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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Penguin Classics)
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Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Publisher: Penguin Classics
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Our Price: $8.50
You Save: $ 1.50 ( 15% )
Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Author: Edgar Allan Poe
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Average Customer Rating:
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The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Penguin Classics) Description
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.3
EAN: 9780140437485
ISBN: 0140437487
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 288
Publication Date: 1999-06-01
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.3
EAN: 9780140437485
ISBN: 0140437487
Label: Penguin Classics
Manufacturer: Penguin Classics
Number Of Items: 1
Book Pages: 288
Publication Date: 1999-06-01
Publisher: Penguin Classics
Studio: Penguin Classics
Editorial Review of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Penguin Classics)
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is Poe's only novel and his "greatest work" (Jorge Luis Borges).
Reading a newspaper account in 1836 of a shipwreck and subsequent rescue of two men on board, Edgar Allan Poe found the germ of the story he would develop into The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket--his classic gothic sea novel. Published in 1838, this rousing sea adventure follows a New England boy, Pym, who stows away on a whaling ship with its captain's son, Augustus. The two boys, who find themselves repeatedly on the brink of discovery or death, witness many hair-raising events, including mutiny, savagery, cannibalism, and frantic pursuits. It was Poe's unique genius, however, that he imbued the deliberately popular tale with such allegorical richness that discerning readers have been intrigued ever since and his literary successors have employed his motifs. With its rich use of biblical imagery and psychological insights, Poe's masterpiece has resonated throughout subsequent literary history, influencing major works by Melville, Verne, James, Nabokov, and others.
Reading a newspaper account in 1836 of a shipwreck and subsequent rescue of two men on board, Edgar Allan Poe found the germ of the story he would develop into The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket--his classic gothic sea novel. Published in 1838, this rousing sea adventure follows a New England boy, Pym, who stows away on a whaling ship with its captain's son, Augustus. The two boys, who find themselves repeatedly on the brink of discovery or death, witness many hair-raising events, including mutiny, savagery, cannibalism, and frantic pursuits. It was Poe's unique genius, however, that he imbued the deliberately popular tale with such allegorical richness that discerning readers have been intrigued ever since and his literary successors have employed his motifs. With its rich use of biblical imagery and psychological insights, Poe's masterpiece has resonated throughout subsequent literary history, influencing major works by Melville, Verne, James, Nabokov, and others.
Customer Reviews of The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket (Penguin Classics)
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Fascinating but deperssing tale of life at sea
Review: Wow, when I first started to read this book I had no idea what it was about at all. I am glad I read it though. It is a tale of a poor young lad going out to sea for adventure, only to have the most nightmarish and strange tragedies befall him in rapid succession.
It starts out innocent enough, but soon the vivid descriptions of the wild situations that take place draw you into the book. Even though some of the events happening would make any normal man wish for death. However Poe does a good job balancing the dramatic storytelling without overdoing it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Adventure, horror, and fantasy as only Poe could conjure them
Review: Suspense and horror pervade Poe's full-length story of entombment, mutiny, shipwreck, cannibalism, and more--a veritable catalog of all the human fears and foibles that Poe depicts in his more widely read tales of mystery and imagination.
The novel opens with a prefatory episode, in which Pym describes a truly harrowing night at sea when he and his best friend Augustus, after having far too much to drink, went sailing during a storm. Instead of curing Pym of his wanderlust, the experience and Augustus's anecdotes about sea life fill his head with abnormally romantic visions of "shipwreck and famine; of captivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow and tears, upon some grey and desolate rock, in an ocean unapproachable and unknown." It's an accurate summary of what ensues, and although it may sound a lot like Defoe, Poe livens things up with his own special brand of horror.
After this preview, the rest of the novel feels like two main stories patched together around a central character. In the first adventure, Pym stows away on the ship owned by Augustus's father and emerges to discover that there has been a mutiny. The second half imagines a sort of "lost horizon" in the midst of Antarctica; instead of ice, there are temperate islands populated by devilishly affectionate natives.
It's rip-roaring fun, and it slows down only in between, when Pym travels through the Galapagos Islands on the way to the South Pole. These chapters, paraphrased and plagiarized rather shamelessly from contemporary travel accounts, abound in longitudinal measurements (a map will come in handy) and summaries of previous real-life explorations of the South Seas. The interlude as a whole is remarkably similar to Poe's unfinished (and languid) novel, "The Journal of Julius Rodman," published two years later, which also purports to be an account of unexplored territory--in this case, the Rocky Mountains. The fact that Poe had never been to either location doesn't help his fiction.
