by Mat Johnson
I'll admit, when I read Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, I walked away thinking, what a strange book. Yes, Poe's attitude was most certainly racist (and as I noted, scientifically inaccurate), but overall I just thought the entire thing was so strange. The book moved though, although nothin...
A somewhat-witty satire of both Poe's [b:The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket|766869|The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket |Edgar Allan Poe|http://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1341387331s/766869.jpg|25789936] & the issue of race. Johnson's book starts out strongly, but bo...
Very cool idea, executed with some striking insights about literary obsessions and the construction of whiteness and blackness as opposites. (One of my favorite moments is when the narrator mentions in passing that he can't imagine black people existing in the saturated, romantic paintings of Thomas...
So weird. This is a deep book. There are layers and allegories and all kind of things that make me wish I was reading it in an intro English college class so that someone could explain all of it to me. There's an exploration of Blackness and Whiteness and what those things mean here, but I couldn't ...
oh god. i am almost ready to give up satire and humour entirely. i adore a good quip. i love a wag, i cheer a wit (and mat johnson fits these categories) but i don't seem to have the patience for the sustained point behind it all these days. happily, there was a lot of other filling in this little d...
A dizzy rewrite of Poe and a heckuva fun read.It's at first a sharp-eyed satire on literature and on race. Narrated by an African-American professor, recently fired, who is obsessed with Poe's Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. He comes to find (shades of Coetzee's rewrite of Crusoe, Foe) a real-life...
Uh...okay? After a rapturous review from the AV Club, who can't always be trusted in their take on books, I'm willing to let this hang out on my TBR list for six months before realizing I've forgotten why I thought it sounded good and killing it.
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