgar Allan Poe

Paperback, 1999

Status

Available

Call number

813.3

Genres

Collection

Recommended Books

Publication

Penguin Classics (1999), Edition: Penguin Classics, Paperback, 288 pages

Description

Edgar Allan Poe's only complete novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is one of the first adventure stories set in and around the Antarctic, which at the time was a place of mystery and the unknown. Pym takes us on an adventure across the seas to uncharted southern lands that are fraught with danger. With shipwrecks, murder, mutiny, and, yes, cannibalism, this tale has it all. First published in 1838, midway between Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Stevenson's Treasure Island, Poe's Pym echoes one and presages the other while delving even deeper into the darkness of men's souls. This new edition, with a new foreword by New York Times bestselling author and Bram Stoker Award winner Jonathan Maberry, brings the classic tale back to life. Not for the faint of heart, Poe's novel, which inspired H.G. Wells, Jules Verne, H.P. Lovecraft, and many others, reflects the wonder and dangers of exploring the unknown.… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member baswood

Claimed to be Edgar Alan Poe’s only novel, but it reads to me like a collection of three, possibly four, short stories. It was published in 1838 before he had achieved significant sales as an author, he was making a living as a critic, reviewer and writer of articles and stories. A year later he

published a two volume collection of his short stories: ‘Tales of the Grotesque and the Arabesque’ and the stories in The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym would not have been out off place had they been included.

The frontispiece to the “novel” gives the game away almost at once:

COMPRISING THE DETAILS OF A MUTINY AND ATROCIOUS BUTCHERY ON BOARD THE AMERICAN BRIG GRAMPUS, ON HER WAY TO THE SOUTH SEAS, IN THE MONTH OF JUNE, 1827

WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE RECAPTURE OF THE VESSEL BY THE SURVIVORS; THEIR SHIPWRECK AND SUBSEQUENT HORRIBLE SUFFERINGS FROM FAMINE; THEIT DELIVERANCE BY MEANS OF THE BRITISH SCHOONER JANE GUY; THE BRIEF CRUISE OF THIS LATTER VESSEL IN THE ANTARCTIC OCEAN; HER CAPTURE AND THE MASSACRE OF HER CREW AMONG A GROUP OF ISLANDS IN THE

EIGHTY-FOURTH PARALLEL OF SOUTHERN LATTITUDE;

TOGETHER WITH THE INCREDIBLE ADVENTURE AND DISCOVERIES STILL FURTHER SOUTH TO WHICH THAT DISTRESSING CALAMITY GAVE RISE.

If this all sounds like a blurb to suck in readers to an adventure story which will titillate and excite then it would not be far wrong from my reading of the book. The titillation is provided by the reference to horrible sufferings and atrocious butchery, while the excitement is the fantasy of what lies beyond the eighty-fourth parallel which remained uncharted at the time. It would be another 60 years before Robert Falcon Scott in the ship Discovery got passed 82 degrees South and discovered the Polar plateau.

The continuity between the three stories is provided by Arthur Gordon Pym who in each of the tales is in danger of death by starvation; first on board the American Brig the Grampus where he is a stowaway locked in the hold and must survive a mutiny taking place above him and his reliance on a friend who can no longer get to him with food and water, then on the hull of the brig where he and three companions are marooned following the retaking of the vessel and its near destruction through violent storms, finally on an island in the warmer waters beyond the 84th parallel where he is trapped by hostile savages. Poe is at his best when describing the sufferings and and vicissitudes of people in a desperate situation and where there appears little hope of survival. He has a way of communicating the desperation of his characters plight that is both macabre and exciting.

The Cruise on the British Schooner the Jane Guy in little known waters and which visits some of the remotest known islands like The Kerguelen Islands and Tristan D’acuna reads like a travelogue, something that might appear in the National Geographical magazine and has given rise to some people thinking it could have been inspiration for Herman Melville’s style of writing in Moby-Dick. The final section/story in the novel is the discovery of a mysterious group of islands in the warmer waters that Poe tells us lie beyond the ice towards the South Pole. We are now reading a fantasy, a story that has led to this book being heralded as early science fiction. Poe provides us with a surprise ending that takes into consideration the events of the final section, but bears little relation to what has gone before.