But don't let these skimmable chapters put you off. Readers who enjoy such classics as "Robinson Crusoe" or "Treasure Island" will find "Arthur Gordon Pym" a thrilling contribution to the adventure genre. It is also one of his more accessible works for young readers, often resembling a yarn of the high seas, without the ponderous metaphysics that bog down some of Poe's shorter pieces of fiction. And fans of science fiction, fantasy, and horror will be interested in the novel's obvious influence on later writers such as Jules Verne (who even wrote a largely forgotten sequel, "The Sphinx of the Ice Fields") and, of course, H. P. Lovecraft (most notably his story "At the Mountains of Madness").
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: An odd literary adventure
Review: Poe only wrote one novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. The novel is a series of amazing adventures that happen to the young Pym. Pym hides in a casket-like box in a ship, along with a rotten ham and several bottles of liquor and a cask of wine. While trapped under the deck, Pym finds that his dog has also joined him in his misadventure. The book takes you through Pym's experiences of being trapped under deck without food or water. He also experiences a mutiny where a faction of the crew take over the ship and kill many of the other crew members before putting the captain and a few honest sailors into a small boat with now paddles or compass. Pym, his friend the Captain's son, and a super strong sailor who participated in the mutiny stick together for survival sake, especially around the African blood thirsty cook who beheads other sailors. The sailor who mentors Pym is half black and half white, which Poe calls a 'hybrid'. They undergo a range of adventures with a death ship full of corpses, and storms so violent that the ship is reduced to ruins. They are reduced to cannibalism and draw straws to determine who will be dinner. They find and eat a dead polar bear. They pass many icebergs until the water becomes warm and tropical as they get near Antarctica. They find a tropical island full of black men who become very treacherous to our heroes. They escape the island and get caught in a giant whirlpool that is going into the center of the earth, where they see a gigantic white glowing figure. Then Poe pulls a fast one on us and tells us that the final 3 chapters of Pym's narrative have been lost and unfortunately young Pym has recently died.
What do we make of this crazy tale? This novel influenced Borges, Melville, and Jules Verne. Yet it is an odd novel, with an abrupt and truncated ending. In some ways it is a series of short stories strung together, each short story meant to give impressions of horror and adventure. Yet, I could not get over a distinct impression that Poe had written himself into a corner with no escape (after all what can possibly come after going into the center of the earth on a whirlpool at the south pole and seeing God or a giant angel?) and thus he wraps up the story in a very untidy manner.
At times, Poe's descriptions of horror are extremely beautiful and masterly. The ghost ship description is especially well done. At other times he develops a careful plot of intrigue and betrayal. The sections about the tribe of black men is very well constructed. At other times he is very abrupt and shocking, such as the immediate stabbing death of the poor man who was sacrificed so that the others could eat him and survive.
This brings up the topic as to whether a good novel must tie up all lose ends for the reader in a tidy plot resolution package? If this is what you seek in a novel, Arthur Gordon Pym is not the book for you. However if you are willing to go on an awkward journey with a skilled but uneven writer,then you will enjoy this unique novel.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The white Odyssey!
Review: Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is one of the most relevant and significant novels of Poe. His passionate literary style, told in first person, tells us about the hidden incursion of Arthur in a boat that will make a tour through the east coasts of South America.
The prodigious imagination and febrile mood, make of it an issue of invaluable and beating actuality.
The white color will impregnate the work as another invisible actor. And its final is still one of the most sublime and admired ever written.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "[I feared] that the public would regard what I put forth as merely an impudent and ingenious fiction."
Review: Claiming that this is the true narrative of a sea voyage by Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Edgar Allen Poe records the strange, unbelievable events aboard the ship Grampus in 1827 and on a voyage of discovery to the Antarctic six months later. Published in 1838, Poe's fictionalized narrative, supposedly penned by Pym, a young man from Nantucket, describes Pym's experiences beginning in July, 1827. Stowed away in the hold of the ship and aided by his friend Augustus Barnard, whose father is captain of the Grampus, Pym endures more than a week alone and in almost total darkness before he discovers that a mutiny has occurred onboard.
Macabre details of ghastly deaths and unrelieved bloodlust, the massacre of the crew, and the casting adrift of the captain presage even more gory events. A countermutiny, equally bloody, leaves only four men alive on the Grampus. A gale, a gruesome death ship which passes them, circling sharks, and additional deaths leave only two men alive when the brig capsizes.
