Audiobook · read by volunteers
Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)
Read by Oscar Goff, Kevin McAsh, Joseph Loverti, J. M. Smallheer, Kirsten Ferreri, Michael Sirois, Julian Jamison, Silver, audiotoshokan, LetzterDetektiv · 27 chapters · 6 h 22
About the book
Young Arthur Gordon Pym longs for the sea. Hidden in the hold of a whaling ship, he soon finds that the voyage he has joined is far more dangerous than he imagined. Mutiny breaks out, the ship is wrecked, the survivors face hunger and thirst, and the further south they drift, the stranger the world becomes.
Edgar Allan Poe’s only complete novel, published in 1838, is a tale of adventure, terror and bewilderment, which starts as a seafaring yarn and ends somewhere between the real and the fantastic. It is told in the first person by Pym himself, in a manner that deliberately resembles a true account. In twenty-seven short chapters and a little over six hours, this recording takes you to the edge of the map, in the company of one of the great storytellers of the strange.
Introduction
Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) is remembered as one of the founders of the modern short story and of detective fiction, as well as for his tales of horror and his poem The Raven. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, published in 1838, is his only complete novel. It was written when sea voyages and polar exploration were of great public interest, and Poe drew on contemporary travel books to give his narrative a feeling of documentary truth.
The book relates the adventures of the young Pym, who stows away aboard a whaling ship called the Grampus. Various adventures and misadventures befall him, including shipwreck and mutiny, and the story moves steadily towards the unknown regions of the far south. Poe plays with the idea of reliability: the preface claims that Pym’s story has been published as a true account, and the narrative ends abruptly, with a note that leaves more questions than answers. Critics have found many layers in the book, and later writers, among them Herman Melville and Jules Verne, were influenced by it or responded to it.
The first reception was mixed, and Poe himself was not entirely happy with the book. Still, it has gained an important place in the history of adventure writing and in the literature of the uncanny.
The recording has 27 sections and runs for about six and a half hours. It is read by volunteers for LibriVox. Why listen today? Because the book is an adventure that keeps pulling you on, and because it offers a view of what the author could do on a larger canvas. Be ready for strange episodes and an ending that refuses easy answers.
Public domain
Edgar Allan Poe died in 1849: the work is in the public domain in Switzerland, more than 70 years after the author’s death.
The LibriVox volunteers dedicated this recording to the public domain.
Sources : LibriVox page · Files at the Internet Archive · Original text