The Dante Club, by Matthew Pearl

On the back of The Dante Club is a quote calling Matthew Pearl a “new shining star of literary fiction.” What a quote! How flattering! What an honor! What veteran of the literary fiction scene said such a thing? John Updike? Philip Roth? Toni Morrison?

Oh. Dan Brown. Dan Brown. The man who gave us the two-page chapter, the muddled plot, the adverb-heavy style. He is now our judge of literary fiction? Oy. Heaven help us.

I don’t know what this says about our culture and its approach to reading; I don’t know what it says about the future of publishing; I don’t know what it says about the state of literature in the English language today. I do know, though, that I’m sick and tired of these “literary” thrillers. For heaven’s sake, people, there’s no need to appeal to the intelligentsia in your murder mysteries; they’re not going to be reading them anyway, except to look down their long noses through their monocles and sniff, ever so disdainfully. Why aim a book at people who will hate it, no matter what? Can’t we just call a spade a spade and admit these books are trash? I don’t ask for gunfire and grisly murders in my Booker Prize winners; why should I get Dante and divine mysteries in my pulp fiction? Just write a good old-fashioned shoot-‘em-up and I’ll be happy. That’s right, Mr. Pearl, I’m looking at you: less Oliver Wendell Holmes and his intellectual crises, more maggots feasting on dead flesh.

It doesn’t help that Mr. Pearl is terrible at doing anything literary. His pacing is all wrong: we spend the first hundred pages without a single clue about the first gruesome killing, and we discover the identity of the murderer a good eighty pages from the end of the book. His editing is shoddy: the book should be about 180 pages shorter, since that’s the number of pages that left me utterly bored. His ending is extremely anti-climatic; the murderer might as well have died of old age, for all the excitement the real resolution stirred. His research was, strange to say, too good: why was one of the main characters a mulatto? Just to show off his knowledge of the period. Why was there a horse distemper? Ditto. Most apparent of all, his ear for dialogue needs a hearing aid, and pronto: I know his characters are real shining stars of literary fiction and all, but is that any reason for them to say things, in all seriousness, like “I do not grow at all weary”? I know I grow weary of it. Also, puh-leeze: “I hastened here with the speed of an arrow.” Nobody talks or has ever talked like that, even, I venture to say, Longfellow himself. People write things like “hasten” and “the speed of an arrow”; they say things like, “I came fucking fast, man.” Perhaps Pearl is trying to point out these are Important and Intellectual Men; all it does for me is prove that this is Bad Dialogue.

All I can think is that Matthew Pearl must know someone, someone who decided to take this kid under his wing and publish the heck out of him. Someone who controlled the enormous advertising campaign, someone who called Dan Brown and begged flattering quotes out of him. (Come to think of it, maybe that someone was Dan Brown.) Or maybe it’s just the old Harvard fallacy again: just because I care about it, just because I think it’s the greatest place in the world, everyone must. Surely everyone will find this bit of trumped-up Harvard history appealing!

Not bloody likely, Mr. Pearl. And please, I’m begging you, stick to your day job and quit trying to be “literary fiction.” Please. I’m quickly getting tired of you and your kind. Or, since you seem to understand this better: I grow weary of you, with the speed of an arrow.