"The Dante Club" by Matthew Pearl

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Read: 5/29/09

4/5 stars

I'm a big fan of Dante. Big fan. When I read The Inferno way back in college, I found the concept and imagery astounding, and I acquired a new understanding of the term "poetic justice." So, naturally, I'd been curious about Pearl's reinterpretation of Dante as a serial killer's inspiration.

What a surprise this book turned out to be. What I imagined to be a straightforward mystery turned out to be part doctoral dissertation and part whodunit.

The book's main detectives are none other than acclaimed poets Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, who formed part of the original Dante Club, and publisher and poet James Fields. The events are set during the period when Longfellow was in the process of translating Dante to English, with the help of other members of the Dante Club. However, these men of letters have to turn themselves into men of action when they realize that the series of gruesome murders occurring in Boston are patterned after the punishments Dante envisioned in Inferno.

Interesting concept, I have to say, though I did have to struggle through the first hundred pages. Although Pearl opens his story interestingly enough--with a murder taken after the punishment of the Neutrals--the prose slowly descends into an exposition of the lives and backgrounds of the four main characters. I got the feeling that, given Matthew Pearl's literature background and the fact that he did do his dissertation on Dante, which would definitely have included extensive research into the lives of the Harvard scholars who translated him to English the first time, he couldn't help but include a lot of the things he knew about the poets. The historical tidbits were interesting, but essentially, a lot of it was superfluous. It did nothing to advance the action of the story, nor add depth to the characters' motivations. Thankfully, the intellectual self-indulgence kind of died down 150 or so pages into the book, and the author finally concentrated on getting his story told.

I especially loved the idea that these men--Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, and Fields--were in no way young and virile creatures. They were old and portly intellectuals and family men, more attuned to literary debates in front of a drawing room fire than careening after a powerful killer. In truth, there was really no careening done. Consider, though, how these men had to conduct a secret investigation within their town, despite the fact that they were all well-known. Add juicy academic controversy, and the reader finds himself or herself finally drawn into the characters and the story. Pearl's success therefore, from my perspective, is in making me walk in the shoes of these poets and recognize them as human. Thankfully, he broke away from his fascination with his own erudition in time to accomplish this.

Interestingly, while I was reading the book, I came across this funny ranking of poets--according to beard weight. Two of The Dante Club's main characters make it into the top ranks. It's about time someone came up with a more objective way of ranking the poets.:)

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