I originally sat at the computer planning to speak about some other novels, but as I set the microphone before my face, I realized that all I really wanted to talk about was The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket.

This book, about the tribulations of a young man from Nantucket who, like Robinson Crusoe before him, suffers great misfortune every time he steps on a boat, is one of those bizarre and inconsistent novels that reveal a man writing in great distress, struggling to keep the novel afloat as it sails from scene to scene. Containing gripping moments of anguish and terror, imaginative supernatural phenomena, as well as descriptions of the nesting habits of penguins cribbed straight from the nearest encyclopedia, this is a book you won’t soon forget.

I try to grapple with how this book came to be the way it is, and what exactly it is that it came to be. I discuss the narrative itself, the appeal it held to Jules Verne of all people, and what it can tell us about Poe and his life.

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