Edgar Allan Poe: An anniversary, a Web site, an exhibit and a novel—The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket

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By David Rothman

Edgar Allan Poe, perhaps destined to be my state’s most famous writer for the eons, died some 160 years ago on Oct. 7, 1849.

Just ten mourners showed up for his burial in an unmarked grave. One of the planet’s biggest Poe-haters wrote a lie-filled obit and, get this, served as his literary executor.

Poe himself was no Mr. Rogers, turning at times against friends. I can just imagine Poe flaming away on the old Usenet. Actually, given the current popularity of gothic, horror and related genres online, he might have fit in well in cyberspace. Find out more about him the via Web site of the Edgar Allan Poe Society of Baltimore or maybe even see an exhibition from the Library of the University of Virginia and the Poe Museum, running through December 5.

I’m hardly an authority on Poe, but, growing up in Virginia, could hardy escape mentions of him—quoth the Raven, never more!-–and the work that most intrigues me right now is The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Poe’s only novel, where young Pym stows away on a whaling ship later taken over by pirates; the piracy is just part of the action. The cannibalism comes later. Some modern editors would whittle down the nautical details, just as they would have cut out no small part of Moby Dick, but Pym might well grab you. Sample:

“Finding that he was not to be moved by anything I could say in a mild tone, I now assumed a different demeanor, and told him that he must be aware I had suffered less than any of us from our calamities; that my health and strength, consequently, were at that moment far better than his own, or than that either of Peters or Augustus; in short, that I was in a condition to have my own way by force if I found it necessary; and that if he attempted in any manner to acquaint the others with his bloody and cannibal designs, I would not hesitate to throw him into the sea. Upon this he immediately seized me by the throat, and drawing a knife, made several ineffectual efforts to stab me in the stomach; an atrocity which his excessive debility alone prevented him from accomplishing. In the meantime, being roused to a high pitch of anger, I forced him to the vessel’s side, with the full intention of throwing him overboard…”

Also see Jules Verne’s sequel, An Antarctic Mystery. Please: read Pym before Mystery.

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