The Devil in Disguise: Nick Tosches pens a poem and then sells it to us in a literary con job - and we smile? Nick Tosches is a con man. He’s an enigmatic New York City street hustler turned self-styled music writer who never stuck simply to writing about the music. He is an acclaimed artful biographer of tormented American celebrity (Dean Martin, Jerry Lee Lewis, Sonny Liston) who prefers style to specifics. He is a chronicler of overlooked and forgotten histories (Country, Where Dead Voices Gather) who fancies inspired interpretation over rigorous reporting. He is a wayward poet trapped in an essayist’s body who at times has pretended to be a novelist (Cut Numbers). Yet, he is not a writer of stories, but rather he is, quite simply, a writer; a glorious and undisciplined lover of words who will con his way into being whatever it is he has to be – critic, historian, author, journalist - to accomplish his graceful and often-brilliant work. In his latest book, In the Hand of Dante, Tosches attempts to disguise his playful love of language - as well as an assortment of wild and wide ranging musings and meanderings about life - as a complex novel linking two distinct narratives. But Tosches doesn’t have the storyteller’s patience for detail that’s required in an ambitious venture like this, and he knows it. His is a symphony of words and ideas, and as much as In the Hand of Dante pretends to be a pair of stories it is really just the poetry and raging manifesto of a middling aged man. Calling this book a ‘novel’ is as much an economic necessity as it is a convenient ruse; one that affords Tosches the opportunity to take these wild and varied flights of indulgence with his both his thoughts and his words. So it is with a wink and a nod that Tosches offers up what is advertised as dueling epic tales, only to leave you with the restless music of his mind. In the Hand of Dante is hardly a novel at all, it is Tosches’ potent poetic roar disguised as such, because Nick Tosches knows that poetry won’t pay the bills. But all con jobs are not necessarily cheats. And although Tosches may sell the world on a novel that isn’t what it portends to be, he is never out to take advantage of the reader. Instead, Tosches aspires to amaze. He’s far more interested in the power and poetry of words and the dynamic strength of sentences (so much so that several “chapters” in Dante are simply that – single lines, filled with muscle and beauty) than he is in fleshing out a plot. . The premise here in Dante is nothing short of divine: Nick Tosches, the story’s protagonist (of course!), is a caustic and bitter middling aged writer who is called upon by a Mafioso big wig to help obtain an authentication for a manuscript that was discovered in a Vatican basement library and is thought to be the original hand written transcript of Dante’s The Divine Comedy. In its parallel tale (told in alternating chapters), Tosches assumes the life of Dante himself. Here he weaves a wordy and philosophical yarn in reverent, near biblical high style about Dante’s struggles to forge a work of permanence and consequence - something that would transcend the constraints of language itself. It is an ambitious scheme, spinning parallel tales, fraught with enormous potential. But as it reads here in Dante it is merely a good idea by half - an expedient excuse for Tosches to, quite simply, be Tosches. And therein lies the catch. Because Tosches, at his very best, is nothing less than a unrestrained loose canon on the literary decks, working wonders with his words (the Chandler-esque beauty of “I put a hole where his soul used to be”); railing gloriously against an overbearing corporate presence in publishing (“In thirty years, I had seen the publishing racket reduced to a drab, unimaginative, and unsuccessful form of corporate salesmanship that grew every day more devastating in its mediocrity,” and, “I speak to you as an AOL Time Warner product”); and even using the infamy of 9/11 as plot ( to fake his own death), all of which is compelling as hell, but does little to define Dante as any sort of traditional novel.. And in the end, because his command of our English language is so utterly unique, so brutally forceful, and so damn compelling, it is Tosches’ literary anarchy that rules the day. In the Hand of Dante is an extraordinary work, a hell of a lot of fun, and impossible to put down. |