Literary Fiction by People of Color discussion

Well, there's Flash for Freedom by George MacDonald Fraser and the follow up novel, Flashman and the Indians, both following the adventures of Harry Flashman, one of Victorian England's most decorated heros, biggest reprobate and most craven coward. He winds up shanghaied by his own father-in-law, a major businessman and part owner of the ship on a slave ship bound for West Africa, helps bring a cargo of slaves back to Cuba and the US, only to be captured by the US Navy and brought to trial in New Orleans, where he pretends to be an English naval officer dedicated to ending slavery. through various misunderstandings and deceptions on his own part is drafted into the underground railroad, becomes an overseer, is sold into slavery, escapes with another runaway slave, makes it across the Ohio river, is captured by slave catchers and rescued by none other than Abraham Lincoln. It's exceptionally non pc, while slamming almost everyone with equal ferver, except for the canny Mr. Lincoln who immediately sees through Flashman and recognizes him as a fellow rascal. and like Pym will never ever be made into a major motion picture movie. there would be rioting in the streets, endless sermons and political speechifying all around. But, I like it.

I think that I was inclined to make the comparisons to those other postmodern slavery novels, particularly The Known World, because of Pym's metafictional qualities - the narrative's awareness of itself as fiction - as well as the way it attempts to convey the experience of enslavement, rather than the mimetic historical realities of antebellum slavery. It was intrigued by what Jaynes says at the start of chapter 12:

I am bored with the topic of Atlantic slavery. I have come to be bored because so many boring people have talked about it. So many artists and writers and thinkers, mediocre and genius, have used it because it's a big, easy target. They appropriate it, adding no new insight or profound understanding, instead degrading it with their nothingness.

Then he goes on to praise the original slave narratives because they are not "duplicitous" and are motivated only by their fight against bondage:

Their artistry is surprising, considerable, devoid of pretension and with passion in its place.

I agree with jo that Pym is really funny and irreverent in its attempt to convey the affect of what it might mean for a 21st century American man to confront the traumatic horrors that we only know abstractly through second-hand sources. I wish it was a little more subtle in the execution. I think that Johnson as a storyteller has not yet achieved the artistry he praises, but it's still a thought-provoking and engaging book. He's modeled himself after Poe in more ways than one.

A better comparison probably would be Charles Johnson's Middle Passage, which also uses a kind of satirical absurdity, along with a sea-faring adventure model, to shake up modern readers who assume that they know everything about the experience of African enslavement. I've never heard of the George MacDonald Fraser books, George - I'll have to check them out!

Kudos to Jo. You should be a reviewer! I think you nailed it there about Johnson being about language, ideas and atmosphere. He seems to be doing exactly what you stated, just having fun, not taking himself too seriously although serious points are made, and for me that was part of the joy, recognizing the metaphors mostly made in jest. Well done Jo!

Qiana,

well, Flashy is a particularly reprehensible character who is primarily interested in the creature comforts, and invariably pays for his sins by winding up at one horrible disaster or another as a result. they're quite good, and footnoted. the first book takes place in Afghanistan in the Brits first war and hideous defeat there and should have been must reading by the previous administration before embarking on our own adventure. However, while he fashions himself a ladies' man, modern ladies will find little to admire in him. my own wife has often questioned with no small suspicions why I like him so much.

there's little to compare between the two authors other than a highly irreverent sense of humor throughout. However, oddly enough, the Flashman character was fashioned after the young villain at Rugby in a famous Victorian era boy's novel, Tom Brown's School Days, and fashioned into what Frasier imagined he would have been like as an adult. the novels are supposed to be his memoirs.

While reading Pym, I kept wondering if the Africans regarded their white tormentors as some sort of snow honkeys, speaking some barbaric gibberish with little obvious culture but entirely dangerous. I was generally caught up in the originality of the concept for the novel and the general lambasting of humanity, or what passes for it. But I'd agree with you Qiana that Johnson as storyteller could yet use some polishing.

Thanks, George. I hope I'm not giving the impression that I'm not enjoying the book. The premise is really innovative; I like Chris Jaynes's narrative voice too. I also think this book would go over well with students in an African American lit class, even my American lit course in which I sometimes teach Poe.

Qiana, no, not at all. I'd think it would be a fascinating novel to discuss in a variety of classes, if you can keep the group under some modicum of control. Where do you teach? I was curious and see that you're in Columbia.

I'm at the University of South Carolina. (Go Gamecocks!) Last year I taught a postmodern black literature course that included Morrison's Beloved, Whitehead's The Intuitionist, and Everett's Erasure. Pym would be a perfect addition to this list!

