It's not hard to figure out why Poe never finished THE JOURNAL OF JULIUS RODMAN, his abortive attempt to compete with the popular novels of Fenimore Cooper. Though Poe tries manfully to create the sense of a trailblazing expedition in the Western wilderness, it's all too evident that he's doing a novel in the form of a "research-dump," using extensive research to convey the illusion that the author knows what he's talking about. All the wordy discussions of forest-lore would be excusable if Poe had even one interesting character. But RODMAN stands in complete contrast to the fascinations of THE NARRATIVE OF ARTHUR GORDON PYM.
On the other hand, though I've thought most of Poe's early humor-pieces completely worthless, PETER PENDULUM is an ingenious satire on egotists who use their supposed genius as an excuse to do nothing. The story deserves to be better known, even allowing for the dated nature of its 19th-century concerns.
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