This is a collection of nautical adventure stories that are well written and very readable. Poe is able to provide plenty of atmosphere in stories that kept me wanting to turn the pages (can you say that when reading on a Kindle?). I just don’t see it as a novel and so as a collection of short stories it is rated as 3.5 stars and as a novel 2 stars.

Show Less

17 more

LibraryThing member 391

What a cliffhanger! Overall, the book is pretty interesting - there are some long and dry digressions but also some moments of pants-crapping intensity to liven it up.

LibraryThing member Midnightdreary

This book is "Moby-Dick" decades before "Moby-Dick." What begins as a jaunty sea adventure tale takes a turn for a somewhat more frightening struggle at sea. Interspersed are descriptions of maritime history, the geography of islands, flora and fauna, and other over-the-top detailed "true" accounts

which are not always accurate. As the novel progresses, it gets less and less realistic despite these pseudo-realistic, pseudo-scientific soliloquies. Eventually, the novel descends to a point of senselessness, fantastic beyond reason, symbolically deep beyond comprehension, and confusing beyond serious analysis. And that's the point, folks. Sometimes life doesn't have a happy ending, nor does it end successfully wrapped up with a cute bow tied on top. "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" is a fun, confusing, hectic, strange book of unrecognized genius.

One comment on here notes it wasn't very scary. I'd note that this book was not meant to be in the horror genre.

Show Less

LibraryThing member ctpress

I'm not really sure what to write about this, the only novel by Edgar Allen Poe - mostly famous for his imaginative short stories of the grotesque. This novel starts out as a real boy-adventure story at sea - mutiny, shipwreck etc. but it quickly turns very brutal and horrific.

Most of the story

the narrator is dazed and confused - either from lack of sleep or lack of food and water - and it gives the tale a dreamlike quality - his turmoils seems never ending and I must admit too much for my stomach.

It's also very detailed in its description of various things the main character encounters - which slows down the action considerable. I didn't understand the ending either - which made me a little irritated. Well, I have read some of his short stories and they are much better. This novel was a disappointment.

Show Less

LibraryThing member amydross

Although too rough, inconsistent, and episodic to really work as a novel, there are some truly chilling images and fascinating scenarios.

LibraryThing member csweder

Growing up, Poe was an athor I really liked--while I can't say that I have read ALL of his works, I am happy to report reading most of his short stories, and of course some of his poetry. Throughout school, whenever we studied Poe, those two genres were mentioned: poetry and short stories. It

wasn't until a few weeks ago when I was told Poe had written a novel--this one. I was shocked! How had I never learned of this?!

Better late than never and I am happy to report my local library had a copy.

The plot of this novel is pretty interesting: a boy hides out on a boat becuase his family won't let him leave, but then the boy suffers from a mutany (maybe his family was right?) and eventually only 4 people remain on the boat...next problem, food and water. It gets so bad that the four draw straws to see who will make the ultimate sacrifice so others may eat him. After barely hanging on for weeks, they are finally seen and rescued by a boat. Only to be taken on another adventure to find the south pole...where savages await them.

Poor Pym...I think he really might have been better off listening to his grandpa.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Stevil2001

You have to define "science fiction" pretty broadly to include The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym as some people do; if we're going to backdate 20th-century genres onto the 19th century, I'd rather go with "fantasy," and even then, the fantasy elements are pretty minimal-- if pivotal. But the book

is gripping all the same. I haven't read much Poe (if any), but I really liked how this novel always had this slight bent of surrealism. For most of the novel, everything that happened was within the realm of possibility, but it always felt slightly off. Arthur, our narrator, spends several chapters trapped in the hold of a ship, and his inability to know what's going on and his struggled to just move around is artfully portrayed-- as is his harrowing struggle with what he finds locked in with him. Things only get weirder from there, and I was always hooked. There are some scenes that are absolutely gruesome where Poe uses sparse, uncharged language-- and this only heightens the effect. It's a gripping, enthralling book, especially once the characters get to the islands mentioned in the (very long) full title, and things get really weird. And the ending is a killer. You can see why Poe never wrote another novel, but I'm very glad he penned this one.