I think I may have read beyond our assigned chapters for the week, but I'm wondering if anyone has thoughts on how Booker Jaynes's character has evolved? Or....Karvel?

That Thomas Karvel (Kincaid) became a central part of the story was when my interest flagged...seemed he just spent too much time on it. I have never seen a Kincaid/Karvel painting in a Black persons home. and the absurdity of his best friend obsessed with it was quickly made. But Karvel/Kincaid has made enough billions to fund a geodesic dome in Antarctica? Its is sooo..."things that White People Like" as to be self parodying and really not worth the effort to spend a good amount of the book making fun of it. And his best friend Garth..is there another Black person other than this person in the world named Garth? Even Little Debbies. M. Johnson is from Philly...We (Black folks in the Phila greater Urban Area) eat Tastycakes...not Little Debbies...They were in the suburban grocery shelves...Garth a bus driver? ..perhaps like Ralph Kramden in the HoneyMooners and his pal Norton? Lots of opposites, fun house mirrors, and bizzarro world allusions if one pays enough attention to find them in this book.

thanks andre! many many deep thoughts tomorrow. i cheated and finished it. for now, thanks everyone for super smart observations!!! and: william don't be a hater.

Ha! Yeah unless a story has an iron grip, suspension of disbelief is difficult for me....probably why I don't enjoy scifi/magical books as much as I once did...How did Pym live over 200 years? Why was it cold enough to keep ice monsters frozen but not so cold that the humans would die of hypothermia?

yeah, you're not supposed to ask those questions, what is this CSI Antartica? reality, what a concept. it's the whole Poe/Pym thing, none of which makes much sense according to our belief in reality, but works on the subconscious, primordial level. Are the snow creatures and black beings of Pym intended to be real or reflections of how we perceive them due to our collective inability to see each other as human?

Anyway, I stopped reading scifi books when the book stores started equating magical/fantasy literature with it. now it seems, no one really writes scifi any more, it's all Dragons in Space.

I also don't want to make it seem like I don't like the book. It was too funny at points, and I almost turned into the crazy lady on the metro cackling out loud to herself. I gave the thing 5 stars, and have been too intimidated by it to write out a proper review, yet. But, really, George? Never, ever made into a movie? I think it's been quite successful and quite well praised, and I absolutely do think that somebody in Hollywood would buy this and then turn it into The Rock goes to Antarctica and battles giant snow monsters. We shall see.

You, know, I was also wondering why Little Debbies and not Tastycakes, the Tekelelians would have been much more impressed with butterscotch krimpets, I bet.

Qiana- the Booker Jaynes developments caught me by surprise. Have we reached that point in the group read? Don't want to spoil by giving too specific of a reaction.

Do folk think there's any significance to the title of the book being Pym? Going in, you would assume it's based on the title of the narrative. But we later find out that Pym is still a character in this story. So does the title refer to the person, the work, both? Why not some completely different name that focuses on Jaynes or the plot, and not just the set up? Why is so much intellectual space given to Poe here? As subversive as this narrative comes off, that's an awfully conservative to start the journey, don't you think?

No, never, not ever. No major studio would touch it and even if Oprah and Bill Cosby got together to finance it privately and got Spike Lee to direct it, it would be extremely hard to distribute. Just my opinion, of course. Time will tell indeed. I suppose it could be turned into Rock vs the schlock monstors, but it wouldn't resemble the book.

hey guys, since most of us who are here chatting about this book seem to have finished it, is it okay if we discuss it in its entirety at this point?

i was frankly blown away from the last section. it was so gripping! for me (though clearly not for william) it was an incredible page turner. at the same time, i enjoyed the ridiculousness of it all so much. and i found johnson's attempt to match poe's Narrative step by step kinda of exhilarating. this of course happens down to the very end, with the mirror arrival of our two heroes in tsalal, a VERY BLACK place.

i agree with qiana that this is probably a very teachable book!

about booker jaynes -- whoah, the guy is just all out, isn't he? he falls head over heels in love with his white mistress (and she with him) and simply can't leave her. but, also, it looks as if the fight has gone out of him. i think it may be related to the fact that he was there, fighting for civil rights, in the heyday of civil rights fighting, and the blow of a return to SLAVERY-FOR-GOODNESSNAKES is just too much for the poor man.

and, in fact, look at the way garth reacts to the idea of blowing up the snow monkeys. as our narrator tells us, he can't quite see himself do it because he hasn't experienced slavery the way the others have.

the various characters react to the brutality of racism in dramatically different ways, and it would be nice to analyze the different reactions, not just booker's. how about nathaniel, for instance?

