Tuesday, December 28, 2021

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Pym by Mat Johnson

 



Pym is a short novel by Mat Johnson based upon Edgar Allen Poe's only published novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket".  The Poe novel, which is strange and ends in such a weird way as to feel incomplete, also features some typical early 1800s racist writing, with a black character leading a mutiny, a black-coded native character turning into an unhelpful ally, and a race of all black "primitive" people that nearly slaughter the white protagonist.  This novel features a fired black literature professor, fired for not fitting into a white college's plans for a token diverse teacher, and a bunch of oddball others (all Black) as they wind up discovering Poe's book isn't quite all that fictional.  

The result is a book that is at times pretty funny, and at others is a pretty cutting satire about ideas of race, both in the original Poe work and in modern society, as Johnson turns Pym's saviors and monsters on their head.  There's even a parody of kitsch painter Thomas Kinkade to go along with it all.  By the 2/3 mark of the book it becomes pretty clear how this book has to end, and yet Pym manages to make that ending work, with his satire working throughout.  This is not really a "fun" book in any way (although it's in no way serious, horrifying as a turn 2/3 of the way through is), but it's certainly a different and interesting (and again occasionally funny) exploration of the themes of race and the different approaches people have to it that is worth your time.  
----------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-------------------------------------------------------
Chris Jaynes was a professor of American literature at a northern liberal arts institution - but his refusal to play along as the token black (and mixed-race at that) on the school's diversity committee got him denied tenure and replaced.  Chris has always had a fondness for exploring literature in general - not just Black literature as the school wanted - and one of his fascinations has always been Poe, especially Poe's novel "The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket" and its implications on race.  So when Chris discovers a slave narrative manuscript that suggests the Poe story is based upon truth, he takes his good childhood friend and begins a journey with an all black crew to Antarctica ostensibly for profit, but really for Chris to trace Pym's route for himself.  

The oddball crew features Chris' cousin - a former revolutionary and conspiracy follower who fled to the sea as a ship captain - a gay couple who film themselves, and the woman Chris loves and her new husband, a successful lawyer.  But none of their skills and disparate views could prepare them for what they find on their journey, and the narrative that results may be just as incredible as Poe's original story.....
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Pym is very much a satire on race and attitudes thereof, with pretty much no view or character spared, even the protagonist (the book's footnotes only add to this).  So it starts with Chris being fired by his White university for not fitting into their needs as a token, with Chris then meeting his replacement who's all the more willing to fit into that stereotype (and who beats his ass), and then winds up with Chris discovering a bunch of clearly black people who insist they're color comes from Native blood instead of any African people (only for DNA to prove them wrong to distressing disappointment).  There's even Chris' flashback to a time he was beat up by a kid named "James Baldwin" (not that one!) just to add to it.  And all of this, portrayed moderately humorously through Chris' first person narrative, happens in the very first part (of four) of the book!  

The rest of the book explores the concepts of race, particularly whiteness and blackness, through its black characters and its white monsters.  Each of the black crew of Chris' journey has their own attitudes towards race that get explored - so Chris is the naive dreamer who most of the time hesitates or quits before strongly going towards something, Chris' friend Garth is the lazy bum who idolizes kitsch white paintings, Chris' cousin Captain Jaynes' insistence that white people are to blame for everything (complete with him naming his dog "White People" so he can yell at it) letting him give in and be sexually complicit once he's "enslaved", and Chris' romantic "rival" (in his head) being a successful lawyer who becomes complicit with his white oppressors, etc. etc.  Johnson explores this with a dialogue and writing that is extremely well done and like I said above, is often pretty funny, and he spares no one, not even the protagonist who starts off feeling pretty sympathetic and winds up looking like nearly as much of an ass as his compatriots.  

And then there's its explorations of Whiteness through the monsters and people Chris encounters.  Chris is a literary professor, so he outright states some of his conclusions about this out loud in the narrative, although others are pretty well implied and satired.  So Chris of course is fired for not fulfilling the role needed of him by the White university, where his "one drop" of black blood makes him not allowed to fulfill any other role.  And then he encounters white monsters who literally find everything pure about whiteness the only thing that matters - and act like traditional slave masters in many respects - as well as rich white asshole who have locked themselves away as the world burns....except where doing so would be inconvenient.  I don't want to spoil too much here, but well, this is a hell of a satire of the ridiculousness of whiteness and it really works.  

This is the type of book that's better explored by reading it than reading my rambling thoughts - the thoughts of a white dude who is not very good at literary analysis/criticism, which is very much what is needed here.  So I'll end it at that.  

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