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The discussion of our book for May, Pym: A Novel by Mat Johnson will begin here on tomorrow, May 1. This book has been a little difficult for some of our members to find because it was published recently and because it has attracted a great deal of attention from critics and from readers. It is starting to come into more library systems, however - it's being cataloged in the Atlanta system now, so I'm hoping to obtain it soon.

Here's some information about the author Mat Johnson from his website :

Mat Johnson is a novelist who sometimes writes other things.

He is the author of the novels Pym, Drop, and Hunting in Harlem, the nonfiction novella The Great Negro Plot, and the comic books Incognegro and Dark Rain. He is a recipient of the United States Artist James Baldwin Fellowship, The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers selection, and the Thomas J. Watson Fellowship.

Mat Johnson is a faculty member at the University of Houston Creative Writing Program.

A more detailed (and more amusing) bio can be found here:



Here's an interview with Mat Johnson:



Pym: A Novel has been extensively reviewed, including these two:





Happy reading!

As we are preparing to discuss this book, I have a question for those more knowledgeable about American literature than I. As I understand it, this book is written as a reexamination of Edgar Allan Poe’s book, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. Toni Morrison is frequently quoted as writing in her book, Playing in the Dark : Whiteness and the Literary Imagination, that "no early American writer is more important to the concept of American Africanism than Poe." My knowledge of Poe is limited to a few poems and some very scary short stories. Can anyone expand on the ideas behind the Morrison quote about Poe?

jo has kindly agreed to lead this discussion. Thank you, jo!

wow, jo. back to back. you go.

hey guys! i am pinch-hitting here (i have read only the first few pages of the book!) so i thought we could all take it easy and spread the book discussion throughout the month going by chapters. there are exactly 24 chapters, which means we could do 6 short chapters a week.

here's why it will be fun (it will be fun!):

1) Pym is short and sweet. no big tome, for sure.
2) remember percival everett's Erasure and the good discussion we had then? i have a feeling Pym might be just like it -- a comic/not-so-comic take on blackness and culture. fun stuff to wrap our minds around.
3) it's funny.
4) you don't have to have read it already: i haven't!

so, how about we discuss pp. 1-84 this week?

to mina: i have read The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantacket more than once (it's one of my favorite books!) but i couldn't tell you right now what toni morrison or, for that matter, mat johnson have in mind when they say that poe is essential to the concept of african americanism. at the beginning of Pym johnson actually goes over the story of the original poe novel (you don't need to read it; it's all there) and i don't remember thinking of it quite that way. i was aware that race played a part, but i wasn't aware it played such a big part! so i guess we will all have a lot to learn from mr. johnson.

thanks mina for giving me the opportunity to lead this discussion, and thanks in advance to all those who'll participate!

Wow, Jo! You're gonna make me drive the 90+ miles to the nearest library to get the book (@ $4.00 a gallon gas no doubt). Impressive!

hey man i'd scan it for you but last i heard it was illegal and i want to keep my good standing with the FBI!

Glad I'm not the only one who finds the Poe/African Americanism connection strange. I have never read a Poe book, but judging from Pym, the linkage is unclear. It will be interesting to see if someone can make sense of that kinship. I thought the book was mildly entertaining, at times laugh out loud funny, but there were some points where it dragged but I won't give anything away, I will follow along diligently.

Glad to have you here, Andre!

Hi everyone! I am delighted that we are discussing this book. I'm rereading Poe's novel as well, so I am also glad to hear that you are dividing the discussion into 6 chapters per week, jo. It will be fun!

The observation that Morrison makes about Poe (and also about Melville, Hemingway and Faulkner) is actually a very persuasive one. In "Playing in the Dark," she evaluates the ways in which early white American writers used blackness - their understanding of blackness - as a way to foreground ideas about power, difference, and reason. She is not arguing that the way Poe represented black people was especially heinous or that he was a racist. But that he, like Melville, was a masterful storyteller who after closer scrutiny reveals the way specific associations with blackness were embedded in early American language and were passed down to Hemingway, Faulkner....and to us.