Speak no ill of the successful black male sellout; for he has achieved the goal of the community that has produced him; he has "made it,"used his skills to attain the status that would be denied him, earned entry at the door of the big house of prosperity. His only flaw is that he agreed to leave that community, its hopes, customs, aspirations, on the porch behind him. (271)

this passage, like many that come out of the mouth/pen of chris jaynes, reveals to be contradictory once you stop to think about it. how about chris jaynes? is he a sellout? isn't he a "successful" black man with a ph.d. and a university career (okay, the career is rickety, but his academic aspirations are not). what success is viable for the black american male, according to chris jaynes? remember that he may have lost his job for not serving in the diversity committee, but his manuscript is published in collaboration with the man who takes his place at the university, mr. johnson, who very clearly tells him that he very much intends to serve on selfsame diversity committee.

and here, on a totally different topic, a really great quote:

Pym wouldn't hear anything negative about the race from the caves. That is it, that's the trick, I realized as my brain began to go numb. Drifting off, staring across at the two-hundred-year-old man just to make sure that the needs of his stomach didn't overpower the needs of his nose, I saw it all become clear to me. That is how they stay so white: by refusing to accept blemish or history. Whiteness isn't about being something, it is about being no thing, nothing, an erasure. Covering over the truth with layers of blank reality just as the snowstorm was now covering our tent, whipping away all traces of our existence from this pristine landscape. (225)

is jaynes talking only about racial history or is he talking about everything -- class, economic injustice, imperialism, war, education, etc.?

Re: your quotes: Nathaniel would invite Clarence Thomas to speak at his daughters H.S. graduation and Jaynes probably just saw a current movie where the Black character died in the first reel and the white one saved the day...(for those who missed my tongue in cheek..I'm identifying C. Thomas as the epitome of black sellout, house negroeism...got his in on the back of affirmative action and married a racist tea party hater to boot...what? listening to Nathaniel I cant criticize because he made it and our community thirsts for those who make it? (by White standards?)?.. in the second para..the whitewash goes on and is a constant overbearing fact of life in these U.S. States...

jo, I think I have enjoyed your enthusiastic commentary about Johnson's story more than the novel itself. Your delight in what Pym is attempting to do is persuading me to think more carefully about the book and that's good, so thank you!

I believe the fear of being a "sellout" is what fuels a lot of Jaynes's decisions in the first place, even his original interest in Poe. Whatever respect he may have for the Morehouse Man ideal, Jaynes still seems to take some delight in Nathaniel's self-destruction and even in Booker's self-delusions.

The last half of the book was unsatisfying for me. I am disappointed that after exposing some of the strategies of whiteness for which Poe is now so well known, Johnson simply flips it and attempts to tell the inverse. It felt to me like those early black Barbie dolls, the ones that were clearly white dolls dipped in brown paint. (I guess Jaynes would argue that he took a Sambo doll and dipped it in marshmallow...) I realize now that what I really wanted to hear was the lost story of Dirk Peters and I can't be mad at Johnson for telling the story he wanted to tell.

Anyway, here are a few points that I thought were intriguing:

1. Something I didn't consider until jo mentioned it again, is that the tale within the book is not actually told by Mat Johnson, but by MOSAIC Johnson - the one who, early in the novel said: "Man, in my work, I deal with the ghetto. The real shit, you know what I'm saying? Reality." And after insisting that "nobody cares about the Poe thing," he says:

"I'm here to bring the beat to the text, that's it. It's all good.[...] Look, cuz, unlike you, clearly, I believe in trying to change things. Fighting against racism where I see it. I don't back down, and I don't apologize for that either. Hell yeah, I'm down for the damn committee. I'm down for the fight, know what I'm saying?"

So just as we know that Poe didn't simply transcribe the original story without his own beliefs and cultural influences creeping in, how are we to regard Pym under the influence of Mosaic? It adds another perspective to the story's fraught language of snow honkies and Little Debbies. Are the fantastic elements of this story distorted by someone who is committed to "reality" and "bringing the beat to the text" in order to fight racism? And then there's the fact that he's named "Mosaic." What was Mosaic trying to say with Pym.

2. Did anyone else find it amusing that in the end, Garth sorta turned into a reverse Little Debbie with the toothpaste whiteface? Ha ha.

3. I wonder how we are to regard the falling ash on Tsalal, since it appears to be the substance that turned everything on the island, including the birds "black." (Or is the ash some kind of nuclear fallout from the disasters we heard about earlier?) On the other hand, the last line suggest that Tsalal is just another way of talking about Earth where brown people "are the majority." Everywhere is Tslal, we all are Tsalal - perhaps this inference is Mosaic's doing? Ultimately all these options are possible. I like the open-ended quality of that. (Though I still hate that Dirk Peters - like all Dirk Peterses - remain elusive.)