The second half of the account details the trip of discovery taken by Pym and the other survivor, along with an English crew from a passing ship, south to the "Antarctic Sea," a voyage in which they go "more than eight degrees farther south than any previous navigators." On this journey they encounter a monstrous "Arctic bear," more than 15 feet long, a cat-like animal with red teeth and claws, warm water with Galapagos tortoises, a series of islands inhabited by canoe-paddling natives, the Aurora Borealis, hot and milky water, white ashy showers, and a huge human figure in white, not the sights reported by later Antarctic explorers.
Poe's only novel, in the romantic tradition of sea adventures, presages the publication of Melville's Typee, which is a true story. In this case, Poe plays with the reader's sense of reality, claiming that his fictional narrative is true and that the fictional Pym had "refused" to publish it because he thought no one would believe his tale. Ironies abound, matched only by the romantic embellishments and imaginative "discoveries" in Antarctica that make this fast-paced narrative as full of tense drama as any soap opera. The abrupt "conclusion" remains ironically inconclusive. Breathless excitement and near death experiences, combined with mystical visions and inexplicable events, make this exciting narrative fun to read. Mary Whipple
Review Summary: Fascinating but deperssing tale of life at sea
Review: Wow, when I first started to read this book I had no idea what it was about at all. I am glad I read it though. It is a tale of a poor young lad going out to sea for adventure, only to have the most nightmarish and strange tragedies befall him in rapid succession.
It starts out innocent enough, but soon the vivid descriptions of the wild situations that take place draw you into the book. Even though some of the events happening would make any normal man wish for death. However Poe does a good job balancing the dramatic storytelling without overdoing it.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: Adventure, horror, and fantasy as only Poe could conjure them
Review: Suspense and horror pervade Poe's full-length story of entombment, mutiny, shipwreck, cannibalism, and more--a veritable catalog of all the human fears and foibles that Poe depicts in his more widely read tales of mystery and imagination.
The novel opens with a prefatory episode, in which Pym describes a truly harrowing night at sea when he and his best friend Augustus, after having far too much to drink, went sailing during a storm. Instead of curing Pym of his wanderlust, the experience and Augustus's anecdotes about sea life fill his head with abnormally romantic visions of "shipwreck and famine; of captivity among barbarian hordes; of a lifetime dragged out in sorrow and tears, upon some grey and desolate rock, in an ocean unapproachable and unknown." It's an accurate summary of what ensues, and although it may sound a lot like Defoe, Poe livens things up with his own special brand of horror.
After this preview, the rest of the novel feels like two main stories patched together around a central character. In the first adventure, Pym stows away on the ship owned by Augustus's father and emerges to discover that there has been a mutiny. The second half imagines a sort of "lost horizon" in the midst of Antarctica; instead of ice, there are temperate islands populated by devilishly affectionate natives.
It's rip-roaring fun, and it slows down only in between, when Pym travels through the Galapagos Islands on the way to the South Pole. These chapters, paraphrased and plagiarized rather shamelessly from contemporary travel accounts, abound in longitudinal measurements (a map will come in handy) and summaries of previous real-life explorations of the South Seas. The interlude as a whole is remarkably similar to Poe's unfinished (and languid) novel, "The Journal of Julius Rodman," published two years later, which also purports to be an account of unexplored territory--in this case, the Rocky Mountains. The fact that Poe had never been to either location doesn't help his fiction.
But don't let these skimmable chapters put you off. Readers who enjoy such classics as "Robinson Crusoe" or "Treasure Island" will find "Arthur Gordon Pym" a thrilling contribution to the adventure genre. It is also one of his more accessible works for young readers, often resembling a yarn of the high seas, without the ponderous metaphysics that bog down some of Poe's shorter pieces of fiction. And fans of science fiction, fantasy, and horror will be interested in the novel's obvious influence on later writers such as Jules Verne (who even wrote a largely forgotten sequel, "The Sphinx of the Ice Fields") and, of course, H. P. Lovecraft (most notably his story "At the Mountains of Madness").