She wrote her analysis after observing the way that these writers would insert an "Africanist presence" - often a secondary character, a setting, or even something more abstract - to facilitate a larger message about the main plot points. In these moments, blackness is devious or buffoonish, indecipherable, overly emotional, sensual - and it is used to affirm the rationality, authority, and sophistication of whiteness. Morrison's concern, to quote from her essay, is how to grapple with these “rhetorical gestures of triumph, despair, and closure dependent on the acceptance of the associate language of dread and love that accompanies blackness."

She argues that one of her goals as an African American writer is to call attention to those "gestures" and write in such a way that counters or challenges the use of blackness as an enabler of whiteness and difference, to give black characters flesh and dimension in ways that Poe did not (or could not, given the time period). My understanding is that Mat Johnson - who has written elsewhere about racial passing - is also interested in the coded language and images that shaped our earliest perceptions of what race means in America.

Sorry to go on so long! I hope this is helpful.

I was hoping that you would expand on the quote from Morrison, Qiana! Thank you! Was Poe the first American writer to use the idea of blackness in this way or was he more influential than others?

Hey, you're welcome! Poe is often credited with being one of the first 19th century writers to develop and promote a distinct American narrative form through his short stories, so I would say that he and Melville were the most influential when it comes to American fiction.

I haven't got the book either, but the discussion is already so enlightening and thought provoking that I'm going to follow along. My thanks, as well, to Qiana for the information about Morrison's thesis. I love Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ!

thanks from me too, qiana. here's an enlightening passage from mat johnson's Pym:

"Whiteness, of course, has always been more of a strategy than an ethnic nomenclature... You want to understand Whiteness, as a pathology and a mind-set, you have to look to the source of your assumptions. You want to understand our contemporary conception of the environment, commerce, our taxonomy of humanity, you have to understand the base assumptions that underlie the foundation of the modern imagination... That's why Poe's work mattered. It offered passage on a vessel bound for the primal American subconscious, the foundation on which all our visible systems and structures were built" (31, 33-4).

there is so much that is quotable in this book... too bad some of you cannot get hold of it!

...passage on a vessel bound for the primal American subconscious... Wow!

pretty, right?

what i like most is the insistence on Whiteness as a strategy. in other places the narrator calls it a sickness. i love that he calls it a strategy. this strategy -- which we all employ (obviously in different ways) -- goes so often unnoticed and unremarked upon. color-blind society: right.

Whiteness as a strategy: tell me more.

i'll try. i think our narrator chris jaynes would put it like this. there are five or six or eight continents, separated by seas and oceans, and in these continents people developed differently, both physically and culturally. the europeans, though, got into their heads that they were superior to everyone else and since they had to find a way to name this fictional superiority they invented Whiteness.

as the quote above shows, Whiteness is an organizing principle (a strategy). it allows us to taxonomize people, develop and support specific economic arrangements, organize our living spaces, apportion educational opportunities etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.

here is a paragraph from Pym in which jaynes explains one way in which even non-whites are sucked into this strategy:

"I used to complain that the only things the white literary world would accept of Africa's literary descendants were reflections of the European themselves: works that focused on the effects of white racism, or the ghettos white economic and social disenfranchisement of blacks created. I still think that, I have just come to the understanding that I'm no better. I like Poe, I like Melville, I like Hemingway, but what I like most about the great literature created by Americans of European descent is the Africanist presence in it. I like looking for myself in the whitest of pages. I like finding myself there, after being told my footprints did not exist on that sand. I think the work of the great white writers is important, but I think it's most important when it's negotiating me and my people, because I am as arrogant and selfish a reader as any other." (27)

in other words, we have come to define ourselves (in literature, but elsewhere as well) in opposition to each other. i am white because you are black and viceversa.

and here's another cool passage (it's a footnote; yes, this novel has footnotes):

"After noting that immigrant ethnic groups in the United States have traditionally used the word nigger to define themselves as white, the comedian Paul Mooney once said that he didn't brush his teeth. He simply woke up every morning and said "nigger, nigger, nigger, nigger" until his smile was like so many pearls sparkling." (28-9)

does this help?