Qiana- you hit on exactly what I was holding my tongue on with jo's earlier questions about the inconsistencies of Poe's narrative. In the same way we question, where does this come from? Isn't Pym dead, how can a dead man tell his tales, etc.?? What are we to think of the foreword?

Pym so clearly mirrors Poe's story, that just as Poe shows us Peters and Pym going through the "hell" of Tsalal and then abandoning them at the edge of Tekeli-li, I knew we were never going to see Jaynes experience his paradise land. We assume at the of Poe's narrative, that Pym dies down there, and with Johnson's unearthing of Peters, we fill in the blanks that Peters abandoned that white man, to the shame of his descendants. So, do we think that Garth (who seems to lean heavily to the flight side of the fight or flight reflex) will ultimately ditch his buddy down in Tsalal, and be the bearer of the tale back to our world? And what kind of reception can Jaynes expect to receive when he has to explain his blackness?

But, ultimately, remember, we had an apocalypse!! Everything was shut down up here. How is it that Jaynes (or Garth) makes it back, gets published, la-dee-da, in the wake of the end of the world? How are we reading this manuscript? And if everything was honky dory when they got back up, why didn't they finish the damn thing?

Quick question - do we know what happens to Garth at the end of the novel? I got the impression that Tsalal was a bit of a heaven/complete opposite reception of our two surviving characters vs their enslavement on Tekeli-li. But if Jaynes is indeed the person who makes it back to the States then what happened to Garth? And why would Jaynes say that he (Jaynes, an English professor) is a poor writer and hence needs Johnson's help? Hilarious re the Lil' Debbies vs Tastycakes ;) I thought this was a great book and enjoyed the humor, irrelevance, voice, storyline, etc. I am a bit curious now about Poe's Pym and think I may end up reading that soon for comparison...

Yes, I also feel like I need to read the original now. not to mention after reading over some of the other commentary here, I feel like maybe I need to reread this work as well. but is there a US to go back to?

i LOVE all those questions because they are precisely the questions that made me love the original so much, and mat johnson's reprise too (by the way, the Narrative's full text is here. it's not long and now that you have read this you might get a greater kick out of it than if you hadn't -- which is saying something).

mat johnson "solves" the mystery of the original by having dirk peters go back and write the story (of course he doesn't solve anything because poe barely looks at his story and has the Narrative half written when peters meets him). this book needs another "sequel" in which some other wacko fictional narrator gives another entirely implausible and leaky explanation for all the questions this book leaves unsolved!

to william: i get the clarence thomas reference, but why does chris jayne see a movie in which the white character saves the day? he seems entirely in love with blackness and profoundly critical of the concept of whiteness.

to qiana: it seems like chris jaynes takes delight in just about everyone's misfortune. he's not a nice man. he's very funny, though. anyone notice how NOT heartbroken he is when the love of his life gets unceremoniously blown up? and, while we are at it, what do we make of the fact that it is the gay couple who sacrifices themselves for the sake of saving jaynes' and garth's asses?

as for your other points:

1. i think mosaic doesn't write the whole story. he simply offers some "brief assistance." bessie is entirely right: chris jaynes is not arthur gordon pym. he should be able to write his own story. maybe we can consider the novel a compromise between jaynes' vision of blackness and mosaic johnson's? but: do we know what their respective visions of blackness are? or of whiteness, for that matter?

2. do little debbies exist in the real world? i want to get me a box. more seriously, though, can some american explain to me why you are all so tickled/irritated/taken by the little debbies?

3. i wish you explained more in detail why you miss dirk peters, or the story this book could have been but isn't. i took chris jaynes to be a dirk peters. but i know you have something specific in mind and i'd love to hear what it is.

to rashida: you say, "So, do we think that Garth (who seems to lean heavily to the flight side of the fight or flight reflex) will ultimately ditch his buddy down in Tsalal, and be the bearer of the tale back to our world?

hahaha @ garth and his flight reflexes! anyway, that would be the mirror conclusion, wouldn't it? and would explain your next questions too! "And what kind of reception can Jaynes expect to receive when he has to explain his blackness?"

finally, to your question: "And if everything was honky dory when they got back up, why didn't they finish the damn thing?, the answer is: because this book mirrors poe's Narrative and this is how the narrative, super-frustratingly, ends!

you know, all through the Narrative one keeps asking oneself, why is poe forgetting this? why is he going back on that? why is he contradicting himself? and it would be easy to say that he is a sloppy writer. but jaynes here is very keen on telling us that poe is, in fact, a master storyteller, very in control of his craft. he tries to drives his readers crazy intentionally. and so does johnson!

now a question of my own: karvel has all these guns, and our guys eventually get properly armed. yet, not one single bullet makes contact with the "white monkeys." why is that??? i was so frustrated. i think it is me who's watched one movie too many and has been turned into a being full of blood lust! i'm astonished at my sanguinary nature. yet, i wanted those guns to poke holes.

