Matthew Pearl, mystery novelist and author of “The Dante Club” and “The Poe Shadow,” spoke Monday night as a part of the Gartner Series in McCord Auditorium in Dallas Hall. Pearl was invited to speak by the Director of the SMU Honors program, David Doyle. His two books were published in 2003 and 2006. “The Dante Club” was published while he was a student at Yale Law School.
Writing books was never the plan for Pearl, though while an undergraduate he studied English and American literature. However, in the midst of this focus he “began a journey following the literature of Dante and fell in love.”
He discovered the Dante Club, a club for fans of Dante, at school but decided to go to law school at Harvard and Yale. Though he admits that this path does not make sense, he also said that the atmosphere was “very conducive to making creative intercessions” between history and fiction.
Pearl began writing his novel in secret to avoid pressure and because he found writing fun, especially because he had enjoyed learning about Dante. When the manuscript was finally finished, he admitted to being nervous about showing it to anyone because of how emotionally attached writers become to their work.
Eventually, he discovered his current literary agent by researching books that were similar to his own. He found his agent from the acknowledgements section in “The Alienist,” by Caleb Carr.
The majority of the lecture was about the process of writing “The Dante Club” because it was his career debut and it symbolized his entrance into the writing world. Pearl confessed that many of his speeches are more conversational from experience with scripting his speeches.
“I had never done any public speaking; I am usually more introverted,” Pearl said. “Usually writers aren’t accustomed to speaking; writing is almost an opposite activity.”
However, he enjoys speaking to college students because they can be at a turning point in their lives, but it’s never too late to do something different.
Throughout the lecture, the author shared experiences making his manuscript into a physical novel as encouragement for future writers. Part of the process involved deciding how many bloodspots to include on the cover and what information to write in his biography. Also for aspiring writers, he advises them to read a variety of novels and discover what they are truly passionate about.
Pearl discussed at length having “to rearrange the way I presented myself.” He changed the way he wrote his signature and found that he had to put himself in situations he had never encountered before. He was told to walk into every bookstore he saw and ask to sign a copy of his book. As an introverted person, he found this to be extremely difficult especially when the first one he saw was a five-story Barnes and Noble.
In the end, he said that he had become attached to the book and characters while writing. However, in order to achieve a successful publication, Pearl was forced to put the finished product into the world and let it make his living.
“It was a strange feeling to see someone else reading my novel,” Pearl said, “because I felt alienated when I realized, its not just a part of my world anymore, but part of someone else’s world.”
