from NPR/Fresh Air
In 'Pym,' A Comic Glimpse Into Poe's Racial Politics
If all you think of when you think of Edgar Allan Poe are poems like "The Raven," or tales of terror like "The Fall of the House of Usher," you might not realize that Poe was a funny guy. I'm not talking belly laughs, but more a creepy comic vision that savored the absurd in desperate situations — like an annoying corpse whose darn heart just won't stop thumping; or — spoiler alert! — a whodunit where the killer turns out to be an orangutan. It's this strain of ghastly humor in Poe that Mat Johnson mines in his new novel, Pym, an inventive and socially sassy play on Poe's one and only novel: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.
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If all you think of when you think of Edgar Allan Poe are poems like "The Raven," or tales of terror like "The Fall of the House of Usher," you might not realize that Poe was a funny guy. I'm not talking belly laughs, but more a creepy comic vision that savored the absurd in desperate situations — like an annoying corpse whose darn heart just won't stop thumping; or — spoiler alert! — a whodunit where the killer turns out to be an orangutan. It's this strain of ghastly humor in Poe that Mat Johnson mines in his new novel, Pym, an inventive and socially sassy play on Poe's one and only novel: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.
Listen Here
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