Haven't read the book, but your discussion suggests it is very American, i.e. US-ican, rather than dealing with universal themes. Would you agree, or is this perhaps my perspective as a foreigner? And, of course, my perspective on the discussion rather than the book! :-)

But, given that the original narrative is written by Poe, based on Peters, from Pym's perspective- isn't it likely that this is written by Johnson, based on Garth, from Jaynes perspective? So, yeah Garth would need Johnson's help in writing the novel. So, I think that our man Jaynes is stuck on Tsalal. Happily or not, we shall never know.

Hazel- I do think that Johnson is speaking specifically of American racism, but in any ways that colonialism has replicated this idea of whiteness versus blackness, then these ideas apply.

@George - I'm downloading the original Poe work now :) Good question re whether there was a US to go back to - it seems there was since the book starts with mention of a return to Va. But then one wonders what was the deal with the Apocalypse? Did it really happen? Was it just one of Johnson's random plot holes akin to what Poe did in his narrative? Johnson via Jayne brings up the idea of the disconnections in Poe's work then seems to wink as he does the same thing.

@Jo, will have to think about some of the questions/points you brought up but one easy one would be that Little Debbies are a little snack cake sold in NY and surrounding areas while Philly's version tends to be Tastycake (although I remember eating both during my youth in NJ - lol!). So the idea that Garth who grew up outside Philly is so into Little Debbies struck some of us as funny...athough perhaps Little Debbies have made their way to Philly. Oh I just wondered if the Tsalal folk think that Jaynes is indeed white, as Pym did and hence keep him there enslaved while Garth is able to return to the US. Funny about the guns, i hadn't noticed that but you are right - Jaynes describes continuously missing his target when he shoots and although one would expect that at some point a bullet would hit one of the huge "snow monkeys", I don't recall mention of that happening right now. The deaths we were aware of are the child in the sucralose stream, sausage nose with the gardening tool to the back after being weakened by the poison, Hunka (sp?) having her throat split by her own kind, poor Augustus and the poisoned pudding and i think one more that is currently escaping my mind as my 3 yr old calls ;) More later...

wow, bessie, you sure kept track of those deaths! but yeah, not a single one by firearm. hmm.

@rashida: the original narrative was not written by poe based on peters, though it is from pym's perspective. poe uses the device of the found manuscript, authored by pym. peters is a secondary character in the original narrative and his authorship of a narrative of his own is an invention of johnson's. and, as i kept getting stuck on, even in johnson's book poe doesn't even take a look at peters' manuscript. TOTALLY hard to keep it all straight!

hazel, it's definitely a book about the atlantic slave trade, and about whiteness, and pretty damn amazing, imho.

ETA: little debbies exist only in NY (or wherever)? i thought we lived in the undifferentiated commercial century, where the same packaged food is available everywhere and all supermarkets' aisles look exactly the same!

@Bessie..I grew up in NJ not too far from Philly and in my youth Tastycakes were king. Second were Drakes Cakes. At least in the corner Mom and Pop stores. I never heard of Little Debbies until I came to DC for college. And I still believe that Tastycake is a far superior product.

@Jo...I was agreeing with Jaynes that Whites like their bread, rice, and suburbs white but he didn't have to go all the way to Antarctica to find Pym to figure that out as he states in the paragraph you posted. Just go to an action movie and see if any Black character other than Will Smith makes it to the end.

@william...i remember drakes too! i think the 25 cent bag of cookies that i used to be thrilled to buy in my middle school cafeteria were drakes ;) as jo points out supermarket aisles are pretty identical now but we're talkin @ corner stores in the 80s ;) i think tho that despite local trends, johnson chooses to go with little debbies (and what a hilarious image is garth stuffin crateloads of those cheap snacks; similar to his mainstream/QVC-type taste in art?) so he can conjure the scene where he hallucinates lil deb herself in all of her white bread innocent glory - speaking of which, i think i remember that brand mostly for its ads plastered on the back of trucks featuring deb smilingly chowing on a piece of buttered white bread - lol!

i'm reading poe's narrative now and was struck immediately by the similarity in the intro. so now i wonder how much stock we can place in the novel pym's intro in terms of believing that it was written by jaynes or accurate in describing his return to va vs just serving as a mirror of poe's intro. and why is pym's body his only evidence? what happened to all the video footage? and out of curiosity why do we seem to be leaning toward garth being the lone survivor vs jaynes? i definitely enjoyed the way johnson weaved such big issues - slavery, ancestry, race, identity, loyalty, love, etc into a humorous, engaging yet puzzling (in the spirit of poe's disjointed novel) story. i will chime in on some of the larger issues brought up in this discussion soon...

