Customer Reviews

In the Hand of Dante: A Novel

5 star:		(13)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(19)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Please do yourself a favor and consider this BEFORE you either read or dismiss the book. First of all, most of what you see here dismissing the novel as "offensive" and "spew" simply laments the, at times, abrasive content and language. If such things frighten you, then yes ... you won't like this book. So rather than read it and dismiss it publically on amazon because of your own personal sensibilities, just avoid it altogether. As for the other accusations of "historical inaccuracy" or Tosches not knowing other languages or being anti-semitic ... it's difficult to respond to these when there are no examples given. I suspect these are bogus rationalizations created to justify someone's anger at reading a book they didn't like.

So, in any case, I stress the following in response: this is a NOVEL. This is fiction. Yes, Tosches is a character, but that does not mean that the author says/does/believes everything in real life that the character does in the book. Tosches writes gritty books that look at tough realities and explore perspectives on changing times throughout history. He is not writing for popularity - he is writing frankly, with sincerity, refusing to suck the life from his words because some amazon reviewers might disagree or take offense at the "f-word." If you enjoy intelligent and heartfelt literature and you aren't outraged and up-in-arms because of some coarse language, you should definitely read this book, as well as Tosches' biographies "Dino" and "The Devil and Sonny Liston."

There is a brilliant chapter in this novel where Tosches talks about the publishing industry, using it as a yardstick by which culture in general is appraised. I suppose he anticipated what some of these folks might say, and I'm content to let the book's words speak for themselves: "It might be labeled 'daring,' in the manner that detergents and oral-hygiene products may be labelled 'new and improved' or even 'revolutionary,' but ... regardless of label, it must be consumer-safe, with tested and approved artificial fragrances and colors. It may be 'shocking,' 'brutally honest,' 'outrageous,' 'wild,' or 'nightmarish,' as these have become the acceptable flavors of mediocrity; but, while being (all of these things), it must never be offensive or aberrant, nor must it venture in any way beyond the pale of the petting zoo of the accepted."

Nick Tosches undeniably has talent. Unfortunately for the reader, Tosches is very aware of this fact and wants the reader to be aware of it (the book refers to Tosches' "legendary" poetry readings!). A series of riffs on truly tangential subjects (e.g., the woeful state of publishing in America today) undermines what could have been a great story. When Tosches focuses on the task at hand, the book is gripping, and the sentences sing (sometimes with melancholy beauty, other times raging jazz, and still other passages sound like a dirge). But the sheer weight of Tosches' ego overwhelms all.

The modern story of Nick's verification of Dante's original manuscript is far more engaging than the parallel story of Dante actually writing his masterwork. Rather than building to a crescendo, this book also trails off towards the end, giving the impression that Tosches merely lost interest in his tale. And by then, so had I.

This is simultaneously the most beautiful and the most repulsive book I have ever read. The parts describing Dante's imaginings of Paradise, the struggle with God, the brushstrokes of color and beauty and poetic possibility for humanity - these are evocative and entrancing almost to the point of tears. And, yet, the bottom-dwellers, with their ugly behavior and gross language are more repulsive than I can really live with.

Both aspects of the book work magically to set the stage for Dante's own descent into a nightmare of darkness and silence. He himself lost his Paradise, and the incredible artistry of the author paints in poetry and drama the dual side of human nature, and the necessity of a dark side alongst the light one.

In the end, I couldn't keep the book out in the house. I've hidden it, because I cannot stand to let it go. I am too embarrased to have my spouse and children open it to the first chapter, and see the words I have been reading. Perhaps the pen could have been a little gentler but, then, would it have been restrained in its depictions of beauty and power and the unutterable longings of the human spirit?

The inside dust jacket advises that many will find this book offensive. I picked it up partially for that reason, and for the supposed plot. Old manuscripts, Vatican intrigues, Mafioso, black market old book selling... fascinating and fun stuff.

