Other editions of book The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

The inspiration for The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym was both modern and American. Poe got the idea from a newspaper. In February 1836, the Norfolk Beacon published a vivid account of the sinking in a storm at sea of a ship named Ariel. Here was the perfect sea story for which Poe had been on the lookout. Like many ambitious young writers, he sought both popular success and literary acclaim. After he had written a number of successful short tales, his publisher, Wesley Harper, had advised him that "readers in this country have a decided and strong preference for works (especially fiction) in which a single and connected story occupies the whole volume." Seafaring adventure was hardly new for Poe. He had already won a prize for his tale of the Flying Dutchman, MS Found in a Bottle. In the novel he began to plan, he despatched his protagonist (the rhythm of whose name suggests Edgar Allan Poe), in a whaler, the Grampus, on an extraordinary voyage to the southern seas, following (as it were) Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. But then he contrived a sequence of ever more dreadful jeopardy: mutiny, storm, shipwreck, sharks, the "exquisite horror" of cannibalism, a ghost ship, and frozen regions inhabited by savage natives. Poe had read and admired Robinson Crusoe and had learned from Defoe's example. Indeed, the opening of Arthur Gordon Pym mirrors exactly the beginning of Crusoe, and borrows a similar authorial device. Like Defoe, Poe also ramped up "the potent magic of verisimilitude" (his own phrase) by borrowing freely from contemporary accounts of South Sea adventure.But, because it's a novel by Poe, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is much more than just a yarn, and is replete with existential and psychoanalytical fascination. Freud, for one, made much of its darker side. Moreover, the later part of the "narrative" explores one of Poe's recurring themes, man's unconscious desire for annihilation. Pym is not only on the brink of death, but in one chapter he actually appears as a dead man. This quasi-supernatural element infuriated many of Poe's readers on first publication, and will no doubt continue to trouble readers today.And yet, despite or perhaps because of its strangeness, Pym's magic endures. In more popular writing, Arthur Conan Doyle, B Traven, and David Morrell all found a touchstone in Poe's only novel. Baudelaire translated it. Jules Verne wrote a sequel. When Paul Theroux, who reports the story in The Old Patagonian Express (1979), read aloud from it to Jorge Luis Borges, the older writer said: "It is Poe's greatest book."

I will relate one of these adventures by way of introduction to a longer and more momentous narrative. One night there was a party at Mr. Barnard’s, and both Augustus and myself were not a little intoxicated toward the close of it. As usual, in such cases, I took part of his bed in preference to going home. He went to sleep, as I thought, very quietly (it being near one when the party broke up), and without saying a word on his favorite topic. It might have been half an hour from the time of our getting in bed, and I was just about falling into a doze, when he suddenly started up, and swore with a terrible oath that he would not go to sleep for any Arthur Pym in Christendom, when there was so glorious a breeze from the southwest. I never was so astonished in my life, not knowing what he intended, and thinking that the wines and liquors he had drunk had set him entirely beside himself. He proceeded to talk very coolly, however, saying he knew that I supposed him intoxicated, but that he was never more sober in his life. He was only tired, he added, of lying in bed on such a fine night like a dog, and was determined to get up and dress, and go out on a frolic with the boat. I can hardly tell what possessed me, but the words were no sooner out of his mouth than I felt a thrill of the greatest excitement and pleasure, and thought his mad idea one of the most delightful and most reasonable things in the world. It was blowing almost a gale, and the weather was very cold–it being late in October. I sprang out of bed, nevertheless, in a kind of ecstasy, and told him I was quite as brave as himself, and quite as tired as he was of lying in bed like a dog, and quite as ready for any fun or frolic as any Augustus Barnard in Nantucket.

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