Oops! I woke up with the thought "wait a sec, the lil bread-eating girl was on the Sunbeam ads not Lil Debbie!" Random thought to wake up to I know, but figured I'd better correct myself ;) And I agree William, Tastycakes trump Drakes :)

@jo- In the reality of this novel, Poe's work is based on Peters. He doesn't keep the manuscript, but he does take it and read it. That's what I'm basing my analogy o, not the "real world" writings. This gets tricky.

But that's just me playing around a bit. I'm more inclined to agree with Bessie and think that Johnson is just mirroring the huge logical gap in Poe's work. Poe has a "dead men tell no tales" paradox. ie- Pym's abrupt end suggests his death, so where does the story come from? Johnson has a "dead men hear no tales" paradox. ie- apocalypse!

Having gotten this book very late, I have just finished it and I am enjoying reading all of the comments. I'm still fairly dizzy from the wild ride of this book, but I did want to agree with Bessie - there's no way that Tastycakes could possibly carry the same image of artificial, cheap, empty sweetness that is conveyed by the oh-so-white image of Little Debbie. All intoxication; zero substance. The scene in which Chris hallucinates about the curly haired, rosy cheeked Little Debbie was hilarious. (jo - do NOT start eating Little Debbies! You will be as addicted as Garth and the Tekelians!)

And, of course, the Kincade/Karval art is equally white, bland, and artificial. I loved that the completely artificial world created by Karval in the dome had to be maintained by constant invisible work done by his wife and, eventually, by Black folks. It certainly made me think of the beautiful, false Gone-With-The-Wind southern lifestyle which also had to blow up.

Because I watched a lot of Star Trek, I was amused by the Jeffree's Tube reference, but it made me wonder how many other quick cultural references I was missing as I read this book. Probably lots. As many of you mentioned earlier, I kept laughing out loud (and trying to explain why to my baffled husband).

i just read this piece by Lydia Yuknavitch and it made me think of this thread, not because it talks about little debbies, but because it talks about whiteness. it doesn't talk about whiteness in terms of race, but i think our buddy chris jaynes, if not our buddy mat johnson, would say there is no other way.

and yet, it is a feminist piece, written, too, from the point of view of a marginalized author. so i decided i'd share it with you, see what you think.

and rashida: i know what you mean, yet i know what i mean, and i know i'm right, and i'll prove it to you when i get down to it, hopefully before the end of the month!

ah, but does race actually exist, or is it more of an attitude or strategy per Chris Jaynes?

argh! i just wrote a long comment, hit post and got "error saving your comment". lesson learned - copy before hitting post. will try to recreate my comment later...

sorry, bessie. i try to copy to the clipboard regularly with long comments. bummer.

george: i think chris (and i) would say: both. attitudes and strategies really exist, especially if the whole world adopts them! what do you say?

maybe it's more a matter of deciding first, what is race. yes, attitudes and strategies exist to be sure, but then what is Chris? Chris is black in some eyes until it's more important to have another white guy around, then he isn't. put him back in the old context, or some newer context, he is black again, in white eyes anyway.

What do we think about the fact that the Tekelians don't seem to differentiate on race for their slaves? Pym thinks that Jaynes is white, until he insists over and over that he's not. But the snow monkeys don't have any problem enslaving Jaynes. Though Pym isn't a slave, he is a lowly servant type, and it seems to me that if there were some debt that he incurred, they wouldn't have any problem putting Pym into bondage, as well.

I realized when I recently read Teju Cole’s Open City, that I can sometimes turn a blind eye to my narrator’s shortcomings. I gamely trekked along with my fellow half-Nigerian Julius, as he explored Manhattan and Brussels, ignoring aspects of his personality and interactions with others…until a big reveal that forced me to finally see his character more clearly. The same was true when I read Pym…I buddied up with Jaynes and found myself mentally high-fiving this young untenured English professor as he critiqued the novel-writing ability of Poe, the “Great American Storyteller”. I decided to read Poe’s Narrative of A. Gordon Pym and armed with Jaynes’s biting criticism, I was prepared to laugh derisively at Poe’s only novel…and then along came the dog scene. In Jaynes’s depiction of Pym’s dog’s role in the novel, he makes it seem as though the dog just appears and no explanation is ever given for his presence. But, Poe does take the time to offer a somewhat plausible explanation. So then of course I start to think, “what else has Jaynes exaggerated or omitted?” ;) There were definitely numerous inconsistencies (one silly one that comes to mind was when Poe makes a point of describing a turtle as being a female….then a few paragraphs later calls it a male) but Poe’s novel wasn’t the complete absolute and total disaster that I had expected.

