Robert McCrum's 100 Best English and American Novels: #10

This week is number 10, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe (1838).  Last week, number 9, was Thomas Love Peacock's Nightmare Abbey (1818). McCrum is progressing chronologically in his list, starting from the earliest to the latest.  His first title then was Pilgrim's Progress (1678).

This is the first American novel on his list and it is Poe's only novel. That seems to be the only reason McCrum picked this one for the honor of being the first Yank title. One thinks this because the below-pulled quote from McCrum's column cites almost entirely poets, who admire Poe's poetry -- and lordessa help us, supposedly Poe's dipsomaniacal, tubercular, impoverished peregrinating (short) life.

James Fenimore Cooper's The Last of the Mohicans was published in 1826. One can argue that Last of the Mohicans and its sibling work featuring Natty Bumpo the white forest runner - scout, sharpshooting friend of Indians, had at least as great influence on contemporary and subsequent writers both in the U.S. and Europe. This continued through the 19th century, into the 20th, and today, at least continues in Europe. Unlike Poe's short fiction and poetry, outside of other writers, literary historians and critics,

Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket is little known, and less read. I read it as part of my self-directed education program in the history of the novel, but I've had no urge to re-read it since.  I never even bother to think about it unless involved again with some aspect of literary history, such as defending the greatness of Moby Dick, whereas I refer in my thinking to Cooper constantly for so many reasons, from the history of the nation regionally, politically and culturally, to the history of the movies and television.

He begins his argument with this:

But it was Edgar Allan Poe, born 1809, who signals the beginning of what would become a great Anglo-American literary dialogue. Poe was original in ways that Irving and Fenimore Cooper never were. As well as being the first American writer to attempt living exclusively by his pen, he is also the archetype of the romantic literary artist. Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, William S Burroughs, and even Hunter S Thompson all owe something to Edgar Allan Poe. His nomadic, boho style and tortured, exigent career continue to exercise a powerful allure on any young American writers who see themselves as outsiders. In Britain, among later Victorian writers, Wilde, Stevenson, Swinburne and Yeats all responded to his unique imagination.

However, Cooper and Irving were making a living entirely by writing before Poe failed spectacularly to do, thus I'm not swayed by his arguments. Even so, I find them, like the weekly column thought provoking about the novel.  And I really enjoy having this opportunity to explore contrasting viewpoints about the history and influence of the novel in the U.S. and England.