

Loading... Pymby Mat Johnson
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No current Talk conversations about this book. 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. Bizarre, hilarious, scathing satire of American racism, all refracted through the lens of Edgar Allen Poe's "Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym." Tons of fun. 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.) no reviews | add a review
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Amazon.com Product Description (ISBN 0812981588, Hardcover)A comic journey into the ultimate land of whiteness by an unlikely band of African American adventurersRecently canned professor of American literature Chris Jaynes is obsessed with The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Edgar Allan Poe’s strange and only novel. When he discovers the manuscript of a crude slave narrative that seems to confirm the reality of Poe’s fiction, he resolves to seek out Tsalal, the remote island of pure and utter blackness that Poe describes with horror. Jaynes imagines it to be the last untouched bastion of the African Diaspora and the key to his personal salvation. He convenes an all-black crew of six to follow Pym’s trail to the South Pole in search of adventure, natural resources to exploit, and, for Jaynes at least, the mythical world of the novel. With little but the firsthand account from which Poe derived his seafaring tale, a bag of bones, and a stash of Little Debbie snack cakes, Jaynes embarks on an epic journey under the permafrost of Antarctica, beneath the surface of American history, and behind one of literature’s great mysteries. He finds that here, there be monsters. (retrieved from Amazon Thu, 12 Mar 2015 18:17:22 -0400) A comic journey into the ultimate land of whiteness by an unlikely band of African American adventurers. Jaynes is obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe's only novel ; when he discovers a crude slave narrative that seems to confirm the reality of Poe's fiction, he resolves to seek out Tsalal, imagining it to be a key to his personal salvation.… (more) |
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