American - Novelist | -
What's most explosive about historical fiction is to use the fictional elements to pressure the history to new insights.
Matthew Pearl
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As a writer of historical fiction, I believe you don't want to fictionalize gratuitously; you want the fictional aspects to prod and pressure the history into new and exciting reactions.
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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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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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The intense media coverage of today's campus shootings presents a double edged sword. On the one hand, it gives us a chance to think about and reflect on the causes; on the other hand, in a very small minority of unstable minds, the repeated telling of the stories can be interpreted as glamorous.
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I had a dog named Oliver with severe separation anxiety. He couldn't be alone... so I had to bring him wherever I went.
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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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There's a remarkable power about reading together, reading collectively, that's brought out by reading groups.
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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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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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I don't like my birthday. I don't like things that are directed towards me. It took me a long time to get over people asking me to write my name in the book.
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