One big inconsistency in terms of Poe’s plot and subsequent “ending” is the various mentions that Pym makes of things that he does after his journey is over (along the lines of “I wasn’t sure about this particular nautical factoid but I looked it up when I got back…”) which made it seem as though Pym does indeed survive. But then Poe also has Pym describe how something is revealed in a conversation that he has with Augustus many years later, which suggests that Augustus is alive and well at the end of the journey….but then Augustus is killed a few pages later! So yes, Poe’s novel attempt definitely leaves a lot to be desired but since Johnson’s book in many ways reflects Poe’s, I was left to wonder how credible of a narrator Jaynes actually is since Poe’s narrator Pym has quite a few narrative lapses.

One thing Jaynes is definitely on point about is Poe’s racist depiction of the “savages” as well as his alignment of blackness with violence, ignorance, physical deformity, subhuman mentality…it’s all there and then some! Jaynes raises so many poignant observations about race and blackness vs whiteness in terms of humans and even our reactions to other animals. For instance, how doves are embraced as symbols of peace and purity while pigeons are essentially trash-eating winged rodents; white mice are accepted as pets while their darker cousins are introduced to mouse traps. One of my undergrad English professors was quite fascinated by the concept of Passing, which he characterized as an “accident of birth”…that allowed one access to worlds that would otherwise be restricted but with the price of admission being denouncement of ones self, family and past. Jaynes refuses to pass when Pym mistakes him for the “owner” of the Creole Crew, firmly establishing his identity until he finally gets Pym to accept it. Earlier, when Jaynes attends the “DNA meeting”, his attitude comes across as bemused derision through his description of the attire and the collective expectation of those gathered (only to have the most disinterested, seemingly out of place attendant be the sole possessor, of those analyzed, of a significant amount of Native American DNA). Garth accuses Jaynes of being a staunch “one drop rule” upholder, an attitude that may have arisen from Jaynes’s having to assert his racial identity to those who are uncertain as to which “box” he belongs, based on his appearance.

Jaynes smugly describes how some African-Americans view Africa as “home” and build up expectations about being embraced, as longlost brothers and sisters, upon their return. But Jaynes does the same thing with Tsalal; he has built it up as a utopia of unmolested blackness, a true paradise where one would assume Jaynes expects to be welcomed. In reading Poe’s novel, the Tsalalians are absolutely terrified of anything white – from the polar bear to the white shirts that Pym and Peters try to use to make a sail. So I wonder what their reaction would be to Jaynes…an outsider who is “fair enough to pass” in Pym’s eyes.

Jaynes was right about the jolting effect in Poe’s novel when Pym, who has made a point of describing Peters as a “half-breed” and a “hybrid” says that he and Peters are the only white men left on Tsalal after the rest of the crew is destroyed. Amazing how quickly Peters’s racial status changes! Someone earlier questioned the appearance of the black volcanic ash as Jaynes, Garth and Pym approach Tsalal – this seems to be a reflection of the white substance (snow?) that falls on Pym and Peters as they approach the chasm that ends Poe’s novel (and perhaps precedes their arrival in Tekeli-li?).

@Rashida - I think the "small humans" are all the same in the eyes of the snow monkeys. Pym does seem to be servant of sorts, similar to the role that Nathaniel tries to establish for himself. But when the battle ensues, Nathaniel is killed and Pym would probably be as well (just as they kill Booker's lover who is one of them but dared to fraternize with the humans). In Poe's book when the Tsalal "natives" turn on the crew, they try to destroy all of them including the "half-breed" Peters (after his initial escape from the group killing, a Tsalalian tries again to kill him in a one-on-one attack). So I think in the same way that Poe's Tsalalians didn't differentiate amongst the outsiders, Johnson's snow monkey are equally unconcerned with race - an outsider is an outsider...

@Wilhelmina, I totally agree - love the fact that Karval's dome was kept in such a state of unearthly perfection by his busy busy wife. She was an interesting character - strong, cool-headed, realistic and survivalist woman marooned in a dome with a dreamer (who is afforded a glimmer of escape through her smokes). I did find it interesting that Jaynes always stopped to evaluate whether interactions (esp in the case of the Karvels with him and his Creole Crew) were race-based or not - he seemed to conclude that at that point it was more about a shared humanity/desire to survive than race and race perceptions.

