Results for “best fiction” 291 found
*Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts*
That is the new book by Christopher de Hamel, and it is one of the very best non-fiction books this year, in fact so far it might rank #1. It is twelve chapters, each one about an individual medieval manuscript, the best-known of those being the Book of Kells. The integration of text and the visuals is of the highest order of quality. Most of all, the book brings each manuscript to life, relating its creators and creation, the surrounding historical context, its subsequent preservation and fame, and how that history has embodied varying attitudes toward copying and preservation. No less illuminating is the anthropological treatment of how each manuscript is currently guarded and displayed, the author’s travel history in getting there, and a more general “philosophical without the philosophy” introspection on what these objects are really supposed to mean to us.
This book is not in every way light reading, and it does assume some (very broad) background in medieval history, but it brings a whole topic to light, and instructs, in a way that few other works do.
Here is just one short excerpt:
My initial inquiry as to whether I might see the manuscript of the Aratea in the Universiteitsbibliotheek in Leiden was met with the reply that this would hardly be necessary, since there is a high-class published facsimile from 1989 and the complete book is in any case digitized and freely available on-line. It was a response entirely within the theme of copying. If you had applied to the palace librarians of Aachen in the early ninth century to see the late-antique Terence, they would almost certainly have assured you that you would be better off with their nice new copy by their scribe Hrodgarius.
Hamel worked for a long time in the book department at Sotheby’s and then in a library at Cambridge University. He is a bit of a fuddy-duddy (he thinks the bustle of NYC is extreme, for instance), but nonetheless has produced a lovely and complete work that virtually every author should envy. I am ordering his other books too, mostly on the history of books.
Here is a Guardian review, John Banville in the FT raves about it, and here is The Paris Review. I believe I ordered it on Amazon.uk, all five-star reviews by the way. Here is the U.S. Amazon listing, with access to used copies, I am not sure when the American edition comes out.
How to choose and assess the movies you are watching
Greg Adamo, a loyal MR reader, writes me with a query:
I have two related questions sparked by your review of American Honey.
First, do you have any tips on judging movies? I make a lot of mistakes. I dismiss a number of very good movies after seeing them the first time. If I happen to watch them a second time – or even a third – I come to see a lot of virtues that I missed originally. I thought Pulp Fiction and the Big Lebowski were quite overrated the first time I saw them. 20 years later, having seen them both several times, my view has changed greatly. These are only two examples – there are dozens more. How can I avoid this problem?
Second, what is the correct time period for appreciating a movie? We have an annual award system (the Oscars). Like me, it also makes a lot of mistakes. Misfires like Crash or Shakespeare in Love – the don’t hold up to other winners. How Green Was My Valley beat Citizen Kane. Hitchcock never won an Oscar. It’s not just me that goofs up – it’s everyone.
I can’t help but think time is a factor. Suppose the Oscars were like the Baseball hall-of-fame and had a five-year waiting period. Would that improve the selection? Is there a market-failure in the movie-critic journalism business that pushes reviews out so near to the release date?
This is an area in which overconfidence and bias abound. I wonder if I’m better off disregarding individual movie reviews in favor of aggregated data – i.e. rotten tomatoes.
Those are some very good questions, I will offer some general observations in response:
1. If the movie was shot for the big screen, you must see it on the big screen. Otherwise your response is not to be trusted.
2. Try not to discriminate by genre or topic, for instance “I don’t like war movies,” “I don’t like romantic comedies,” and so on. You’ll miss out on the very best of that genre or topic this way, and those are very likely very good indeed. (NB: In your spare time, you can debate whether there is a horror movies exception to the principle.)
3. In my view, the bad Oscar picks were evident right away. A five year wait will only elevate some other set of mediocre movies instead. Movie awards are designed to generate publicity for the industry, not to reward merit. Ignore them.
4. I use movie criticism in the following way: I read just enough to decide if I want to see the movie, and then no more. I also try to forget what I have read. But before a second viewing of a film, I try to read as much as possible about it.
5. On net, I find the best reviews are in Variety magazine, as they are written for movie professionals. And the market for reviews is largely efficient. That is, if you read six smart critics on a movie — usually just two or three in fact — you will have a good idea of the quality of the movie. But you must put aside movies that are politically correct or culturally iconic, as they tend to be overrated. Brokeback Mountain and The Graduate will make plenty of “best of” lists, and they are both interesting and extremely important for both cinematic and cultural reasons. Still, I would not say either is a great movie, though they have some wonderful scenes and themes.
6. Hardly anyone watches enough foreign movies, that means you too. Or you might not watch enough outside your favored cinematic area, such as French, Bollywood, etc. There is a switching cost due to different cinematic “languages,” but most of your additional rewards at the margin probably lie in this direction. Furthermore, the very best foreign movies are so excellent it is easy to find out which they are.
