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48 of 55 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Misguided effort, April 6, 2003
This review is from: In the Hand of Dante: A Novel (Hardcover)
This book is a promise unfulfilled, and not worth the sacrifice it takes a reader to get through it. The modern day plot line, intentionally written to offend with coarse language and imagery, promises an examination of how the corrupt publishing world, dominated by mediocrity, will react to the discovery of the original manuscript of the Divine Comedy in a Vatican store room. But all we get instead are the expressions of awe by literary experts and shoot-outs among the crooks trying to sell the manuscript. The historical plot line, following Dante as he struggles with God and Nature to complete the work, also fails to deliver. It is written in an egotistically overblown style in which every word is latinized (never "begin", always "commence") and adjectives and nouns are routinely converted into pretentious verbs (e.g., "he cruelled his wife"), a trick Dante mastered and Tosches hasn't. The plot falls flat with a dull "twist" at the end about the true authorship of the work that has little to do with the rest of the story and a trite meeting between Dante and an Arabic sage who is supposed to know the meaning of life but who basically tells him nothing. Tosches grasps at an all encompassing world view that accounts for the interplay of the three great religions from the beginning of time to 9/11 (which actually plays a minor and unnecessary role in the plot) but the accomplishment eludes him. The main lesson you come away with is how impressed Tosches is with himself, what he's written (all his prior works get an airing this time around) and what he's learned about classics. Gratuitous profanity does not save this book from bombastic pedantry. Peccato.
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11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Quite an arduous reading experience, August 29, 2007
I read Nick Tosches' In the Hand of Dante a month or two ago, and I've been putting off this review ever since. Actually, I wasn't even sure I wanted to attempt a review because my opinions of the novel are rather ambivalent and, frankly, I didn't get a whole lot out of the experience. This is the kind of book that makes me think I should like it more than I actually do. After all, it's literary and deep (sometimes) and brought to life by a true wordsmith. Honestly, though, I found myself floundering through many a section of the story, and I've already forgotten more than I ever knew about what I was reading.
On the one hand, you've got the author inserting himself into the story as the protagonist. Due to his association with some shady, underground, fairly despicable people, he ultimately gets his hands on a long-lost original copy of Dante's The Divine Comedy. This is where the action of the book can be found, replete with lots of adults-only language, a few doses of brutality, and the blood of a string of murder victims. Alongside this story, however, is Tosches' take on Dante's own journey - seeking to tap into something deep and eternal, I guess. As I said, I got very little at all out of this section of the book. It moves along at a glacial pace, sells out to pretentiousness early on, and made the simple turning of each page something of an internal struggle. It doesn't help that Tosches apparently sought to use every word in the dictionary at least once, resulting in literary speed bump after speed bump. I'm an intelligent, well-educated fellow, and I was constantly running up against words I could not define (and had I chosen to seek out the definition of each one, I would surely still be trying to finish this novel all these weeks later). Using "big words" is no sin, of course, especially if the author actually knows what those words mean, but in Tosches' case I got the strong impression that he was just trying to show the reader how darn smart he thinks he is. That doesn't make for a good impression among many readers, and it puts to ruin Tosches' otherwise impressive writing style.
Despite what I found to be a remarkably promising story idea, In the Hand of Dante just didn't do anything for me. The only memorable passage in the whole book is the one many other reviewers have mentioned: Tosches' no-holds-barred attack on the publishing industry. That made for pretty gripping reading, but everything else left me quite nonplussed. I can't for the life of me figure out how this became a national bestseller, as I doubt many casual readers will make it past the first 50 pages. Only the most serious and dedicated of readers will want to tackle this novel.
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17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Ugh., July 7, 2003
By A Customer
This review is from: In the Hand of Dante: A Novel (Hardcover)
Bought this book because I love Dante and had heard wonderful things about Nick Tosches. After reading it (and I finished it only because I wanted to see if it would get any better) I still love Dante but think that Tosches is overrated, pretentious and suffering from testosterone poisoning. Believe me, I'm not a prude; so-called offensive material can certainly be thought-provoking and enjoyable. But in the contemporary portions of this book the author seems to be crude just to show what an iconoclastic stud he is, while at the same time having nothing of interest to say. In the historical portions of the book, by contrast, he does have something interesting to say but it's buried under an overly vague, artsy-fartsy, stream of consciousness story structure. I'll be selling my copy of this book and rereading the Divine Comedy instead.
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