@Jo, I couldn't help but notice the similarity between Yuknavitch's husband's telling her to not write so much about herself and Jaynes's dean wanting Jaynes to not go outside the canon of African-American authors in his courses.

hey bessie: wow. thanks for the thoughtful comments. i am going to mull them over a bit and then write more later. i was thinking these days that i would read toni morrison on whiteness (apparently many of jaynes'/johnson's thoughts on whiteness are covered by morrison in Playing in the Dark, which i haven't read). but then the month is over and i didn't get around to this small small book. maybe we can continue in june? anyway, more about your thoughts later. thank you!

Hi Jo, thanks for bringing up Morrison's Playing in the Dark, I'm definitely interested in reading it too - it will be interesting to read her perspective and also to see the source of some of Jaynes/Johnson's seeds of thought. I know we are moving on to our June book but I'd love to share our thoughts on Morrison's book when we both get a chance to read it ;) Thanks again!

Yes, I wasn't even aware of it. I'll have to give it a shot later when I return this summer.

I've had a tough time commenting on Pym, not sure why. Everytime I feel like I want to say something I sit down and it just doesn't come out, so I've had a few things I haven't sent as a result. I've very much enjoyed all the other comments though, been reading them over with considerable interest.

Please share your thoughts right here when you read Morrison's book, Bessie and Jo. I think that Qiana has already read it and we would love to hear about it from all of you at any time. Great comments from you both! Of course, everyone is welcome to continue posting about this amazing book at any time. The end of the month doesn't mean the end of the discussion.

jo, thank you so much for another great discussion!

Bessie- here's where my brain ties up in knots over the "outsider is an outsider" idea. Is Johnson setting up the Tekelelians as some sort of paragon of whiteness? He manages to work almost every traditional slavery "cliche" into the story, o we've discussed. Does slavery as an institution become more or less evil if it is not founded on a bedrock of race? Given how indeterminate the matter of race is in the first place, does enslaving people based on phenotype alone rank higher or lower on the moral disgust scale than someone who would enslave ANY person given the right circumstances?

I'll add the Morrison to my "to read" list, as well.

Rashida wrote: "@jo- In the reality of this novel, Poe's work is based on Peters. He doesn't keep the manuscript, but he does take it and read it. That's what I'm basing my analogy o, not the "real world" writin..."

hey rashida, i went and checked and you are right. i was so sure i was right!!! johnson's poe sees the manuscript (all three pages of it). as for peters, the novel states clearly that he makes it back. whatever that means.

@bessie: "So yes, Poe’s novel attempt definitely leaves a lot to be desired but since Johnson’s book in many ways reflects Poe’s, I was left to wonder how credible of a narrator Jaynes actually is since Poe’s narrator Pym has quite a few narrative lapses."

the narrative lapses are fabulous in both books, aren't they? it really helps that both poe and johnson are master story-tellers, who know how to make their stories fun with of without (intentional?) lapses.

@rashida: "Given how indeterminate the matter of race is in the first place, does enslaving people based on phenotype alone rank higher or lower on the moral disgust scale than someone who would enslave ANY person given the right circumstances?"

i think it ranks just the same on the moral scale. on the socio-political scale it's another matter altogether, as i think johnson amply shows in this book.

i should like to say that it seems to me johnson just had a blast writing this book. the points he makes are made elsewhere by others, but this is plain riotous fun. i would also like to say that the other day i had my first experience with little debbies. someone bought them for me and said the she was almost sure they were the original ones. they are oatmeal on the outside and cream on the inside. I FRIGGING LOVE THEM!!!!!!! i ate nine in rapid succession and i got myself so nauseated and sick that i had to stay away from any other food all day. MINA YOU WERE SO RIGHT. why did no one ever told me about these delicious treats? now of course i have to try tastycakes and drakes. yum! you americans sure know how to make addictive food. i think you're world champions at this.

I shall look for you and Garth in the next edition of that other thing Americans are so very good at...un/reality shows..Biggest Loser here we come!

jo wrote: "i would also like to say that the other day i had my first experience with little debbies. someone bought them for me and said the she was almost sure they were the original ones. they are oatmeal on the outside and cream on the inside. I FRIGGING LOVE THEM!!!!!!! i ate nine in rapid succession and i got myself so nauseated and sick that i had to stay away from any other food all day..."

From now on, our group can only choose books with NO addictive junk food in them. Sounds like you got the originals, jo, and, no, the oatmeal does not make Little Debbies a suitable breakfast food!

hahahaha.

The oatmeal makes them a great source of fiber though.
Just trying to help you out a little, jo.

i thought so too, jean. i had a couple more today. i am feeling a new sense of well-being; must be all those fibers. i will keep you all posted on my excursions into tastycakes. just kidding.