Dante and Holmes
Right now I'm reading the Dante Club by Mathew Pearl and I like it enough to have bought his first book about Edgar Allen Poe-a book that has my name all over it. Poe is considered the father of the modern mystery novel (Murders in the Rue Morgue) but is better known for his poems and short stories-The Raven and The Fall of the House of Usher. I was ten years old when I discovered Poe and I know that he changed my reading habits forever. I hadn't read any science-fiction or horror before Poe (and to me, his short stories are almost all horror-the Tell-Tale Heart or The Cask of Amontillado are pure horror and I didn't know there were stories like that out there until Poe. They gave me the creeps and scared me-and I liked it. I memorized the first two stanzas of The Raven for an English class in sixth grade-I'm sure my teacher thought it strange when everyone else picked poems about flowers and sports but it was Poe for me.
But right now it's all about Dante. Yes, I like Dante and read the Commedia in college and I like how this book ties in Dante, the Commedia, the levels of Hell. Anyone who has read Dante remembers the Circles of Hell and the various tortures he inflicts on politicians and enemies of his age, along with almost everybody else in history and the tortures fit in nicely with the murders committed in this book. My only quarrel is with the character of Oliver Wendell Holmes. This is a man who is esteemed in history. A doctor who was the first to recommend that doctors wash their hands before delivering babies (Semelweiss said the same thing but many years later). A man so smart that Arthur Conan Doyle gave his most famous character and indeed one of the smartest characters in fiction his name. So why is he (in the words of a colleague) such a jackass? he wants to faint at the sight of a dead body. He can't deal with the murders-granted that he and his friends clearly have some tie to murders being done in the style of Dante's tortures right when they are translating into English the Commedia but still. He is behaving like an idiot and this is a man who is considered one of the greatest doctors in American history. Was he really such a jackass in real life? I have no idea-I haven't read any biographies of him and Wikipedia (not that I trust it but it can be a decent starting point) says practically nothing on his personal life. Maybe it changes-I haven't finished the book and there's a little light in the tunnel. Holmes has just done a masterful job of reasoning as to why the bad guy is a soldier and is reasoning is brilliant-worthy of Sherlock Holmes himself so I feel a little better about the character. We'll see what happens and what he says about Poe in the precursor to this book. It would be hard to say anything about Poe that ISN'T true-he was a drunk, he married his 13 year-old cousin, he got kicked out of West Point-and he could write. He really was a jackass and yet, everyone loved him. You can't ask for a better character than that.
But right now it's all about Dante. Yes, I like Dante and read the Commedia in college and I like how this book ties in Dante, the Commedia, the levels of Hell. Anyone who has read Dante remembers the Circles of Hell and the various tortures he inflicts on politicians and enemies of his age, along with almost everybody else in history and the tortures fit in nicely with the murders committed in this book. My only quarrel is with the character of Oliver Wendell Holmes. This is a man who is esteemed in history. A doctor who was the first to recommend that doctors wash their hands before delivering babies (Semelweiss said the same thing but many years later). A man so smart that Arthur Conan Doyle gave his most famous character and indeed one of the smartest characters in fiction his name. So why is he (in the words of a colleague) such a jackass? he wants to faint at the sight of a dead body. He can't deal with the murders-granted that he and his friends clearly have some tie to murders being done in the style of Dante's tortures right when they are translating into English the Commedia but still. He is behaving like an idiot and this is a man who is considered one of the greatest doctors in American history. Was he really such a jackass in real life? I have no idea-I haven't read any biographies of him and Wikipedia (not that I trust it but it can be a decent starting point) says practically nothing on his personal life. Maybe it changes-I haven't finished the book and there's a little light in the tunnel. Holmes has just done a masterful job of reasoning as to why the bad guy is a soldier and is reasoning is brilliant-worthy of Sherlock Holmes himself so I feel a little better about the character. We'll see what happens and what he says about Poe in the precursor to this book. It would be hard to say anything about Poe that ISN'T true-he was a drunk, he married his 13 year-old cousin, he got kicked out of West Point-and he could write. He really was a jackass and yet, everyone loved him. You can't ask for a better character than that.
posted by SHbookworm at 3:59 PM
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