Show Less

LibraryThing member elviomedeiros

Interesting book. A narrative on an expedition to the southern seas. Despite being the work of E.A Poe and a potentially good story, the book is childish at times and has got too many loose ends. Hope the continuation by Jules Verne is better.

LibraryThing member Mary_Overton

Perfect Poe: a physical adventure - descending a rock wall - becomes a nail-biting metaphor for the descent of a mind into madness...
"It was some time before I could summon sufficient resolution to follow him [down the sheer face of the cliff.] .... I fastened this rope to the bushes, and let

myself down rapidly, striving by the vigor of my movements, to banish the trepidation which I could overcome in no other manner. This answered sufficiently well for the first four or five steps; but presently I found my imagination growing terribly excited by thoughts of the vast depths yet to be descended, and the precarious nature of the pegs and soapstone holes which were my only support. It was in vain I endeavored to banish these reflections, and to keep my eyes steadily bent upon the flat surface of the cliff before me. The more earnestly I struggled NOT TO THINK, the more intensely vivid became my conceptions, and the more horribly distinct. At length arrived that crisis of fancy, so fearful in all similar cases, the crisis in which we begin to anticipate the feelings with which we SHALL fall - to picture to ourselves the sickness, and dizziness, and the last struggle, and the half swoon, and the final bitterness of the rushing and headlong descent. And now I found these fancies creating their own realities, and all imagined horrors crowding upon me in fact. I felt my knees strike violently together, while my fingers were gradually but certainly relaxing their grasp. There was a ringing in my ears, and I said, 'This is my knell of death!' And now I was consumed with the irrepressible desire of looking below. I could not, I would not, confine my glances to the cliff; and, with a wild indefinable emotion, half of horror, half of a relieved oppression, I threw my vision far down into the abyss. For one moment my fingers clutched convulsively upon their hold, while, with the movement, the faintest possible idea of ultimate escape wandered, like a shadow, through my mind - in the next my whole soul was pervaded with a LONGING TO FALL; a desire, a yearning, a passion utterly uncontrollable. I let go at once my grasp upon the peg, and, turning half round from the precipice, remained tottering for an instant against its naked face. But now there came a spinning of the brain; a shrill-sounding and phantom voice screamed within my ears; a dusky, fiendish, and filmy figure stood immediately beneath me; and, sighing, I sunk down with a bursting heart, and plunged within its arms."
Kindle location 2897-2916

Show Less

LibraryThing member jasonlf

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.

Show Less

LibraryThing member heidip

I must say--this one is a strange one. When I first started reading it, I was thinking how beautiful Edgar Allan Poe's writing style was. But, the story is a slog at times. Sorry. It took me a month to read this short tale. The middle drags with too many longitude and latitude references and

descriptions of bizarre animals.

And Edgar Allan Poe--don't you just feel sorry for the guy? He had to be weird beyond measure. He is preoccupied with the human body, birds eating dead humans and people murdering and eating people. What is it with him and human flesh? (I'm thinking of the Telltale Heart, too, murdering and cutting up a body in small pieces and stuffing it under the floorboards.) Yuck.

He also has this decided paranoia. You always wonder if he is just freaking out or if he's really in danger. (I'm thinking of The Raven, too.) Paranoia abounds in this work too. He has a preoccupation with being buried alive. He has a preoccupation with black and white. I really should read it again and look for all the references of black and white--they abound. One really needs to look at race relations through this novella, since it was written in 1838.

So, why did I read it? I'm reading a series of 5 novellas from American authors to get a feel for the American writer and the development of American Literature. I've read Benito Cereno by Melville, Parnassus on Wheels by Morley and now The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Poe. Next up, Cather and Fitzgerald. Apparently, this little novel influenced American literature in a great way, including Melville and Lovecraft, and Jules Verne even wrote a sequel.

This is a story of a young boy who runs away to the sea, and it is a classic shipwreck story with mutiny, deaths, storms, islands, animals, and longitude. Essentially it is a survival story multiple times over--but the ending is abrupt and very strange. I'm still trying to figure it out. Why is the water hot in the antarctic? There were a lot of loose ends in this story--where did that come from? How is that possible? Is he paranoid or is something really freaky here?

