Pym

Racism collides with greed in Mat Johnson's Pym and, sadly, what results is a lackluster satire. Narrator Chris Jaynes, the sole black professor of American literature at a northeast college, is let go from his job and soon comes into possession of a manuscript purportedly written by Dirk Peters, a previously assumed-to-be-fictional character from Edgar Allan Poe's, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym. Jaynes discovers in the manuscript what appears to be proof that Tsalal, a fictional locale in Poe's Pym, is not only real but accessible, and proceeds to assemble a crew consisting of his best friend, his ex-girlfriend and her new husband, and a couple of cameramen. Despite each crew member being there for a different reason, they take off together, hoping to break the story and make some money in the process. Though Pym begins as a critique of the racist underpinnings prevalent in academia, as well as the canon of much of American literature, it quickly devolves into a silly genre-fiction satire once Jaynes and his crew come into contact with the Tekeli-li—a tribe of albino giants living at the South Pole. Johnson's prose thrums with manic energy both comedic and intellectual; however, his multiple ambitions and unfortunate lack of focus prove to be his undoing. Disappointingly shallow and scattered, Pym sets off in a thousand directions but never arrives at a single destination.