Indeed. My initial thoughts were about Whiteness as representative of class/social status and of acceptability, but your term 'fictional superiority' is more precise. In the history of my own country (both of them!) I could use the words imperialism or colonialism similarly. The second paragraph (27) makes me think of Frantz Fanon, and Naipaul, and any other thinker/writer trying to make sense of art in a post-colonial society.

It occurs to me, though, that the Europeans were not alone in assuming this innate superiority. Wasn't the Japanese word for 'foreigner' pejorative?

Jeez. I have to buy this book!

First few pages in and Mat Johnson/chris jaynes seems like a bull in a china shop. He's not only tackling Whiteness but he's putting the smackdown on a few Blackness perversions too. From the early on beat down of sitting duck Booker T. Washington's admonitions to seperate but equal second class citizenship to the seemingly insatiable need for some of us to be anything but what we really are. The meeting of the NAACG had me laughing out loud in public...perhaps in recognition that if you look far enough in my family tree you'll find Pocohantas..at least thats what they tell me...He's skewering everything in sight and hasn't even left for Antartica yet!

hahaha. the meeting of the NAACG had the same effect on me!

I'm hanging back a bit, because I read the book about a month ago and can't profess to remember the specifics of page sections, and I don't won't to reveal anything not yet read. But, yeah, this is funny. I LOVED the footnotes. How often in life has that sentence been written?

Here's the thing about that NAACG meeting- Jaynes has about just as much Black in him as these people have Native. So, why is it okay for him to claim his Blackness, but not okay for them to claim their Native heritage. Does it have to do with phenotypical gene expression? acceptance by some larger group? some authenticity measure?

well i am scrupulously following the schedule, so i don't know if jaynes turns out to be a jerk later, but for now, i don't think he's got an issue with their claiming their nativeness; i think he's got an issue with their not claiming their africanness.

I think the key phrase in the difference between Janyes Blackness and the native blood in the NAACG members was the professors finding that most members had between 2 to 6 percent American Indian DNA. With a margin of error of PLUS OR MINUS 6 PERCENT!

Hazel asked: wasn't the Japanese word for 'foreigner' pejorative?

Not sure which Asian country/ies use "long nose" as a term for foreigners, but there is that.

reading this on kindle so having a little trouble keeping up with page references, but glad for the group's input. just at the beginning of the footnoted pieces.. fascinating. 'faux' scholarship. opens many many questions..

Rashida wrote: "I'm hanging back a bit, because I read the book about a month ago and can't profess to remember the specifics of page sections, and I don't won't to reveal anything not yet read. But, yeah, this i..."

I just finished chapter 11 where C. Jaynes describes his looks, color, and ancestry. Your point, Rashida, is much clearer now.

i haven't gotten there yet (trying to be disciplined, not to get mixed up), but he's made already very clear that he's very pale and has straight hair.

William wrote: "I just finished chapter 11 where C. Jaynes describes his looks, color, and ancestry. Your point, Rashida, is much clearer now. ..."

Speaking of which, my library did have Johnson's
Incognegro, about passing under very dangerous circumstances.

first week almost over. i can't wait to move on to the next 6 chapters! i've been very disciplined.

i just wanted to point out something a bit nerdy but which tickled me a lot. as jaynes points out, the original Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym is full of inconsistencies and just plain narrative mistakes. i am getting a kick from the fact that the story within the novel, dirk peters' manuscript, is guilty of the same sin. when dirk peters goes to meet edgar allen poe, poe has already published a couple of sections of the Narrative. but since the Narrative is based on dirk peters' manuscript, how can he have done that? (if i'm wrong, please correct me!)

