Matthew Pearl
Matthew Pearl was born on October 2, 1975, in New York City, a city that formed the geographic starting point for a career that would extend across both literary fiction and university teaching. A citizen of the United States, Pearl writes in the English language and works within the genre of historical prose literature.
Pearl's education took him through several institutions. He attended University School of Nova Southeastern University, followed by studies at Harvard College and Harvard University, and subsequently at Yale Law School. This sequence of formal education across multiple universities provided the academic foundation from which he went on to pursue careers as both a novelist and a university teacher.
As a novelist, Pearl produces fiction in the genre of historical prose literature, working in English. His dual professional identity as a novelist and university teacher has defined his career, with his work in the classroom running alongside his output as a writer of fiction. Both occupations are listed among his professional roles, reflecting a career that has operated simultaneously within academic and literary spheres.
Pearl continues to work as a novelist and university teacher in the United States. His writing remains rooted in historical prose literature, the genre that characterizes his fiction. His professional life as a writer and educator, carried out in the country of his citizenship, represents the ongoing shape of a career that began in New York City and was formed through his education at institutions including Harvard College, Harvard University, and Yale Law School.
Quotes by Matthew Pearl
The books do pretend, Mr. Branagan. Surely. But that is not all. Novels are filled with lies, but squeezed in between is even more that is true – without what you may call the lies, the pages would be too light for the truth, you see?
Unlike New York or Chicago, once you were inside Boston, any point in the city was fairly convenient to any other.
Avoid the Holy Grail, the heroic journeys, the pursuit of a legend – that is not the life of the bookaneer, who must keep his eyes on the ground while other book people live by dreaming.
You are always better off to read a book, anyway, than to meet the person behind it.
It is my conviction that we make ourselves who we want to be and not chain ourselves to the notions of busybodies who wish to judge us.
When they dreamed of turning iron and metal into gold, they called it alchemy. The much more far-fetched dream of turning bound sheafs of plain paper into fortunes, they call publishing.
On the trees were no longer only leaves but brown fruits, on the bushes no longer blossoms but clusters of red berries. And the wind had a rough manliness in its voice – the tone not of a lover but of a husband.
I was looking for something else in books. I could not really say what, but I think I can say why: a notion started in my own brain was probably wrong, but an answer read in a work of literature would be right. That was my conviction at nineteen, and only in later years would I come to trust myself over a book.