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'''The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket''' is Edgar Allan Poe's only complete novel, published in 1838.
The work relates the tale of the young Arthur Gordon Pym who stows away aboard a whaling ship called ''Grampus''. Various adventures and mis-adventures befall Pym including shipwreck, mutiny and cannibalism. The story starts out as a fairly conventional adventure at sea, but it becomes increasingly strange and hard to classify in later chapters, involving religious symbolism and the Hollow Earth.

Contents

Plot introduction

Analysis

Literary significance and reception

Allusions/references from other works

Publication history

References

External links

Plot introduction

Poe wrote the novel with a deliberate and experimental structure whereby the mood of each chapter was matched by the corresponding chapter at the other end of the book.

Analysis

The novel begins with Arthur Gordon Pym, a name similar to Edgar Allan Poe, departing from Edgartown, Massachusetts on Martha's Vineyard. In a voyage of discovery, the protagonist is actually sailing away from himself, or his ego. Unlike previous sea voyage tales that Poe wrote (i.e. "MS. Found in a Bottle") Pym is undertaking this trip on purpose.^[1]
Poe may have been inspired, at least in part, by Jeremiah Reynolds, who had recently made a report to Congress on a proposed expedition to the South Seas.^[2] Poe actually used about seven hundred words of Reynolds' address in Chapter XVI, almost half the length of the chapter.^[3]

Literary significance and reception

Contemporary reviews for ''The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket'' were generally unfavorable overall. Fifteen months after its publication, it was reviewed by Lewis Gaylord Clark, a fellow author who carried on a substantial feud with Poe. His review printed in ''The Knickerbocker'' said the book was "told in a loose and slip-shod style, seldom chequered by any of the more common graces of composition." Clark went on, "This work is one of much interest, with all its defects, not the least of which is that it is too liberally stuffed with 'horrid circumstances of blood and battle.'"^[4] A review in ''Burton's Gentlemen's Magazine'' (possibly William Burton himself) criticized its excessive gruesome detail, borrowed descriptions of geography, and errors in nautical information. The reviewer considered it a literary hoax and called it an "impudent attempt at humbugging the public" and regretted "Mr. Poe's name in connexion (sic) with such a mass of ignorance and effrontery."^[5] Science fiction author H. G. Wells noted that "''Pym'' tells what a very intelligent mind could imagine about the south polar region a century ago".^[6]

Allusions/references from other works

In 1897 French author Jules Verne published ''The Sphinx of the Ice Fields''. A sequel to ''The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym,'' the two-volume novel explores the adventures of the ''Halbrane'' as its crew search for answers to what became of Pym. Translations of this text are sometimes titled ''An Antarctic Mystery'' or ''The Mystery of Arthur Gordon Pym''.
Poe's novel was also an influence on H. P. Lovecraft, whose 1936 story ''At the Mountains of Madness'' follows similar thematic direction and borrows the cry ''tekeli-li'' from ''The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym''.
In Paul Theroux's travelogue ''The Old Patagonian Express'', Theroux reads parts of ''The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym'' to Jorge Borges.
Yann Martel named a character in his Booker Prize winning novel ''Life of Pi'' after Poe's fictional Richard Parker, and other real life Richard Parkers who were all coincidentally involved with cannibalism, shipwrecks and having the same name (see below). As Yann Martel said "So many Richard Parkers had to mean something." So many Richard Parkers have apparently confused Martel, who in interviews has inadvertently transferred the cannibalism from the 1836 ''Francis Spaight'' shipwreck (where there was no Richard Parker aboard) to the 1846 ''Francis Spaight'' shipwreck (where there was a Richard Parker lost). ^[7]

Publication history

''The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket'' was published in England by George Palmer Putnam. Putnam bought Poe's manuscript without reading through to the last page, hoping the book would capitalize on the public interest in Sir John Franklin and his expedition to the arctic. Putnam apparently believed the story of Pym was true, as Poe intended to present it. When the book was published in London in particular, it received harsh reviews and comments that Putnam, the "Yankee," was trying to dupe British readers. Putnam vowed never to publish another work without reading it in its entirety.^[8]

References

1. Hoffman, Daniel. ''Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe Poe''. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1972. ISBN 0807123218 p. 260
2. Kennedy, J. Gerald. "A Brief Biography" in ''A Historical Guide to Edgar Allan Poe''. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001. p. 38 ISBN 0195121593
3. Tynan, Daniel. "J. N. Reynold's Voyage of the Potomac: Another Source for The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" from ''Poe Studies'', vol. IV, no. 2, December 1971, pp. 35–37. Available online at www.eapoe.org
4. Moss, Sidney P. ''Poe's Literary Battles: The Critic in the Context of His Literary Milieu''. Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1963. p. 89
5. Silverman, Kenneth. ''Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance''. New York: Harper Perennial, 1991. pp. 143, 157 ISBN 0060923318
6. by Frank, Frederick S. and Anthony Magistrale. ''The Poe Encyclopedia''. Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut and London, England, (1997). ISBN 031327768 p. 372
7. [1]
8. Tebbel, John. ''A History of Book Publishing in the United States - Volume I: Creation of an Industry (1630-1865)''. New York City: R. R. Bowker Co., 1972. ISBN 0835204898 p. 305-6

External links

★ The Strange Disappearance of Arthur G. Pym

★ Jean Ricardou, « The Singular Character of the Water », English translation of a french analysis of the last part of ''Pym'', Poe Studies, vol. VIII, no. 1, June 1976.

★ J. V. Ridgely, « The Continuing Puzzle of ''Arthur Gordon Pym'', Some Notes and Queries », Poe Newsletter, vol. III, no. 1, Juin 1970

★ Kathleen Sands, "The Mythic Initiation of Arthur Gordon Pym", ''Poe Studies'', vol. VII, no. 1, June 1974

★ Daniel J. Tynan, "J. N. Reynolds' ''Voyage of the Potomac'': Another Source for ''The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym''", ''Poe Studies'', vol. IV, no. 2, December 1971

★ Audiobook Complete MP3 Recording in the Public Domain