Johnson book is much like the movie Inception, in that its a book inside a book inside a book. [semiSpoiler] It ends in the same fashion as the original does and even brings back characters from the original, which by the way, I keep waiting to him to inform me just how they managed to live 200 years but Johnson/Jaynes never really got around to explaining. Krackt/crack kept them alive? OOOkay!
Did anyone who read LaValles 'Big Machine' notice a lot of similarities?
I'm not inclined to read the original Poe work but I would love for those that have to weigh in with some comments. Seems like it was one ridiculous and blatantly racist story. (sorry if I'm writing out of turn but once the book goes back I have no idea what chapter my ideas are in.) I do remember that Jaynes says he looked like he was White in chapter 11 and that after that point a lot of developments and action turn on his ability to pass. Johnson makes a point of not only satirizing Black and White relationships but also the degrees and status of color within the African Diaspora.

@jo: I could be mistaken but I thought Jaynes said that Peters got to Poe after a few serialized chapters of the Narrative had already been published. He wanted to entice Poe with the parts of the tale he didn't know. This explains why the form of Poe's fictionalized version changed so erratically toward the end. Or I could have this totally wrong...

@William: I also see a lot of similarities with LaVelle's book and with Colson Whitehead, too!!! They book have a similar narrative voice, very observant, yet insecure and bit snarky when it comes to thinking about racial absurdities. In terms of the original work, what's funny is that the majority of the tale is a "typical" sea-faring journey, even the initial references to Peters are somewhat subtle; but the ridiculous juxtapositions of white ice/black natives (black skin, black clothes, black teeth, ha ha) really ramp up during the last quarter of the text.

Oh man... I accidentally deleted my second comment! Okay. Here's a recap of my feelings about the first six chapters.

1. loved the tenure debacle and the Diversity Committee, having served on a few of those on and off campus, which I think is part of the point...university as society?

2. I think Rashida is on to something. We learn quite a bit about the mechanics of Poe's writing - whiteness as strategy - but I think we're also meant to take something from Jaynes's own proprietary feelings about blackness. We are all, to some extent, card-carrying members of some club when it comes to race. And sometimes, from the outside looking in, it can be just as absurd as those folks dressed in feathers and beads claiming to be Cherokee chiefs. (Also, in this same vein: love the Thomas Kinkade satire!)

Okay, I think that's what I said. I'm about to read the part where the team travels into the Jeffree Tube!

@quiana no, you are not mistaken. Peters finds Poe after a few chapters were published.

but what is poe's source? isn't dirk peters the only one who made it out of there? this is a problem in poe's Narrative too, because first person narratives are not supposed to end with the death of the writer (how does the writer get to write his own death?). poe gets around this with the device of the found manuscript, but pym -- if he dies at all -- dies in antarctica! the end of the Narrative leaves entirely to the reader to imagine how said manuscript could have made it back to the US, and it's not easy. i mean, pym does not describe his own death (that would be a bit too much) but he gets pretty damn close.

this is just a little technicality, but it's also relevant in that it plants the Narrative firmly into unreliability-land. i think mat johnson reprises that. the trick is to find out why.

okay, and here's another inconsistency in which i'm delighting: dirk peters' manuscript is supposed to be written in atrocious english, but, you know, it isn't. it's not the most elegant prose, but it's okay, it's decent english.

Ah, good point. I'll have to go back and read that section again. Johnson may be craftier than I thought. I love unreliable narrators!

jo, I'm simmering in anticipation over here. So much I want to say about the point about the narrative that you're raising, but I must hold it in. Ah, the torture.

Here's a question I have. I think I did a spit take when Captain Booker Jaynes called the Tekelians "super ice honkies." Then I felt like a bad little liberal for finding it amusing. And then I worried about the reception a book that so casually dropped such a phrase would get with the "mainstream." Do you think that Johnson risks offending anyone? Did anyone here find this book (or the portions you've read so far) offensive?