The first chapter is an exercise in using the F bomb as often as humanly possible. This, in itself, is not that offensive, I liberally sprinkle it through my conversations. However, it seems forced and contrived. Louis is a vile, foul-mouthed hit man who seems to enjoy his work too much. Nothing redeeming here, but that's ok. He's The Bad Guy (tm).

Then we are introduced to Tosches, who I hope to god is nothing like the character in the book. If he is, please let me have the opportunity to backhand his egomaniacal misogynistic gob. So far all women are "b*s and c*s" and seem to exist to be used, tossed aside and to fellate him. The one bright female light is the daughter he abandoned while she was still in the womb. He is reunited with her after 15 years and learns the true meaning of love. I start to think I judged him too quickly and too harshly. Then he promptly kills her off in an unnamed yet violent death. So we are back to b*s and bjs.

He spends a page ranting about his disappointment with modern medical spending, resenting the money spent on AIDS and cancer research when Diabetes kills more people. He has diabetes, as you can guess. While you want to sympathize, you can't, you wonder why he threw this soapbox in the middle of a story. His prose, if it isn't biography, drips with self-indulgence and contempt. It's like reading Hemingway, only hateful.

I am only on page 80, so I have yet to read his diatribe against the publishing industry mentioned by other reviewers. After reading those reviews I have decided to do what I *never* do - walk away from an unfinished book. If that's how he feels about the readers and publishers who pay his bills, then he can bite me. As if his view of women wasn't bad enough, his self-centered, ego-maniacal, self-serving bullcrap pushes it over the edge to not worthy of my time.

I'm not spending my hard-earned money or any more time on you, Tosches.

This is the first (and last)Tosches to which I willing will subject myself.
To list the factual errors the book contains would require another book longer than the original.Remarkably, the author demonstrates repeatedly that he is ignorant in any number of languages. His style is that of a teenager who imagines he or she is the first person to use the F-word in public ( poor Lenny Bruce could have avoided jail fifty years ago had he had the prescience to anticipate N.T.).The author's perverse interpretations of Judaic concepts and history are unfortunate ; his poorly disguised antisemitism deplorable ; his use of ethnic slurs disgusting.
A puerile, silly stew of nonsense posing as-- what ?? Stew, spew-a pitiful mess in any event.

God I hated this book. I don't say this lightly. I thought the idea was great and I couldn't wait to read it but...The author is so overrated and pretentious that I couldn't help but laugh at some sections. Did he even bother to give it to an editor? The characters are one-dimensional and the plot is lame. I totally lost interest half way through the book. I continued reading with the hopes that it would get better but it never did.

A New York Times' reviewer accurately describes Nick Tosches' novel as "kind of a mess, but a splendid, passionate mess." The narrative alternates between the 14th and 21st centuries to tell the story of the stolen original manuscript of Dante Alighieri's "Divine Comedy, written between 1313 and 1315 (p. 160). After a priest steals the poem from the Vatican, Louie, a tough guy with a fetish for wearing women's lingerie, steals the parchment manuscript from the priest. A 64-year-old diabetic character, Nick Tosches, is then asked to authenticate the several-hundred page document, apparently scrawled by the hand of Dante with the wild "tempest and serenity of creation" (p. 64). While this is the basic plot of Tosches' novel, it is by no means an easy book.

There is more to Tosche's novel than mobsters popping priests for a stolen poem of "incalculable" value (p. 302), and this is precisely where things get interesting. In his first-person narrative, Tosches burns like an inferno, criticizing everything from monotheism, publishers, Oprah's Book Club, mediocrity and even his own editor. In fact, throughout his book, very little escapes the heat of Tosches' impassioned rage. The spectacle of his narrative conflagration, seasoned with profanities, will surely offend some readers, but will attract many others. Does Tosches burn as brightly as Dante? Well, no. But I enjoyed every minute of reading this novel.

G. Merritt