. . .” And an 1852 reader, a nineteen-year-old bookstore clerk in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Frank R. Diffenderfer, wrote:

This is without a doubt one of the most remarkable books I ever read. I really do not know which to admire most[,] the story or its author. . . . Unfortunately for the truth of the story[,] a few years later the United States Exploring Expedition discovered a continent stretching 1500 miles in length from east to west being all the portion which Mr. Pym pretends he sailed over. This is of little account however. Centuries may elapse ere another such story is written. Future generations will appreciate the genius of its gifted but erratic author. (Franklin & Marshall copy)

The clerk (later a distinguished historian) overstated the problem, but he was correct in that there is a geographical difficulty in the final portion of Pym: the “Antarctic Ocean” that Pym sails over in this portion—from 84° S, 43° W, over a “vast distance to the southward”—is Antarctica itself. But this inconsistency was evidently not troubling to young Diffenderfer. Poe’s occasionally unbelievable verisimilitude was apparently considered acceptable, and his many sensations considered sensational. It is relevant to note what Poe wrote in this regard in his Sheppard Lee review:

The attention of the author, who does not depend upon explaining away his incredibilities, is directed to giving them the character and luminousness of truth, and thus are brought about, unwittingly, some of the most vivid creations of human intellect. The reader, too, readily perceives and falls in with the writer’s humor, and suffers himself to be borne on thereby.

Appealing to the popular imagination with sensation and purportedly verisimilar detail, Poe did successfully reach some contemporary readers.

But Poe also still sought the “very few,” members of the small, highly literary audience. Very probably, he sought readers interested in the solving of codes—another kind of adventure. Jean-François Champollion’s solving the mystery of the Egyptian hieroglyphs with his analysis of the Rosetta stone in 1822 had made the issue of decoding a familiar and exciting one to a number of readers of Poe’s time. Poe would later enjoy some success with his code-breaking articles in Alexander’s Weekly Messenger in 1839 and 1840 and would publish “A Few Words on Secret Writing” in Graham’s Magazine in 1841. And he acknowledged in his “Exordium” in 1842 that “The analysis of a book is a matter of time and of mental exertion. For many classes of composition there is required a deliberate perusal, with notes, and subsequent generalization.”

Deliberate perusal reveals a subtext in Pym concerning Poe’s family. We may trace it briefly here. Even as Arthur Gordon Pym suggests Edgar Allan Poe, Pym’s friend Augustus suggests Poe’s brother, Henry. Even as Augustus was two years older than Pym, taller, more widely traveled, and inclined to tell stories and to drink, so, too, was Henry two years older than Poe, taller, more widely traveled, and inclined to tell stories and drink. The early episode in which Augustus was rescued from the ocean and the later one in which Pym was rescued from the hold of a ship may suggest their births. And certainly Augustus’s death on August 1 suggests Henry’s death on August 1, 1831. Critically, attention to the mysterious close of Pym reveals more about Poe and his family.

A language correspondence can clarify the subtext. By virtue of the identical phrase “human figure,” the “shrouded human figure” at novel’s end (chapter 24) may be linked with the “human figure” in the chasms (chapter 23) and, more importantly, with the “human figure” to which Poe’s Pym compares a penguin: “.