Recently in a meeting with an older client, he repeatedly referred to those in a position of authority over him (mostly but not exclusively white, uniformly abusing such authority) as "crackers." After several minutes of this, he turns to me and in all seriousness says, "Oh, sorry, I forgot that your generation doesn't say things like that anymore. I hope I haven't offended you, I'm trying to be better about that." I thought it was sweet.

hey rashida, you can say whatever you want that pertains to chapters 7-12! WARNING: SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ CHAPTERS 7-12!!!

okay so we've learned that arthur pym is alive. have at it, rashida, unless it goes further than the 12 limit!

i have things to say about the (inverse) racism, but i can't say them now. but no, i don't find it offensive at all. in the context, it sounds entirely appropriate. but i'm curious, rashida: do you think white people would find it offensive, or anyone with a liberal and politically correct (i mean this in a very good sense) bent? your example seems to indicate the latter. and of course i'm assuming you're african american?

Johnson took a bit of criticism for his pretty conservative though still comic stance in his previous book 'Hunting in Harlem'. A Black Christopher Buckley if you will. While he still goes after lots of progressive targets this book is not leaning as far to the right as Hunting was.

I think the fact that most of the references to "honkies" etc. are initiated by Booker, the elder black nationalist, creates enough distance that it didn't strike me that anyone would take offense. He is sort of a parody which makes it harder to take him seriously ("We went to march? What do you mean what for?!?)

Sooo....now I've made it through chapter 12 and I can't say that I'm loving the turn this novel is taking! Hmm..

I don't think Mr. Johnson is concerned at all with white people may or may not find offensive. He has made it clear in earlier passages that one of the things he finds frustrating is trying to find people who look like him in "mainstream" novels. So certainly as a author in his own right, what white people think is unimportant. And really isn't that how it should be?

i think i remember in poe's Narrative that at some point that black people (with the black teeth) of the tropical island at the south pole where our (anti)heroes are eventually stranded enslave them and force them to work.

i think the slavery that happens in chapter 12 of mat johnson's book is a mirror slavery (if you guys want greater precision i'll check out the Narrative). the crazy crazy CRAZY thing, at least for me, is that, whereas in poe the enslavement of our heroes doesn't feel entirely outrageous because we know that white people don't stay enslaved to black people for long, THIS enslavement feels simply intolerable. i am extremely curious to see where it all goes.

i'm sure you guys have noticed that the Creole's crew refers to the white giants of the south pole in the same derogatory, animalesque terms once reserved for slaves (and replicated by the character pym in mat johnson's book).

this book is chock full of racial slurs, white2black and black2white. pym is unabashed in his refusal to treat our crew as human. since johnson is critiquing/parodying the crude brutality of the language of the Narrative, his use of B2W racial slurs seems entirely fitting to me.

we may also think about so-called reverse racism. i have problems with the concept. hatred is hatred, but when a majorly disempowered numerical and cultural minority uses derogatory language toward the oppressive majority, i'm not sure it's racism. i think it's anger and hatred and fury. racism (like sexism, homophobia, ableism, etc.) requires that you hold the stick of power; otherwise it's toothless.

i wonder what you guys think of all this. i am also wondering what the role of the clear undoing of law and order in the US (bombings in major cities, etc.) is doing in this book. jaynes doesn't tell us who is doing the bombing. do we automatically assume islamic terrorists, or are there other options?

Jo, reverse racism is a concept put forth by faux news commentators and the Sarah Palins of this world but it is an empty suit, a paper tiger. Black people can certainly be prejudiced against White people and even hold racist attitudes towards them but they cannot practice racism. Racism depends on power. Whereas the mostly White people of privilege (Some Blacks and others have been allowed to join the club) use racism to deny education, jobs, health and equal justice to Blacks in this society, Blacks can be as prejudiced against Whites as they want but have no ability to influence their lives outcomes. There is no example in this society of Blacks using their power to put a racist policy in effect (racism) to the detriment of Whites, examples of the the opposite are innumerable.

