Makes more sense if you have some familiarity with Poe's "Pym". Good, fun read with some nice drama although it did get slow at times when the author spent too much time on describing a setting...just like Poe did in Pym. ( )

An interesting story filled with all sorts of surprises of which some don't make sense, LOL. The reviews say it's pretty funny, but I didn't get the humor at all. I also thought the story was borderline psychotic since much of it doesn't make any sense. Regardless if you like a book that shifts gears a few times, you'll like this. ( )

Overthought and overwrought, "Pym" scans as a fix-up of two halves with dissimilar themes, awkwardly riveted together with a forced attempt at wry social satire. It doesn't work.

The first half is smug and pretentious, with the narrator implicitly winking at the reader: "Look, I'm a black man making fun of blacks; I'm a writer making fun of writers; I'm an academic mocking academia. Aren't I _clever_ ?" The digs at deeply-held conceits would have been more satisfying were the narrator less of a schmuck and the sarcasm thinner.

The second half enters the land of truly bad, SF B-movies. Actually, were Roger Corman to emerge from retirement to produce a blaxploitation/horror film about alien honkies in the Antarctic while hampered by a shoestring budget, this would be the screen treatment.

Hard pass. ( )

I have been waiting to get to this book since it was published! Now is the time! 'Pym' is the last book in the four book project that covers almost 200 years. I first had to read the inspiration of the other three books- Edgar Allan Poe's 'Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym' and then Jules Verne's 'Antarctic Mystery'. If I hadn't already read H.P. Lovecraft's 'At the Mountains of Madness', I would have read that before reading Mat Johnson's book. But I had already read the Lovecraft and loved it years ago. Reading all four was a PROJECT but a fun project. I love that Johnson mentions all of the books featured in this interesting bookish saga within his own book, not only Edgar Allan Poe's original mess, but the other two books as well, making my reading of all four books in this journey completely worth it for me. And Johnson's is the best by far! Really updating these others, giving a freshness to that mysterious Poe ending, not to mention making it a satire. I loved every page here and all the twists and turns. Much like Edgar Allan Poe's original featured Whiteness, whether a subconscious side affect of Poe being a supporter of slavery, Mat Johnson also has interesting things here to say about Whiteness. With a Black main character that sometimes can pass for white, he is trying to use books like Poe's to find why society hasn't moved past the sickness of Whiteness. Anything I say about this book won't do it justice. It's a gem! Pick it up! It's one of those things emanating greatness that I just knew I would love before delving into it and I wasn't wrong. I would fit this on a shelf in between 'Cat's Cradle' by Kurt Vonnegut and 'Parasites Like Us' by Adam Johnson. All three books have the same spirit. ( )

dnf @ 3% just not my thing :/

"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." ( )

Mat Johnson's Pym is a completely off-the-wall satire: part academic musing, part throwback adventure à la Jules Verne, part unsolved mystery.

Protagonist Chris Jaynes has just been denied tenure, because he was more interested in researching Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, than in being the token black professor on the diversity committee. When Jaynes stumbles across evidence that at least part of his favorite novel was based on fact, he and his buddy Garth head off to the South Pole to check it out. They join up with an all-Black crew and run into a lost tribe of...well, I won't spoil it for you, but the old-fashioned sci-fi trope is a great setup for cuttingly funny insights into race, academia, art vs. pop culture, etc., etc.

The novel appeals to me as a teacher of literature, a fan of science fiction, and a person who thinks we ought to be able to laugh a little more about race. Everyone will find someone to identify with in Jayne's crew, from his Black Power cousin to his unemployed friend; from his ex-girlfriend's new husband, a sellout entertainment lawyer, to a gay couple with an adventure blog. Then there are the hilarious sendups of the white conservatives who are piping Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck into their Antarctic getaway. It's a satirical romp that may leave you scratching your head but it's well worth the read -- or listen. JD Jackson does an excellent acting job on the audio CD, creating unique voices for all the characters, black and white, male and female alike. ( )

