Pym by Mat Johnson
323 pages
Published 2009
Read from October 25 to October 27
Rating: ★★★★ out of 5
"I really only read The Narrative [of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket] as homework before I read Pym
by Mat Johnson. The cover and blurb of that book have intrigued me for
months. I even had it checked out for a while earlier this year, but
elected to hold off on it until I had the chance to read Poe's original
novel." So I wrote in my review of Poe's Narrative, which I read way back in June.
I'm
coming to face how very little -- how shamefully little, how
appallingly little -- African American literature I have read. One book
by Octavia E. Butler, which I really liked; one book by Nnedi Okorafor,
which I really wanted to like. I almost bought Ellison's Invisible Man
half a dozen times between my late teens and the day I got a library
card last year. And... that's it, as far as I can remember. The one
history I own by a Black historian is titled The History of White People.
I am the worst kind of lip-service liberal, never poking my head out of
my fantasy fiction comfort zone, clinging to my humanities degree as
evidence of not-wholly-debased intentions without making substantive
effort to inform myself of other perspectives.
What struck me
most powerfully about this book, qua a book, is the mixing and mingling
of what I would ordinarily classify as incongruent styles. Dry, bitterly
hilarious social satire rubs elbows with the "low" humor of pratfalls
and the prominence of Little Debbie snack cakes as a central plot point.
Pointed social commentary commingles with the structure and plot of a
Crichton-esque airport adventure novel. It resists easy
compartmentalization. Given how little I've explored African American
literary and critical perspectives, it's best that I don't try to impose
any kind of labeling anyway, beyond affirming that I think Pym is pretty damn funny.
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