7. I still think Pulp Fiction and The Big Lebowski, while good, are overrated. Don’t always assume your second reaction is the correct one. In addition, a lot of movies are made to be seen only once, so don’t hold that against them. For instance, I am not sure I need to see the opening sequence of Private Ryan again, but I am very glad I saw it once. It made seeing the whole movie worthwhile, but since most of the rest is ordinary, albeit serviceable, seeing it again would be excruciating.
8. It is a mistake to smugly assume that television has surpassed movies. The best movies (mostly foreign) are better than the best TV, even today.
What tips can you all offer?
Sunday assorted links
*Hitler’s Soldiers*
The author is Ben H. Shepherd and the subtitle is The German Army in the Third Reich. That may seem like a timeworn topic, but I found this book consistently fresh and interesting, also well-written, analytic throughout, one of the year’s best non-fiction studies. Here is one bit:
Two occupied populations whom the German army particularly tried to cultivate were the Muslim peoples of the Crimea and the Caucasus. The Sunni Tatars comprised a quarter of the Crimea’s population, and German army administrators saw them, as they would also come to see their Muslim brethren in the Caucasus, as presenting an opportunity to woo Islam in the Soviet Union for political and military gain. The Germans granted the Tatars religious rights and concessions and reintroduced major religious holidays, and Manstein’s otherwise infamous November 1941 order required his troops to treat the Tatars with respect…the Germans appointed a Muslim committee to re-establish the religious infrastructure.
…Yet the failings of German occupation were soon apparent to these Muslim peoples.
Overall the message is that the German army was less effective and less moral [sic] than many other historians had suggested. Recommended.
*The Fall of Heaven*
I loved this book, the author is Andrew Scott Cooper, and the subtitle is The Pahlavis and the Final Days of Imperial Iran. It is the best book I know for understanding the Iranian revolution, and it is compulsively readable throughout. Did you know for instance that the Ayatollahs were deeply disturbed by the presence of The Mary Tyler Moore Show and also Rhoda on Iranian TV?
Here is one excerpt:
Iran’s political and economic malaise gave a renewed sense of urgency to the Shah’s top priority, which was to settle the question of the Imperial succession once and for all. His initial preference was for a European princess who could provide the House of Pahlavi with the luster of dynastic legitimacy. He soon ran into trouble. The Windsors rebuffed his interest in Queen Elizabeth II’s cousin Princess Alexandra of Kent, while his favorite, Princess Maria Gabriella, the Catholic daughter of the deposed King Umberto of Italy, was ruled out owing to opposition from the Vatican and Iran’s ulama.
And this, from the Shah himself:
“When everybody in Iran is like everybody in Sweden, then I will rule like the King of Sweden,” he declared.
I would describe this book as relatively sympathetic to the Shah, and also arguing that the oppressions and tortures of Savak are sometimes overstated.
This one makes my best non-fiction of the year list, and it will be in the top tier of that list.
My personal tech ecosystem, updated
A few of you have asked, I considered that question in 2012, here is a significantly revised update:
1. Now I know how to text, sort of, though I hardly ever do it. It strikes me as the worst and most inefficient technology of communication ever invented (seriously). It’s not that fast, and it’s broken up into tiny bits of back and forth. I don’t see how it makes sense beyond the “What should I get at the supermarket? — Blueberries” level. There is intertemporal substitution, so just, at some other point in time, spend more time talking, writing longer letters, making love, whatever. Not texting. It is never the best thing to be doing, except to answer some very well-defined question.
2. I now carry only one iPad around, as I donated my spare iPad to a poor Mexican family. I use it very often for directions, book and restaurant reviews, and general life advice. Plus email and keeping current on my Twitter feed. I simply don’t want a screen any smaller than that. My iPad now also has a rather pronounced crack on the front glass, but that adds to its artistic value. I dare not drop it again.
3. I have an iPhone, which I hardly ever use for anything. Occasionally someone calls me on it, or I use it to check email in situations when it might be rude to pull out the iPad. Other times I am rude, but it’s actually a form of flattery if I am willing to check my iPad in front of you. You may not feel flattered, however.
3b. Except for the occasional Uber ride, I don”t use apps and hate reading news sites through the apps, I won’t do it. I’m used to the web, not your app, and I hope I can get away with being a stubborn grouch on this forever.
4. I now have a Bloomberg terminal, which is very cool. It is amazing that a product designed in the “before the internet as we know it” era still is the clear market leader and the best option. Bloomberg is a great company with a great product(s). Right now I can do about 5 of the 25,000 separate commands, but the fault is mine not theirs. In the meantime, send me email at my gmu address, not what is listed on the Bloomberg column.
5. I use my Kindle less over time. It remains in that nebulous “fine” category, but I prefer “real books.” Kindle is best for works of fiction when I know in advance I wish to read every page in the proper order. I am continuing with my long-range plan to read Calvin’s Institutes on my Kindle, bit by bit, in between other works. This will take me ten years, but a) he is a brilliant mind, and b) in the meantime I won’t lose sight of the plot line.