I read about this book in some science fiction and fantasy round-up a few years ago -- and committed to it so hard that I bought and read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket before reading this. As it turns out, Johnson doesn't assume you've already read this and so includes all the passages and summaries that you would really need to read Pym, but I do think having read both, I probably got a little more out of it. Because there are a LOT of echoes. A lot. Like, a lot. But a bunch of them backwards. And with SO MUCH RACE COMMENTARY. But if 300+ pages of race commentary and biting satire of a relatively unknown 180+ year old novel by Edgar Allan Poe doesn't sound like it would be a good time, then I don't know, maybe this book isn't for you? But it is also funny and insightful and irreverent and clever. Plus, there's that whole polar fiction thing going on, which earns it lots of extra points from me (plus the extreme satire of "self-reliant" libertarian right wing talk radio addicts). I was consistently impressed by this. ( )

I don't know what I may have missed by not knowing Poe, but I still got a lot of entertainment out of this book because it satirizes much more than Poe - for starters, academia, blackness, whiteness, and Little Debbie snack cakes. It's broad satire, coming close to but not crossing the wackiness line, which seemed just right to me. I think it was channeling Swift and [b:Gulliver's Travels|7733|Gulliver's Travels|Jonathan Swift|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1427829692s/7733.jpg|2394716] even more than Poe. My only criticism is that it went on too long. For me, satire works best in small doses, and I'd have preferred this as a novella. I wonder if the author wrote different versions of the ending - this one didn't feel very satisfying. ( )

Totally wacky in a way I didn't expect - which was wonderful! The first 50-75 pages didn't do much for me but after the group arrives at their destination, the story really picks up. However, the first bit of the book paired with an ending that left too many questions unanswered made for a slightly underwhelming read. ( )

Some parts in the middle really seemed to drag, but overall I enjoyed the book a lot. ( )

How can any novel manage to be so smart and so ridiculous at the same time? In this novel, Johnson tells a story even more incoherent and open-ended than his source of inspiration, Poe's [b:The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket|766869|The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket |Edgar Allan Poe|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1341387331s/766869.jpg|44915222]. But within his chosen framework of comedic satire, Johnson also makes intellectually exuberant arguments, a cascade of them, about literature, race, identity, feminism, love, and the historical inheritance of slavery. He even manages to explore the conditions under which genocide might be morally justified. It's a wonderful social satire, and a very enjoyable read, as long as you allow it to sweep you along, instead of permitting it to make you cranky for the way it never really acts like a novel is supposed to act. I would recommend reading Poe's novel immediately before this one as the passages of 'literary analysis' in Johnson's novel are priceless and many of the plot lines run parallel to Poe's, where an immediate experience of Poe's story, missing dog and all, will make Johnson's sendup all the more delightful. ( )

A very odd book. Quite an amazing riff on Edgar Allen Poe's Pym book. A weird book that fascinated me when I read it. Didn't have my ears tuned at that time to the racial overtones of the book. Johnson does an over the top job of meditating on and at the same time lampooning this book, nineteenth-century and twentiety century takes on race and racism, and literary criticism in the current century. In the end too talky and preachy, too pleased with itself (though blessedly with the humor). Just didn't come together for me. But certainly much more ambitious than your average fare. (Listened to audiobook.) ( )

I wanted to love this novel. I've read Poe's Pym; I loved the idea of a subversive, critical-race-theory-inflected continuation; and the blurbs on my paperback copy promised brilliance and hilarity.

Well, there's some funny/smart stuff in the first few chapters about racial politics in academia and race in American history, but overall it's a hot mess of a book, an unsuccessful mixture of literary counterhistory, heavy-handed satire, and cheesy 1950s sci-fi melodrama.

Others have discussed the plot and characterization issues so I will comment on what is equally problematic: the weak grasp of the historical period at the center of the novel's back story. The main character is an academic which allows for lengthy embedded lectures on Poe's Pym, the history of the slave narrative, African American literature, etc. And of course, the novel is peppered with fabricated quotations from apocryphal writings by Dirk Peters and Poe.

