Matthew Pearl
Matthew Pearl
Matthew Pearl is an American novelist and educator. His novels include The Dante Club, The Poe Shadow, The Last Dickens, and The Technologists. Editions have been published in more than 40 countries...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth2 October 1975
CountryUnited States of America
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One important idea I hope is reflected in 'The Poe Shadow' is that fiction can add as much to history as nonfiction does.
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Poe was plagued and haunted most of all by something pretty banal: poverty. Probably the most eccentric decision in life was to become a writer in an age when making a living at it was nearly impossible.
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One thing I incorporated in my novel 'The Poe Shadow' was the little-known fact that documents show Poe inherited a slave and decided to free him.
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My high school English teacher in junior year, Dr. Robert Parsons, assigned us some Poe stories, including 'The Black Cat' and 'The Purloined Letter.' Being an animal person, I had trouble with 'The Black Cat!' I got hooked instead by 'The Purloined Letter,' a Poe story with detective C. Auguste Dupin.
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I still have my high school copy of the collected Poe - missing its covers and pretty worse for the wear.
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'The Dante Club' was one of America's most important book clubs, as their Wednesday night meetings ultimately led to our country's first exposure to Dante's poetry on a wide scale.
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Edgar Allan Poe, an earlier UVA student, once complained in a letter that his stepfather spoke to him as if Poe were one of the black slaves; some of the students at UVA surely felt the same about being told what to do by faculty.
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The novel has always been a contradictory form. Here is a long form narrative mainly read originally by consumers who were only newly literate or limited in their literacy. The novel ranked below poetry, essay and history in prestige for a long time.
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When Charles Dickens arrived in Boston Harbor, where he started, they had to keep it secret because there was such a mob of people expecting him, and they actually chased down his carriage at the hotel, the Parker House Hotel.
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Films have become shorter in length, jumpier in style, and simpler in story so that they can be more easily transferred to once under-exploited international markets.
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Up until the final decade of the nineteenth century, the United States and the United Kingdom did not recognize copyright in each other's creative works.
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Porter Square Books was the only place I could find that was dog-friendly, work-friendly, and had food. I was there all the time.
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I was fortunate that Yale has a very open and creative law school. I took many courses outside the law school, and every semester, the students had a literature reading group. I was asked to lead one on 'Dante and the Concept of Justice,' and it was around that time that I began writing the novel.
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I think respectful conflict is intrinsic to the spirit of literature. It reminds us that literary history is living and evolving and thrives on us being active participants.