Required reading for my Adolescent Lit class, the only novella published by Poe. It was epically disappointing. Nowhere near as scary with many plot lines left untied. Plus you get promised "exciting cannibalism," which winds up being very disappointing and not scary at all. I don't think anybody in my class liked this book, and it was a large class. ( )

http://vehesse.free.fr/dotclear/index... ( )

The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is Poe's first and only novel. It is notoriously uneven and difficult to classify, but can generally be described as an endless adventure story of one episodic adventure after the next with no definitive ending. Poe is at his classic best in the middle portion describing the macabre adventures on-board the ship Grampus. The later half is a rush job, Poe copied entire sections from other books word for word and the plot has a weak ending. Later commentators have defended the ending by pointing out Poe imagined what the South Pole was like before anyone had been there, but Poe's vision is hardly convincing, even for contemporaries. Putnam, who published it without reading to the end - on the strength of the first and middle section - vowed never to publish another work again without reading it fully. It was generally panned by contemporary critics.

Narrative does have strengths, the macabre style he is so famous for can be seen in full development (his first big classic The Fall of the House of Usher (1839) was only a year away). On the other hand Poe's imagination seems to get away from him, he is unable to sustain a long narrative without it shattering into separate short stories. He was at his best working from start to end in manic bursts of creative energy. Whatever the critical reviews, Narrative is popular today, if for no other reason it is Poe's only (complete) novel. The descriptions of being buried alive in the Grampus, the ghost ship and the story of cannibalism with Richard Parker are well told and unforgettable.

--Review by Stephen Balbach, via CoolReading (c) 2008 cc-by-nd ( )

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. ( )

It's a decent book. The story is interesting and moves at a good speed, except when different types of boats are being described. The end is very unsatisfying. ( )