But, buried alive deep in Poe's icy adventure tale is the ultimate scary subject in 19th-century American literature: slavery. Masquerading as authentic journal entries, the tale chronicles the voyages of a young seafarer, Pym, who suffers through mutiny, shipwreck and cannibalism. Poe published the novel in 1838, trying, as always, to make some money from his writing by cashing in on the public's thirst for novels and newfound curiosity about Antarctica. It's this strain of ghastly humor in Poe that Mat Johnson mines in his new novel, Pym, an inventive and socially sassy play on Poe's one and only novel: The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket. I'm not talking belly laughs, but more a creepy comic vision that savored the absurd in desperate situations - like an annoying corpse whose darn heart just won't stop thumping or - spoiler alert! - a whodunit where the killer turns out to be an orangutan. If all you think of when you think of Edgar Allan Poe are poems like "The Raven," or tales of terror like "The Fall of the House of Usher," you might not realize that Poe was a funny guy.
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