But aside from a wonderful early chapter summarizing Poe's novel with satirical commentary most of this is very halfassed. Johnson's awkward imitations of C19 style are unconvincing--they fail even as pastiche. And as for the excurses on lit history, it hardly inspires confidence to be informed by the narrator, an English prof, that Uncle Tom's Cabin was written in 1838 (!) by a "little old white lady" (!!). When Uncle Tom's Cabin was published in 1851/52 (not 1838), H. B. Stowe was just out of her thirties--not exactly elderly, even by Victorian standards. But more importantly, the false date is the basis for further counterfactual claims about Stowe's role in eliminating demand for authentic slave narratives (in 1838--seven years before Douglass's first autobiography). The unmistakable misogyny of "little old white lady" resonates with and may explain the novel's difficulty with female characters. But mainly I am struck by the incompetence of it. It is possible this was part of a deliberate effort to undermine the reliability of the narrator, but I don't think so. ( )

This book was crazy and a fun read. Although i resisted at first, at one point I just had to say alright , I'm in. Slavery in Antartica? Thomas Karvel (ie Kinkade Painter of light) living in a technicolor wonka-esque Biosphere after the Armageddon? Big Yeti creatures hanging out in underground ice caves? Okay, sign me up. Now I have to read the original from Edgar Allan Poe. wtf eap? ( )

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. ( )

I am glad this novel brought my attention to the absolute craziness that is Poe's Pym. I have not read it, but the highlight reel presented in this book further convinces me that Poe is not a writer American culture should celebrate.
More specifically to this novel, I found it interesting and enjoyable, but not particularly special.
The commentary on academia will definitely entertain anyone working in that field- the main character's frustrations will probably feel very familiar. The sci-fi turn of the second half of the book is pretty funny, and would appeal to genre enthusiasts, but the two parts just don't totally hang together as a cohesive whole. I feel like the satire of the realist half disappears when things get weird and the stylistic shift was a little too much. Fun read, accurate commentary on the academy and race relations, but not quite to my tastes as far as novel construction goes. ( )

I debated adding a shelf labelled "Racism" because that is one of the recurring themes of this fascinating novel, one of three "sequels" to Poe's problematic "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym." Johnson uses the frame of Poe's novel to structure his consideration of whiteness, racism and slavery. I found it thoughtful, relevant and insightful. ( )

Beginning of Chapter XVI:
"I have always loved quitting jobs. Whether because the job itself was repugnant or the people working at it with me, I have always held my right to quit my job as one of my most sacred privileges. An entire ritual surrounds this shedding of employment. First, there is the glorious moment when, after the unpleasantness of my position and my general unhappiness become overwhelmingly apparent to me, I say to myself (and I quote), 'Fuck this. I don't have to take this shit anymore. They think they can make me do what they want, but I'm out of here.' Ah, there it is, the almost orgasmic release I feel when I first make the profane declaration to myself, the feeling of reclaimed power coursing invisibly through me. But not just that: this singular moment, this coveted private knowledge is formed into a golden kernel and popped into existence again in my mind as a reaction to every unfortunate work-related moment I'm forced to endure before I make my destined departure. It's such a glorious thing, the harboring of this secret knowledge, that in itself it has kept me at many a job even longer than I had originally intended, because just knowing that I would soon be free was the most effective of panaceas. So much so that there were times when even though it was impossible for to quit I would say the same words to myself and mercifully delude my conscious mind that I could get the hell out of there if I wanted to.
"As I marched through the snow with nothing but more snow in front and behind for hours, I began to wonder if all of my quitting dramatics might have some larger meaning. That they might in fact be evidence of some form of race memory from my genetic past. How many of my slave ancestors used such gimmicks to preserve their own sanity? Spending years obsessing over the intended escape that only they knew of. The intricate planning that they shared with no one. I have thought of their escapes before, and was usually impressed by the bravery and fear that must have accompanied those breakouts. But I forgot to think about the glory of all the acts of flight that never happened. And how powerful their inaction probably was to the slaves who did not perform them.
"But me, I quit. I have quit very good jobs, and horrible ones. I have co-workers that I still miss, and co-workers that I regret never assaulting on the way out the door. And overall, I have enjoyed my resignations, enjoyed that last moment of walking away from each of the places that housed my misery, knowing that I would never have to return. I have walked down the street each time and bounced away, literally bounced in a skipping motion, knowing once more the effervescence of freedom.
"And always, immediately after my departure, then comes the next feeling, the next sentence, which is just as inevitable as the first. It goes, 'What the hell are you going to do now?' And thus begins my terror."
Kindle location 2987-3010

