The Problem with Pym

Pym tells the story of an African-American studies professor's obsession with Edgar Allan Poe's only short story, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.  I don't quite remember how I stumbled on Pym, but it is exactly the kind of book I love/hate. 

The problem with Pym is that to understand the it requires knowledge of the source material (Poe).  So I carefully read Narrative.  The problem with Narrative is that it just isn't very good.  I can't decide if it was intended to be campy or if that's just the way 1840s serial style writing feels in 2011.  If the intent is humor, then the awkward shifts from a detailed narrative to journal style storytelling Prior to this I was only vaguely familiar with Poe's other work.  I like The Raven (mostly because of the Simpson's Tree House of Horror), but other than that I'm not really a fan.  About 30 pages into Pym, I discovered a few more Poe works were referenced.  Rats. I like to be thorough, and thankfully these other works are short. 

This reminds me Adam Langer's The Thieves of Manhattan.  This book is jammed with popular (and some pretty obscure) literary references.  There is a glossary at the end of Thieves, but that ruins half the fun of figuring out the jokes.  Before I reread Thieves, I'll need to brush up on a couple of books.

Back to Pym. 

After suffering through Poe, read Pym.  You will have earned a treat.