The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (1838)

3.5
Creo que esta es la única novela (o relato largo) de Poe.

Me gustó, es atrapante e intrigante. A veces se extiende demasiado con información cartográfica pero aún así eso no le resta al argumento.
Las aventuras y desventuras de Arthur Gordon Pym son terribles y el final es inquietante. ( )

I've been a sucker for maritime adventure books, particularly polar exploration stories, since I read "The Last Cruise of the Jeannette" as a kid. I know what binnacles and ratlines are, how a sail is fothered, and why you're screwed if you don't have the stuff in your cargo hold stowed properly. So I was delighted to learn that Edgar Allen Poe had written a novel in this vein, "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym" (1839) and that Jules Verne added a sequel to Poe's work, "An Antarctic Mystery" 60 years later.

Read the rest on my blog: http://thegrimreader.blogspot.com/2013/09/i-visit-antarctica-with-two-famous.htm... ( )

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, Poe's only novel, is a nautical adventure with elements of science fiction and horror. It reads like a series of brilliantly told stories somewhat arbitrarily connected and capped by an abrupt and mystifying ending.

The story takes place in 1835-36. Pym, a young New Englander, desires to go to sea with a friend, Augustus, whose father captains a whaling brig. Pym's relatives refuse him permission, so Augustus helps him stow away in the hold. Pym's confinement in the dark, unhealthy hold last days longer than he expects, and he fears he will die there, alone and forgotten. Finally Augustus gets word to him that there has been a mutiny, and that Augustus, because of his youth, had been the only non-mutineer allowed to remain alive on board the vessel.

There follows a succession of adventures involving a counter-mutiny, a storm, a shipwreck, and a prolonged survival ordeal at sea. Pym eventually finds himself on board another ship which is off to explore the Antarctic in the hope of finding some previously undiscovered land where there are seals to hunt or natives to trade with. His adventures have only begun. Each episode in the novel is told briskly with edge-of-the-seat tension. Poe's descriptions are as vivid and rousing as any nautical adventure I have read.

At the time of Poe's writing, a number of European and American expeditions had attempted to determine if there was an Antarctic continent. Most had been turned back by ice. Two or three explorers had only recently come upon dry land within the Antarctic circle, but were unable to determine if these were the shores of a continent or just isolated islands. There had been some reports or rumors that the waters actually grew warmer as one approached the pole, leading to speculations about hidden tropical civilizations. Others believed that the Earth was hollow, and that the poles were the points of entry to a second world inside. Poe recaps much of this in the novel, and Pym and his companions make discoveries that begin to hint that some the wildest theories may be true.

The science fiction elements of the novel are found in the "lost world" idea, though this surfaces only in the final chapters. The horror elements are found in the terror of premature burial (a common theme in Poe's short stories) and in the superstitious fear of the reanimated dead. But there is nothing overtly supernatural in the novel.

There are two objectionable aspects to the novel. One is the abrupt and unsatisfying ending which has frustrated and mystified readers since its original publication. The other is the strong presence of racial stereotypes. I found myself, while reading the novel, unable to put it down and wondering why it has been so neglected relative to Poe's poems and stories. The puzzling ending is the answer to that question, but it remains a memorable reading experience. ( )

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. ( )

Readers beware: this novel, slight as it is, has no conclusion. Poe wrote himself into a big, dumb hole from which he could not extricate himself. When an author can't even finish his own story, why should the reader bother? ( )