Matthew Pearl

In fact, he looked more like a college student than half the students at the Central Park Campus Conference Center or the other 1,000 or so that sat to listen to the best-selling author at the Preston Ridge or Spring Creek campuses as part of the Book-in-Common program featuring Pearl and his second novel, The Poe Shadow.

Slightly disheveled hair, facial hair that isn’t going anywhere, casual attire and a nonchalant attitude toward his chosen profession. All of this from a Harvard grad, an attendee of the Yale Law School and an unassuming member of the literary glitterrati.

“To tell you the truth, I never wanted to be a writer. It was an accident,” Pearl said.

“Have I read anything you’ve written?”

It’s a question that puzzles Pearl. Taken literally, how would Pearl ever know what a stranger has or hasn’t read.

It’s actually a handful of social situations that Pearl is at least somewhat at odds with since he published his first novel, The Dante Club, in 2005, The Poe Shadow in 2007 and, finally, The Last Dickens in 2009.

He started writing while at Yale after years of reading in high school and college. As an undergrad at Harvard, Pearl was too intimidated to take the admissions exam for a creative writing class in fear he’d be turned down. Not exactly the attitude of a New York Times bestseller.

“For me, I thought of a story which became my first book, The Dante Club, and made myself a writer,” Pearl said. “On the negative side of that sale, because I never wanted to be a writer, I didn’t know what it took to be a writer.”

Once while walking down a street in New York City, Pearl noticed someone reading The Dante Club on the street. In a fit of elation, Pearl blurted out “That’s my book!” Although apparent lunatics shouting on New York City streets may not be as rare as in other cities, the action was met with a strange look.

Another time, Pearl said he was stuck on an airplane in Chicago sitting on a tarmac for three hours when the woman in the next seat starting reading his book. Having learned a lesson, Pearl kept a potential outburst to himself.

“It’s an odd feeling seeing people reading your words. If you think about it, when you’re writing something important to you, and it might not be fiction, you’re really selective who you show it to. That goes out the window when you publish something. Suddenly it’s not in your power at all to decide who reads your book. It takes time to adjust to, that the book isn’t under your control,” Pearl said.

‘Nevermore’

Another common aspect for the best-selling author is the book signing. Pearl noted that his initial “microscopic” signature drew the ire of a fan or two. Not only did he make his signature bigger, but he decided to add a tagline.

A discarded tagline idea for The Dante Club was “Go to hell.” One for The Poe Shadow was “Nevermore,” which Pearl admits didn’t really make sense in the book signing medium.

“Because I never planned on being a writer, it’s still a bit of a mystery to me what it is to be a writer,” Pearl said. “It gives me a chance to explore not just their books, but who they were as people and what that interaction is between the book and the people.”

Pearl’s, so far, made a career out of the “literary” or “historical” fiction genre. In all three of his books, he’s designed a fictitious story out of real circumstances and people.

The Poe Shadow chronicles the dealings of a Baltimore lawyer who risked his career, friends, family and love life in order to investigate the suspicious death of his favorite writer, Edgar Allen Poe.

Poe’s death is real. So is the mystery of his death. What isn’t real is Pearl’s characters, the intrigue and action.

Just as the hero – Quentin – looks to save the reputation of Poe post-mortem, the idea of celebrity and image is a major theme for Pearl.

At the lecture, Pearl brought out a stuffed Poe decked out in velvet jacket and a raven (which detaches) perched on the toy shoulder. The stuffed Poe is pale as a ghost and ominous looking.

This popular image of Poe, Pearl notes, is largely inaccurate. He states that most readers are “repulsed and intrigued” by Poe. In literature, sometimes there exists a “powerful ambiguity” that puts the reader (not the character or author) in a position to create their own assumptions.

“Sometimes we assume a writer is his or her book or story. That’s not always the case,” Pearl said. “There’s a reason for that characture because he single handedly invested the genre we know as horror. Too often, we make the mistake that as a person he was actually just like a character you’ll find in his story. The reason for that is because he tended to write in first person and didn’t name his character. So we have this feeling that Poe is one of his characters or narrators.”

These expections have manifested themselves in Pearl’s career. He’s been told that he doesn’t look old enough to write books. During a phone interview, the interviewer tells Pearl, “You know, you don’t sound creepy.”

“For me writing the Poe Shadow was getting to know Poe in a different way,” Pearl said. “He’s not a character in the novel, but he’s a presence in the novel and that’s what the title of the book means – he’s a shadow over the story and the characters.”

Getting to know Poe helped him write in a sympathetic vein and to write from the perspective of a fan of literature. He also put forth facts about Poe that many people may not know.

Like, Poe was relatively poor and unpopular at the time of his death. He helped free a slave. He did marry his 13-year-old cousin and were together for 10 years until her death.

“Because we can never know what happened in Poe’s death, it allows people to superimpose their own ideas into his death,” Pearl said. “Many people don’t know where Poe was born. It was Boston. I’m from Boston, and most people don’t know that. Very few people were aware of his death or funeral. There were only four mourners at his funeral. There were no flowers left on the grave. It got me started thinking about the subject of this novel. My first vision revolved around who loved Poe’s writing seeing this funeral and wanting to make it right for Poe. He’s not considered a particularly famous writer. I wanted to imagine what if someone started investigating his death not 100 years later, but minutes later.”

A Reader’s Writer

Pearl notes that Poe – over time – has been much-maligned by scholars and literary pundits because he’s such a fan favorite. For this reason – and because he’s such a fan of literature himself – Pearl made the conscious effort of making Quentin a reader, not a thinker.

“Usually it’s giving you great opportunity as a writer and reader to have that interchange. For my novel I wanted my hero to be a reader, not a scholar or writer or a publisher, but simply a reader who loves Poe and I wanted to ask that character, “How far will you go to protect a writer you didn’t know in person, l but in your heart you know as a part of your life because he meant so much to you?” Pearl said. “It let me explore what it meant to be a writer, which in 1850 was very courageous. It was financial suicide. When you published a novel, back then you got paid in copies of your novel. Most of the writers who were able to achieve success were already wealthy or were from a good family and married very wealthy, like Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. That allowed them the security to concentrate on writing. Someone like Poe had to struggle his entire life. This was not a crazy person or an eccentric.”

For more information about the Book-in-Common program visit www.ccccd.edu/academics/Bookincommon.