John Took

Why Dante Matters: An Intelligent Person's Guide by John Took is a slog of a book with periodic bright spots. It isn't that it is not accessible for most readers, it is, but if something could have been said in two sentences of eight words each Took seems to enjoy making the point in either one sentence of about 25 words or two sentences of about fifteen words each. Once you get used to his repetitive style with certain phrases and his love of his own authorial voice, it is more bearable, but still far from an enjoyable read.

I had hoped that this would be better than his recent biography of Dante, which was, as one reviewer said (I paraphrase because I'm not going to go look it up) intended as a love letter to Dante himself and not for most other readers. I do think this is better than the biography, but minimally. Of all the critical works and biographical works I have read on Dante, Took's two books easily rate as the least useful simply because of his apparent belief that his writing is poetic. But he confuses poetic with pretentious.

So, why does Dante matter? A lot of reasons, I believe, but good luck discerning them from this muddy mess. The only people I can recommend this to are Dante scholars, and the ones I know (all two of them) were already turned off by the biography, so... The rating is not negative because there is good information here, not a lot truly new or groundbreaking and it requires a masochistic streak to get through it, but it is there.

Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley.… (meer)