Pym: A Novel by Mat Johnson
Pym has elements of mystery, satire, science fiction, and entertainment, plus it has a message. In fact, this is arguably among the funniest and most original books to be released in recent memory.
Pym: A Novel by Mat Johnson
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Chris Jaynes, an English professor at a college, just lost his job. He not only declines to serve on the school’s Diversity Committee but also refuses to teach Black Literature, which is what he was hired to do. It’s challenging to create a Diversity Committee without any diversity as the sole black faculty member. Edgar Allan Poe, especially his sole book, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, is the subject of Jaynes’ obsession.
Even if this is not Poe’s best work, Jaynes is troubled by Arthur Pym’s unexplained and sudden death in Antarctica and the island he discovered, Tsalal. The people of Tsalal are so dark that they even have dark teeth. Jaynes discovers that Poe’s novel is likely nonfiction after buying a manuscript authored by Dirk Peters, a fictional character in Poe’s story. With the aid of a settlement from the college, Jaynes assembles a group of African Americans under the command of his cousin, ship’s captain Booker Jaynes, to retrace Arthur Pym’s movements as well as to harvest South Pole ice into potable water (one of the last sources of pure water). Not only is what Jaynes finds in Antarctica shocking, but it could also bring him to the same fate as Arthur Pym. It is significantly worse than what Booker Jaynes calls a “snow honky problem,” despite what he says.
Despite Pym’s occasionally hilarious antics, Johnson forces us to consider race in a profound way. His humour and cynicism mask a serious aspect of this tale. “I enjoy reading works by Poe, Melville, and Hemingway, but the Africanist presence in the great literature written by Americans of European origin is what I enjoy most. I enjoy searching the whitest of sites for myself…