Edgar Allan Poe's only novel, THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM, published in 1838, is an Antarctic adventure with a startling and puzzling ending. The book inspired at least 3 writers to create their own versions of Pym's quest for the South Pole. Each book is a fun read in its own very different way.
THE SPHINX OF THE ICE REALM by Jules Verne, 1897
AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS by H.P. Lovecraft, 1936
PYM: A NOVEL by Mat Johnson, 2011

A surprisingly incisive novel that would seem like a trip back to the glory days of British satirists if the narrator wouldn't rightly shun an association with those imperialist scumbags on general principle. ( )

A very good book, both funny and intelligent. The academic/social satire of the first half or so was my favorite part, but I enjoyed the thoughtful, funny and erudite scheme of the second half as well. Chris Jaynes and Garth Frierson were excellent characters. ( )

There's a lot of hugely interesting stuff going on in this book. Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is a truly weird story, and well worth revisiting with a contemporary eye. Whiteness, blackness, and race in general do play a bizarre, symbolically-weighted role in that original text (far more opaquely than one normally sees in literature of the day), and I was excited to see a contemporary writer tackle this weirdness.

Johnson's book does tackle all this stuff head on, and the story he tells is entertaining and involving. Most of the time, however, I found myself wishing he had pushed a little harder -- sometimes I felt like he had taken the easy way out, reading Poe's text in a simpler, more straightforward way than it deserved, and consequently making his own narrative a little reductive. For just one example, when the characters find the inexplicably still living Arthur Gordon Pym, he turns out to be a one-dimensional racist asshole. While there's no question that the original character was racist by our standards, he had more going on than just that.

In general, the satire didn't quite work for me. It was mostly broad and gentle, with few fresh or surprising insights. There was a lot of stuff I could tell was supposed to be funny, but few real laughs. All in all, the book was fun and interesting, but never quite lived up to its brilliant premise. ( )

http://wineandabook.com/2011/09/01/review-pym-by-mat-johnson/

First person narration can be tricky, but Mat Johnson has a sense of voice that rivals Junot Diaz. So clear, so compelling. As I read, I wanted to follow Johnson's main character, Chris Jaynes, anywhere he went. Until he decided to leave the States (and reality) far, far behind...

The premise of this book is really quite genius: the self-described token black professor at a small, predominately white liberal arts college finds himself without tenure after favoring teaching Edgar Allen Poe to authors of color. The object of Jaynes' fascination is Poe's only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Johnson does an amazing job of allowing us into Jaynes' psyche as deconstructs Poe's novel, which he sees as part of the "intellectual source of racial Whiteness." In this part of the book, Johnson soars and Jaynes takes us through Poe's work and explains its literary and institutional significance. Strong voice, compelling argument and raw social commentary. Near perfect. Up until this point in the narrative, I was in love with this book.

Then we go to Antarctica. Through a turn of events (which I won't cheat you out of discovering on your own), Jaynes is lead to believe that the events outlined in Poe's novel may not be so fictitious after all. Given the opportunity to, in part, retrace Pym's journey and go to Antarctica, he accepts in hopes of finding the island of Tsalal, an island of pure blackness (which Poe described with much terror) which Jaynes imagines to be the "last untouched bastion of the African diaspora." Unfortunately, once the ship docks, Johnson loses me a bit.

