Pym_ A Novel - Mat Johnson [7]
“Right. You’re here to be the Diversity Committee.”
“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?” A Ph.D. can’t manage a lot of menace, but we are good at reading between the lines. I knew exactly what he meant, no footnotes needed. Still, I stepped in closer.
“You know what I think? I think that when you fight the same battles, with the same tactics, you don’t get any further. That unless you address the roots of the problem, it will continue to grow.”
This was fairly eloquent for me. Given that it was off the cuff. No peer review or rewrites. And I was proud that I had thought it there and not later via l’esprit de l’escalier. It was the arrogance brought on by this success that made me pause two steps into my exit, turn, and continue.
“And the white folks here know that. And they like it that way. You’re hired to be the angry black guy, get it? You’re not fighting Whiteness, you’re feeding its perversion. You’re here so you can assuage their guilt without making them actually change a damn thing. They want you to be the Diversity Committee. Because every village needs a fool.” Still, I felt I was sticking to my thesis closely, not diverting off into too much bullshit. If Mosaic Johnson had kept his mushy buttocks on the stool instead of getting in my face then, it would have made a decent closer.
“Oh I get it. I get it now, why you love Poe. You two share one big thing in common. Neither one of you is a damn bit relevant anymore.”
“This college can really use you,” I returned, preparing myself to hoof it. “Every good zoo needs a caged gorilla.”
It was an inflammatory statement. I lit that shit on fire too, just to watch him burn. Even I was offended, to tell the truth, and that’s why I chose that level of toxic phraseology to hit him. He hit me back, though. First in the gut and then, when I went down to the floor, in several other places.
Mosiac Johnson could definitely bring the beat. To me personally, he brought the beat down.†
“Poe. Doesn’t. Matter,” he said as he pummeled. I respected him for that, though. He guessed correctly his weak suburban mini-mall kung fu punches might not be enough to hurt me.
“Tekeli-li!” I laughed, as the crowd pulled Mosaic Johnson from my body.
“Tekeli-li!”
* Matthew Henson excluded.
† Not to be confused with the “downbeat.”
TEKELI-LI. Tekeli-li, Tekeli-li. I got that from Pym. I got that from Poe. The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe, specifically. Pym that is maddening, Pym that is brilliance, Pym whose failures entice instead of repel. Pym that flows and ignites and Pym that becomes so entrenched it stagnates for hundreds of words at a time. A book that at points makes no sense, gets wrong both history and science, and yet stumbles into an emotional truth greater than both.
The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym was Edgar Allan Poe’s only novel. It shows. A self-proclaimed “magazinist” who plied his trade mostly with Virginia’s Southern Literary Messenger, Poe attempted the long form only because that’s what the editors at Harper & Brothers were looking for. Poe was broke, his relationship with the Messenger soured, his intended entrée into New York literary society failed in drunken spectacle. Spiraling into the wreck he became known for, Edgar Allan Poe was barely writing anything new and couldn’t find buyers for a collection of his short stories. The novel was a novelty, a lucrative one, so he cashed in. As for the idea of a book in “which a single connected story occupies the whole volume,” Poe went along grudgingly, belligerent.
We start the story as