Johnson uses the time spent with the "Ice monsters to poke fun at almost every character in a typical slave narrative. The "house nigger", the slave revolt leader, the Jezebel, etc. Did anyone notice that Jaynes descriptions of the "Other, Unfamiliar" were the same as historical records of slavemaster attempts to dehumanize their chattel?

hey william, you are making exactly the same point i made re: racism, though much more eloquently. this is what i said, "racism (like sexism, homophobia, ableism, etc.) require that you hold the stick of power; otherwise it's toothless."

as for your second point, yes, i noticed that too! it's masterfully done!

do you have any ideas about why johnson puts the united states in a state of terrorist chaos? is he making a point about something?

My thought on the USA chaos; that is a constant state for people of color both physically, psychologically and metaphorically. And IMHO, that is what he is attempting to convey.

I agree with Andre and William, and I wonder if we couldn't go a step further -- given the way their bondage on the ice is used as an analogy to the transatlantic slave trade, I'd speculate that the turmoil with "terrorists" in North America could also be a way of replicating the internal conflicts within the African continent during the 16th and 17th century. In both cases, the experience of enslavement is horrible, but there is also a sense that the place where you departed from is in turmoil as well. For me, it intensifies the deep sense of homelessness and displacement all around. You don't want to stay where you are, but can you go back?

On another note: There's something about these Antartican slavery chapters that just aren't satisfying for me. I was much more excited about the Dirk Peters narrative than I am about these ice creatures. I'm also mindful of the fact that making the reader feel uncomfortable and off-kilter may be a part of Johnson's agenda. The attempt reminds me a little of Octavia Butler's Kindred, Gayl Jones's Corregedora, and Edward P. Jones's The Known World - writers who found different and innovative ways to depict the experience of slavery. But I'm just not feeling like Johnson, a strange as it sounds, is "buying" his own story...

You all really thought about that apocalypse thing. I assumed it was just a plot contrivance thrown in there to facilitate the slavery episode. I mean, if the outside world is there, then the workers return and our crew just sails away. What do we do about this? Blow up the world! This is why I truly enjoy this group. :)

Qiana- the latter half of the novel was admittedly "different" to me than the first half. It felt more like the screenplay than the introspective novel (btw, I've mentally cast Jesse Williams or Wentworth Miller as Chris Jaynes, yes, somewhat hunkier than what I think Jaynes must be, but isn't that the way of Hollywood?)

starting today, we will discuss chs 13-18, so if you want to avoid spoilers don't read!!! have fun with it y'all!

jo- can you give a brief bit about what is going on in these chapters? I don't have the book anymore and don't want to be spoilerish

hmmm. i haven't read them yet. you found me out (though i do do it intentionally, not to get confused). someone else?

i've only read chs 13 and 14 of the new section so i'll have those in mind, mostly, but i must say that i don't share qiana's or rashida's misgivings about this. i haven't read the gayl jones or octavia butler you mention, qiana, but i really don't see anything in common between this book and The Known World. you are suggesting a sort of skewed, unusual, different look at slavery. yes. so, okay, i do see something in common, but PYM is also so much fun. at least it is to me. it's quirky and bizarre and unbelievable and silly and funny. it totally doesn't take itself seriously, even as it makes really serious points about, say, the way we, americans, eat (we are starving ourselves while getting fat).

as for rashida's point, about johnson's having a screenplay in mind, again, i don't see it. so much of this book's magic is in the unserious language and atmosphere. this author seems interested in language and ideas to me, not in story.

this is the startling quality of slavery in PYM, in my opinion: there is no despair. this is so interesting to me, because there should be despair! it's a sick and fucked game, a dream that turned into a nightmare, but, also, it's a comic fantasy novel, a bizarre po-mo pastiche, and i'm not sure who could put it into a movie and do it justice.

i like chris jaynes. actually, i like all the characters. in the terrible circumstances they are in they are thinking each about their own little pet passions: commerce or little debbies or scholarship or their spouses. it's so surreal yet it's so down-to-earth and normal. it's FUNNY!

remember when Life is Beautiful, the italian movie, was made and people were all up in arms about dealing with the holocaust through comedy? i am wondering if there are other comic novels that deal with slavery, and we all think about this.