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: An odd literary adventure
Review: Poe only wrote one novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. The novel is a series of amazing adventures that happen to the young Pym. Pym hides in a casket-like box in a ship, along with a rotten ham and several bottles of liquor and a cask of wine. While trapped under the deck, Pym finds that his dog has also joined him in his misadventure. The book takes you through Pym's experiences of being trapped under deck without food or water. He also experiences a mutiny where a faction of the crew take over the ship and kill many of the other crew members before putting the captain and a few honest sailors into a small boat with now paddles or compass. Pym, his friend the Captain's son, and a super strong sailor who participated in the mutiny stick together for survival sake, especially around the African blood thirsty cook who beheads other sailors. The sailor who mentors Pym is half black and half white, which Poe calls a 'hybrid'. They undergo a range of adventures with a death ship full of corpses, and storms so violent that the ship is reduced to ruins. They are reduced to cannibalism and draw straws to determine who will be dinner. They find and eat a dead polar bear. They pass many icebergs until the water becomes warm and tropical as they get near Antarctica. They find a tropical island full of black men who become very treacherous to our heroes. They escape the island and get caught in a giant whirlpool that is going into the center of the earth, where they see a gigantic white glowing figure. Then Poe pulls a fast one on us and tells us that the final 3 chapters of Pym's narrative have been lost and unfortunately young Pym has recently died.
What do we make of this crazy tale? This novel influenced Borges, Melville, and Jules Verne. Yet it is an odd novel, with an abrupt and truncated ending. In some ways it is a series of short stories strung together, each short story meant to give impressions of horror and adventure. Yet, I could not get over a distinct impression that Poe had written himself into a corner with no escape (after all what can possibly come after going into the center of the earth on a whirlpool at the south pole and seeing God or a giant angel?) and thus he wraps up the story in a very untidy manner.
At times, Poe's descriptions of horror are extremely beautiful and masterly. The ghost ship description is especially well done. At other times he develops a careful plot of intrigue and betrayal. The sections about the tribe of black men is very well constructed. At other times he is very abrupt and shocking, such as the immediate stabbing death of the poor man who was sacrificed so that the others could eat him and survive.
This brings up the topic as to whether a good novel must tie up all lose ends for the reader in a tidy plot resolution package? If this is what you seek in a novel, Arthur Gordon Pym is not the book for you. However if you are willing to go on an awkward journey with a skilled but uneven writer,then you will enjoy this unique novel.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: The white Odyssey!
Review: Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is one of the most relevant and significant novels of Poe. His passionate literary style, told in first person, tells us about the hidden incursion of Arthur in a boat that will make a tour through the east coasts of South America.
The prodigious imagination and febrile mood, make of it an issue of invaluable and beating actuality.
The white color will impregnate the work as another invisible actor. And its final is still one of the most sublime and admired ever written.
Customer Rating:
Review Summary: "[I feared] that the public would regard what I put forth as merely an impudent and ingenious fiction."
Review: Claiming that this is the true narrative of a sea voyage by Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Edgar Allen Poe records the strange, unbelievable events aboard the ship Grampus in 1827 and on a voyage of discovery to the Antarctic six months later. Published in 1838, Poe's fictionalized narrative, supposedly penned by Pym, a young man from Nantucket, describes Pym's experiences beginning in July, 1827. Stowed away in the hold of the ship and aided by his friend Augustus Barnard, whose father is captain of the Grampus, Pym endures more than a week alone and in almost total darkness before he discovers that a mutiny has occurred onboard.
Macabre details of ghastly deaths and unrelieved bloodlust, the massacre of the crew, and the casting adrift of the captain presage even more gory events. A countermutiny, equally bloody, leaves only four men alive on the Grampus. A gale, a gruesome death ship which passes them, circling sharks, and additional deaths leave only two men alive when the brig capsizes.
The second half of the account details the trip of discovery taken by Pym and the other survivor, along with an English crew from a passing ship, south to the "Antarctic Sea," a voyage in which they go "more than eight degrees farther south than any previous navigators." On this journey they encounter a monstrous "Arctic bear," more than 15 feet long, a cat-like animal with red teeth and claws, warm water with Galapagos tortoises, a series of islands inhabited by canoe-paddling natives, the Aurora Borealis, hot and milky water, white ashy showers, and a huge human figure in white, not the sights reported by later Antarctic explorers.
Poe's only novel, in the romantic tradition of sea adventures, presages the publication of Melville's Typee, which is a true story. In this case, Poe plays with the reader's sense of reality, claiming that his fictional narrative is true and that the fictional Pym had "refused" to publish it because he thought no one would believe his tale. Ironies abound, matched only by the romantic embellishments and imaginative "discoveries" in Antarctica that make this fast-paced narrative as full of tense drama as any soap opera. The abrupt "conclusion" remains ironically inconclusive. Breathless excitement and near death experiences, combined with mystical visions and inexplicable events, make this exciting narrative fun to read. Mary Whipple