Wichita State English professor Rebeccah Bechtold thinks Edgar Allan Poe’s poetry and short fiction are overrated. She claims horror enthusiasts are better served by Poe’s one and only novel. She tells us why in today’s Why Should I Read This.
We all know that Edgar Allan Poe was a master of horror; his short stories and poems have terrified readers for almost two centuries. His only novel, “The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket,” is no different, yet also offers a fascinating study of the early American novel form. Published in 1838, “Pym” is structurally weird; it begins as a fairly conventional sea narrative until an ill-timed mutiny leads the plot astray. Poe ultimately adopts different narrative strategies to map his title character's journey into the unknown, a style Poe’s contemporaries described as “rambling and incorrect.” A careful eye, however, reveals “Pym” to be structurally precise. The novel, in fact, functions as one large riddle, purposefully designed by Poe to evoke the slipperiness of interpretation.
