Challenge Tuesday – 27

This time, I decided to revisit the books from the 100 novels list to see if I fancied starting any that I’d put aside for later, which gave me…

Book 27 – The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, by Edgar Allan Poe. This story started out as one thing and morphed into another.  At first I thought it was about how two best friends survived various adventures and disasters but about midway through, one of the two left the story in a pretty unpleasant way and we were left with the ongoing story of the somehow-suddenly-wise boy/man and the strong/mad-but-only-sometimes mutineer.  If a book was fabric, this one was a patchwork quilt – we jumped from one disaster and death to another and you wondered why on earth the narrating character didn’t leave the boat and go home when he finally could!

Having said all of that, it was quite entertaining, very easy to read and although some aspects made me raise my eyebrows ( for example there are definitely undertones we’d now call racist in the story, in my opinion) it was quite escapist.  It also kept me involved throughout. There are a few mini essays on things I really didn’t need but these were short enough not to really encroach on the flow as a whole.

The flow and fluidity of the story made the ending extremely jarring: it ends suddenly and partway into the next (probable) disaster.  I even wondered if somehow the e-book was incorrectly uploaded, such was the sharpness of the ending (it wasn’t)!  I have made my own decisions about what the ending means but it’s ambiguous to say the least.

Other than that, I can see how it could have influenced Melville in writing Moby Dick – the whaling ship gives a huge scope for all sorts of exploration of the nature of life, humanity, place in the world, security and expansionism, and it’s a very impressive narrative option.  I found The Narrative… far easier to read than Moby Dick despite its flaws; Poe’s writing style is much more to my taste.

It’s not one I’ll re-read though, because of the frustration of the ending.  Up to the end, I might have re-read it though – I feel it was undermined by an unsatisfactory ending.  That’s a lesson I should always remember!

Happy reading,

EJ

🙂