Bowdoin's long relationship with the famed 14th century Florentine poet Dante Alighieri continued on Friday, November 19, when Matthew Pearl, best-selling author of The Dante Club, visited campus for a Common Hour talk and lunch with the students of professor Arielle Saiber's class, "Dante's Divine Comedy."
Pearl's novel deals with a series of murders based on the Inferno in 19th century Boston. The Dante Club, led by Bowdoin alum and professor Longfellow, who founded the Dante Society of America, and including Oliver Wendell Holmes and James Russell Lowell, must solve the mystery before Dante's literary reputation is irreparably damaged.
Pearl's Common Hour talk centered on the experience of publishing and promoting his book, including the trial of trying to pick a cover to represent your book to the world; his father constantly asking waitresses in restaurants if they read; writing the author bio and taking the author photo for the jacket; and the space that develops between you and your published work.
"You lose control of your writing once it's published?anyone can read it," said Pearl. He pointed out that his novel itself was to some extent about losing control of your words, with murders being inspired by Dante's 600-year-old work.
One of the most amusing moments of the talk was a story about autographing his book, as his publisher encouraged him to do anytime he walked into a bookstore. The clerk asked to see an ID. Pearl asked if people impersonating authors to sign books was a usual problem and it turned out there had been a number of people claiming they were Virginia Woolf. However, the clerk hadn't realized Woolf was dead.
Pearl graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University and won the Dante Prize from the Dante Society of America in 1998 for his Dante scholarship. He wrote a draft of the novel while studying at Yale Law School.
He edited the novel to make it more accessible to the general public, so as to not "limit readership to the 200 members of the Dante Society of America, of which I am one." The decision paid off. The Dante Club was published in February last year, was a New York Times bestseller, and has been translated into 12 languages.
"Dante scholars' response to the novel was quite positive on the whole," said Saiber, who met Pearl several years ago at a Dante Society meeting. "There are always a few scholars who think no one but scholars should write about Dante, or use Dante in a modern, commercial venue, such as a thriller. But besides those people, the book was enjoyed."
A chapter from the novel was actually published in the journal Dante Studies prior to the book's release.
"Most Dante scholars do not know a great deal about Longfellow and his club, and the parts that Pearl includes in his novel around Longfellow and nineteenth-century academia were appreciated and great fun to read," said Saiber. "We were also happy that Pearl's book reintroduced Dante and his works to the mainstream readership."
Pearl's success has spread to his lead character as well, as his talk illuminated. The Modern Library has published Longfellow's translation of the Inferno, out of print for years, which the poet is working on in The Dante Club. Pearl wrote an introduction for the volume, as did his Harvard professor Lino Pertile who inspired him in his Dante studies. The translation has sold about 15,000 copies and is now in its fifth printing. Pearl is hoping to get Longfellow's Purgatorio and Paradiso published as well.
Pearl discussed his work after the talk at lunch with Saiber's current students, as well as several alums from the 2002 class. He also gave a writing workshop.
-Hillary Matlin contributed to this article.