Not quite. Lovecraft’s sole novel compares only to Poe’s sole novel in the fact that both have the then mysterious continent of Antarctica as its setting. Lovecraft has most of the action happening in an eldritch city discovered deep within the frosty kingdom; Poe has ill-fated Arthur Pym enter a veiled misty Southern Pole at the book’s final page.
Pym is a concatenation of conglomerated composition. I saw, obviously, Moby Dick by Herman Melville there, as well as some Kidnapped by Stephenson early on and a heaping of She and King Solomon’s Mines by Haggard in the latter chapters. It must be noted here that Poe precedes all these writers, however, and undoubtedly influenced them. But the hodgepodge of Melville-Stephenson-Haggard is thoroughly and oppressively saturated with the grim, ghastly ghoulishness of trademark Edgar Allan.
What a truly macabre tale it is! What starts off innocently enough – young Arthur stowing away on a whaler captained by his best friend’s father – soon devolves into a maze of psychological, physical, and moral horrors. Early on Arthur finds himself cocooned and forgotten in the coffin-like hold of the ship, a pre-Premature Burial. Then, in rapid succession:
* an uneasy alliance with a dog mad with hunger
* a mutiny sandwiched by a pair of bloodbaths
* a horrible death by poison
* gale winds which nearly capsize the whaler
* slow starvation as saved supplies swiftly fester
* the madness which drives men to – cannibalism
* the drawing of the straws – and what happens after
* a rescue ship, populated with rancid, decaying bodies
* the foul image of a seagull eating its way through a corpse
* the descriptive death of Arthur’s friend from gangrene
Then, our plucky lad – how is he not bat-raving mad by now? – and a mutineer are rescued, and Poe turns the novel into a travelogue. Huh? We learn the longitudes and latitudes of various South Sea islands, the histories of exploration and discovery in said regions, as well as detailed exposition on local flora and wildlife. In truth, battered from the intensity of the previous third of the novel, my eyes glazed over much of this miscellanea. It did nothing to further the story and everything to make me impatient to see where the heck it would wind up.
Before we get to Antarctica, we have a perfunctory scene where sailors battle polar bears. Perhaps this was exciting to early 19th century readers, polar bears being a rarity of tall-tale sorts and such. Then we meet the natives, written about as can no longer be written about without the taint of racism. There’s a betrayal and ambush – but no more cannibalism, thankfully – and Arthur is again fighting for grim survival against thousand-to-one odds.
He manages to escape the island in a stolen canoe, pursuit on his heels, when he drifts into the dreamlike vision of the South Pole. But I recall thinking, in this oddest last chapter, is Arthur dead? But he’s written his tale now for me to read. The waters warm and turn milky, steams and mists hide the horizons, a “veil” parts and he comes face-to-face with an impossible giant being clad all in white. Is he on Earth, or has he fallen through to a hollow Earth, so tantalizingly believed during Poe’s time?
The abrupt ending is frustrating. The ghastly first third is torturous to get through. The second third is filler to modern minds, and the final third is inexplicable. There are some images burned into my mind that I won’t long soon forget, on par with some of the most terrible fates ever put to paper by Poe. I don’t regret reading it, but I recommend it only for fans of true, classic horror. C+, if I, an unaccomplished novice, had to give a grade to this, the great man’s longest and most erratic work.
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