My problem is not with the journey; my problem is not even with the sequence of events that border on science-fiction/disaster porn. My problem is with the way the characters react (or don't) to these events. Typically, when an author decides to dive into the realm of science fiction or adventure, as Johnson absolutely does in the last half of his book, either:
the story takes place in a world where a specific set of magical/heightened/supernatural/etc rules and conditions are consistent and we, as readers accept them as the reality of the story OR
the story takes place in reality as we know it and something unusual/strange/supernatural/world-shattering happens, and the characters react accordingly.
A beautiful example of this is House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski: when the house starts shifting and changing, people freak out, then adapt, then re-approach their new reality. In Johnsons' story, when reality as Jaynes' knows it is turned on its head, the characters just seem to keep moving through the plot without much reflection, except in terms of potential profit. In addition, some pretty major occurrences are mentioned and then never reacted to thoroughly or revisited...which I think, in the end, is not a problem of story as much as a issue with characterization.

Jaynes is a wonderful character. Consistent. Complex. Evolving. But he was the only one flushed out and developed to that extent. The rest of the cast of characters seemed to be more like different sized shadows of people rather than fully realized individuals, with only 2-3 defining characteristics, as opposed to the dynamic, compelling personality given to Jaynes. When they stand side by side as the same bizarre events unfold, it's hard to completely give yourself to the world Johnson creates given their reactions (or lack thereof).

But back to Johnson's genius: he crafts the story utilizing the same structure as Poe's Narrative. As I read, I kept noticing how Johnson took some of the most salient story elements from Poe's piece and reappropriated them for Jaynes' journey (if you're curious as to which story elements he chose, message me, as I don't want to give away any major plot points here!). Super clever, and done in such a subtle way that it's in no way gimmicky or forced.

Rubric rating: 7. I would love to read more by Johnson...as long as it's set north of Antarctica. ( )

Chris Jaynes, the narrator of this strange novel, has just been denied tenure at the college where he has for some years been a Professor of American Literature, “the only black male professor on campus.” One cause of his dismissal is his refusal to participate in the college’s Diversity Committee which, without him, is not diverse.
Jaynes is engaged in what he sees as essential research into the roots of American racism in early American literature. A key text, he believes, is Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Pym’s adventure begins when he stows away on a whaling ship. The ship capsizes in a storm, and Pym is one of only four survivors. Eventually he ends up on an island inhabited solely by blacks, so black that even their teeth are black. For Jaynes, this is a lost tribe of Africans, though clearly a horror to Pym (and Poe).
On the final page of Poe’s novel, Pym and the only other remaining survivor come face to face with a huge humanoid figure, “and the hue of the skin of the figure was of the perfect whiteness of the snow.” That’s it—end of story; first black blacks, then a white monster.
Jaynes, a rare book collector, comes across a manuscript which proves to his satisfaction that Poe’s narrative is in fact a true story. He arranges an expedition to Antarctica to find the island of blacks and by doing so, make his scholarly reputation.
In the world of this novel Obama’s presidency is mentioned, but in this world there are terrorist attacks and riots in all of the major cities, and since the “Dayton Dirty Water Disaster” people drink only pure bottled water. Jaynes enlists for this expedition a cousin who sees a fortune to be made by forming a corporation to harvest glacial ice. Included in the expedition are Jaynes’ best buddy, a fat bus driver, two black lawyers (to protect the corporate interests), and two supposed water treatment engineers.
The expedition does discover that Poe’s narrative is true; in fact, they find Arthur Gordon Pym still alive, living with the race of eight-foot tall white monsters in an under-ice beehive-like city. Pym has apparently been kept alive for two hundred years by consuming a repulsive alcoholic beverage brewed by the “albino monkeys.”
Enslaved by the monsters, Jaynes and his buddy are the only ones to get away alive, but how and to face what—civilization having apparently ceased to exist—I leave the reader to discover. In sum, this book is an outrageous, well-written fantasy adventure and a hilarious satire on racism. The book’s ending leaves it open to a sequel, and should Pym 2 come along in a year or two, I will be first in line to check it out. ( )

Former professor of American literature Chris Jaynes is determined to find out the truth behind Edgar Allen Poe's novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket." After finding an old slave manuscript that seems to allude to the same subject as Poe's novel, Jaynes convinces a crew of six other black men to follow Pym's trail to the South Pole to search for the answer to one of literature's greatest mysteries.