I had been so fixated on reading The Dante Club by Matthew Pearl that I hadn’t considered what to read next.  Now that I’ve finished the book, I need something else.  I have a few non-fiction books that I had put off at the beginning of the summer, but I feel like reading something lighter.  I think I’ll stop in at the book store tomorrow and pick up something, maybe an Elmore Leonard novel.  Although I’ve read at least a dozen of his novels, I know there are still some that I missed.

I think I’ll also check out some of the authors from The Dante Club: Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, James Russell Lowell, Oliver Wendell Holmes, and, of course, Dante Alighieri.  That’s one of the interesting things about Pearl’s writings - he details his subject characters so well that I feel like I’ve met, dined, walked, and talked with each so much that I miss them when the book is finished.  Pearl’s web site, http://www.matthewpearl.com, contains some good biographical information and links to other sites, like the National Park Service’s site for Longfellow’s house.  Visiting the house will make for a nice day trip into Cambridge next time we’re looking for something to do.  It’ll also give us an excuse to revisit Fire and Ice, a fun restaurant in Harvard Square, and the nearby pub where I first knew that I’d marry Maggie.

After my last posting about The Poe Shadow, I received a very nice email from Matthew Pearl.  I was a little doubtful at first, because I thought it may have been an automated email from his publishing company, but it turned out to be from the author himself.  So many different thoughts ran through my head from the first second I saw the email’s “from” line and continued for days after.  I was amazed that he had found my little blog and overjoyed that he took the time to write me.  I was also a little self-conscious about whether my comments were good enough or what I would write when I finished The Dante Club.  I also wasn’t sure if I should continue to write him back for fear of being perceived as a stalker as my wife was quick to point out, so I let it go.  However, I think I’ll write him another email after posting this entry anyway to at least let him know that I’ve written about The Dante Club.

The novel takes place in Boston in 1865 when Henry Wadsworth Longfellow is the premier poet of his time.  In this time before cinema, television, and radio, authors of the written word are the popular celebrities and Boston was brimming with them.  Longfellow had formed a translation group of his friends and peers, simply called The Dante Club.  Each week, Longfellow, Lowell, Holmes, and George Washington Greene met to produce an American translation of Dante’s seminal novel, The Divine Comedy, originally named Commedia.  As the authors make their way through the first canticle, The Inferno, two gruesome murders shock the citizens of Boston.  When it is discovered that both murders were committed according to punishments described within The Inferno, the authors fear for the worst.  Their translation could be doomed before it is ever published, they themselves could be accused of the murders, and the murderer may continue his spree under the noses of the dumbfounded police.  Longfellow, Lowell, and Holmes (Greene is excepted due to his age and poor health) enlist the aid of their publisher, J. T. Fields, and set out to solve the mystery and catch the murderer.

An interesting character in the story is that of the fictional Nicholas Rey, the first black (actually mulatto) police officer in Boston.  Rey is an amalgam of real nineteenth century black police officers Pearl researched during his writing of the book.  What differentiaties Rey from the other characters in the book is that we are constantly reminded that he is an outsider.  He’s part black, so he’s not accepted by the white community, and part white, so not accepted by the black community either.  He’s a police officer, yet he doesn’t have the powers of his fellow officers.  He can’t arrest a white person, he can’t wear a uniform, and he can’t carry a gun.  Although the authors are more open-minded than many and certainly don’t discriminate against Rey for the color of his skin, they do recognize him as a police officer and fear that he will connect the murders to Dante and therefore, to them.  We learn that Rey was born a slave and emancipated as a boy and placed in the care of a Boston blacksmith and his family, but there are no other mentions of Rey’s family, his friends, or even where he lives.  From all appearances, Rey is alone in this world.  It’s a painful reminder of the struggles Africans have made to fit into American society.

I should warn that the accounts of the murders in this book are frightful and gruesome.  The depictions reminded me a bit of the movie Seven, aka SE7EN, starring Brad Pitt and Morgan Freeman.  I don’t think Pearl is glorifying the violence, only that he is accurately rendering what Dante had envisioned.  Dante described a punishment befitting the crime for each soul he encountered during his journey through hell and Pearl describes these for us in the deaths of the victims in his novel.  Interestingly, in the Reader’s Guide at the back of my book, Pearl is asked about these depictions is comparison with a Stephen King novel.  The author remarks that he’d like someone to give King a copy of the novel and see what he thinks.  I’d like to know if someone took him up on that offer or if that other New England writer had responded.  Maybe after my day trip to The Longfellow House, I’ll have to make a second trip to Bangor, Maine to seek out King and then catch rocker Howie Day doing a show at a local pub.  Ok, maybe my wife was right to be concerned about me being perceived as a stalker.

"The apprehension of approaching evil has hurried many into the utmost danger.”
James Russell Lowell

P.S. I once attended a wedding at the rose garden in Lynch Park in Beverly, MA.  I remember reading an engraving at the entrance to the garden and I feel certain that it contained lines from Longfellow’s translation starting with “All hope abandon, ye who enter in!” It stood out at the time because of how inappropriate it seemed for a site where weddings were held.  Does anybody know what the enscription at the park reads?