Show Less

LibraryThing member john257hopper

This was Poe's only full length novel, and its episodic nature and very abrupt ending seems to indicate he was probably right to focus on short stories, of which he is in my view one of the prime exponents. This is a long-winded story of shipwrecks, storms, cannibalism, burial alive (of course),

and exploring new lands at the southern extremity of the world. The book's abrupt end seems to come when the narrator and his sole surviving shipmate are about to discover a mystery near the south pole, that is held to be a vindication of the "hollow Earth" theory, which still had some traction in the early 19th century when exploration of the polar regions was still in its relative infancy. This story is a curiosity rather than anything else.

Show Less

LibraryThing member nosajeel

Show Less

LibraryThing member greeniezona

Okay, I read this book for mostly two reasons: 1) I bought the book Pym by Mat Johnson, and figured I should read the book it is referencing first, and 2) Melville House published it in their novella series and you know I'm a sucker for Melville House.

Of course, in what should probably be

embarrassing for someone in love with a publisher who has named themselves after Melville, I can't really stand nautical writing. I mean, there's nothing really wrong with books that take place at sea, but inevitably there are multiple scenes all about rigging the jib sail and something the mizzen deck and I have no reference for any of these things and can't be bothered and it makes me batty. My strategy for this book was basically just to cross my eyes and skim through all those sections, which was pretty okay for getting me the background I need in order to appreciate Pym.

This is a strange book. Of that tradition of adventure books filled with peril after peril and a few unlikely escapes. Rather different from Poe's horror, but there are some bits of dread that do feel more familiar. Then there is the frighteningly racist depiction of the "natives" discovered in the Antarctic region. I am so incredibly curious to see Pym's updated version.

Glad I read it, but not my fave.

Show Less

LibraryThing member soylentgreen23

In his book 'The Old Patagonian Express,' Paul Theroux praised Edgar Allan Poe's one novel, and wrote at length about the mysterious atmosphere that pervaded the text. I felt it too - there is something both magical and macabre in here, and I wonder, now that I've finished the book, if a great part

of the magic comes from the fact that rather a lot - around the middle especially - tends to sag. The adventures suffered by the narrator sit right at the limit of what could ever be believed, and sometimes stray further across the border even than that, but of all the 'adventure' novels I have read, none have focused my attention quite like this one.

Show Less

LibraryThing member Carl_Alves

In the only full length novel that Edgar Allan Poe ever wrote, he tells a tale set at sea of Arthur Gordon Pym. He sails around the globe, and during his misadventures at sea, he experiences a mutiny on board, a terrible storm resulting in a shipwreck, and a run-in with a tribe of cannibals. In

order words, all sorts of madcap mayhem fun. As far as the novel itself goes, I wasn't wildly impressed. It seemed to ramble at times and most of it wasn't terribly compelling. I'm not the biggest fan of Poe's writing other than some of his classic stories and poems.

On the other hand, there were many familiar elements in the story that other writers emulated in their stories. On that basis, I will give Poe credit for coming up with some innovative story lines that stood the test of time. Certain aspects of the novel stood out in that regards. One is the uncharted land with a savage tribe. Another is drawing the shortest straw to face one's death. There is a whole pirate element to it and some macabre aspects that I appreciated. Overall, although I wasn't overwhelmed by the novel, I can at least appreciate it.

Carl Alves - author of Two For Eternity

Show Less

LibraryThing member clong

Poe never ceases to fascinate. His only novel starts like a realistic narrative of life at sea, then turns into a horrific story of survival, and then morphs into a fantasy about aboriginal island tribes and an imaginary trip to a completely-divorced-from-reality version of the south pole. Quite

different from the short stories and poems by which he is known, but still an intriguing read.

Show Less

LibraryThing member JimDR

It may be painless to mount a defense of this work despite its many flaws, in that it is an relic of a very specific time and place. However I am not about to do so.

This book is tedious, pointless and dull as dishwater a good 80% of its length. Useless details about ship stowage, map coordinates,

the market for sea cucumbers and so on may set a certain feeling of reality for a population used to sea faring memoirs, but exciting reading they do not make.

There is some Poe sensibility here, especially near the end, but not enough to answer for the utterly pointless digressions that plague the majority of Pope's only novel.

He should have stuck to sort stories

I added a star for cannibalism but this is a two star book.

Show Less

Fewer