"THE SHARPEST AND MOST UNUSUAL STORY I READ LAST YEAR . . . [Mat]
Johnson's satirical vision roves as freely as Kurt Vonnegut's and is
colored with the same sort of passionate humanitarianism."--Maud Newton,
New York Times Magazine
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Washington Post - Vanity
Fair - Houston Chronicle - The Seattle Times - Salon - National
Post - The A.V. Club
Recently canned professor of American literature Chris Jaynes has just
made a startling discovery: the manuscript of a crude slave narrative
that confirms the reality of Edgar Allan Poe's strange and only novel,
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Determined to seek
out Tsalal, the remote island of pure and utter blackness that Poe
describes, Jaynes convenes an all-black crew of six to follow Pym's
trail to the South Pole, armed with little but the firsthand account
from which Poe derived his seafaring tale, a bag of bones, and a stash
of Little Debbie snack cakes. Thus begins an epic journey by an unlikely
band of adventurers under the permafrost of Antarctica, beneath the
surface of American history, and behind one of literature's great
mysteries.
"Outrageously entertaining, [Pym] brilliantly re-imagines and
extends Edgar Allan Poe's enigmatic and unsettling Narrative of Arthur
Gordon Pym of Nantucket. . . . Part social satire, part meditation on
race in America, part metafiction and, just as important, a rollicking
fantasy adventure . . . reminiscent of Philip Roth in its seemingly
effortless blend of the serious, comic and fantastic."--Michael Dirda,
The Washington Post
"Blisteringly funny."--Laura Miller, Salon
**
"Relentlessly entertaining."--The New York Times Book Review
"Imagine Kurt Vonnegut having a beer with Ralph Ellison and Jules
Verne."--Vanity Fair
**
"Screamingly funny . . . Reading Pym is like opening a big can of
whoop-ass and then marveling--gleefully--at all the mayhem that
ensues."--*Houston Chronicle