6. I have a new Lenovo laptop, sleek and fast, plus some computers at work. I don’t even know what they are, but probably they are quite subpar.
Way more iPad and way less texting are I suppose the main ways in which I deviate from the dominant status quo. Come join me in this and we shall conquer the world.
What I’ve been reading
1. Samuel Fleischacker, The Good and the Good Book: Revelation as a Guide to Life. A nice, articulate, and well-reasoned account of how a reasonable person might turn to faith and believe that faith and reason are compatible. The author is a well-known Adam Smith scholar.
2. Abraham Hoffman, Unwanted Mexican Americans in the Great Depression. The best and most readable book I have found on the deportation of Mexicans during the Great Depression, most of all during the 1931-1935 period. Reading up on this era puts today’s America in useful perspective.
3. The Curse of Cash, by Kenneth Rogoff. The quality of argumentation and presentation is high, as one would expect from a Ken Rogoff book. Still, I don’t think it has so much to convince those who might be worried about a currency-less surveillance Panopticon, or those who think negative interest rates are mostly a contractionary and not-so-useful tax on financial intermediation.
4. Mats Lundahl, The Political Economy of Disaster: Destitution, plunder and earthquake in Haiti. More of a potpourri of Haitian economic history than what the titles indicates, the best 20 percent of this book has insights you won’t find in other places. For me that is a high hit rate, I liked it.
5. John Hardman, The Life of Louis XVI. I’m only about fifty pages into this one, but so far it is a first-rate biography, both detailed and conceptual in nature, likely to make the list of the year’s best non-fiction books.
Which part of the world is most underrated in literary terms?
I asked that question of Michael Orthofer, and his answer was this:
Underrated, I would absolutely think the regional language and literature of India. I think surprisingly, even though, perhaps, English is the main literary language of India and a great deal is locally translated, even there much of the vernacular literature still isn’t available in English.
What one can see of it and also in part hear about it — we’re missing an awful lot. There is a literary culture there, especially, for example, in Bengali, but we’ve had that since Tagore. One of the remarkable things is Tagore won his Nobel prize over a hundred years ago, and there are still novels by him which haven’t been translated into English. He is really a very good novelist.
It’s truly worthwhile, and this goes for many regions. The southern region of Kerala where they write in Malayalam — there’s remarkable literary production there, and we just see so little of it.
My inclination was to suggest Chile. Here’s why this country of below 18 million people is nonetheless a fierce literary contender:
1. Pablo Neruda was one of the two or three best poets of the latter part of the twentieth century. His Canto general is not his best poetic work but as a general statement of the history and underlying unity of the New World it is unparalleled. Gabriela Mistral is noteworthy too.
2. José Donoso’s The Obscene Bird of the Night is one of the very best Latin novels, yet it is hardly read these days, I am not sure why. I think it is clearly better than say One Hundred Years of Solitude.
3. Roberto Bolaño is probably the most important Latin author post-García Márquez, and he is from Chile, though he wrote much more about Mexico.
4. Antonio Skármeta isn’t even a top figure in this lineage yet he is still quite good, the same holds for Ariel Dorfman (born in Argentina, moved to Chile shortly afterwards), Alejandro Zambra, and yes Isabel Allende, who is the Chilean author most in the public eye in the United States. She is usually too sentimental for my taste but some of it I enjoy nonetheless.
And why is Chile underrated? Well, when you are there it feels fairly provincial — just ask a Porteño. Bolaño didn’t stick around and more generally exile from Pinochet prevented the creation of any well-defined group or movement. The Pinochet years also gave Chile a…shall we say…non-artistic reputation, and finally both Neruda and Doñoso don’t translate so well out of the Spanish.
Do you have an alternative choice?
What I’ve been reading
1. Charles Clover, Black Wind, White Snow: The Rise of Russia’s New Nationalism. Lots of detail, not just the usual BS, scary too. Too much detail, too scary, thus a good book.
2. Christopher Goscha, The Penguin History of Modern Vietnam. The best general history of Vietnam I know, and it does not obsess over “the Vietnam War.” Readable and instructive on pretty much every page.
3. Adolfo Bioy Cesares, La invención de Morel. One of the better short Spanish-language novels, ever. I’ve already started my reread. Borges, Cortázar, Carpentier, and García Márquez all expressed their admiration for it. Imagine a mysterious island that becomes more rather than less strange as the story develops, and characters start to wonder if they are living inside a simulation.
4. Samuel Arbesman, Overcomplicated: Technology at the Limits of Comprehension. I was very happy to blurb this book: “Why can’t we understand technology anymore? In this consistently entertaining and insightful book, Arbesman offers a necessary guide to where we are headed and why everything seems so strange along the way.” Here are a variety of positive reviews.
5. Helen DeWitt, The Last Samurai. First published in 2000 to strong critical acclaim, the publisher ended up going bankrupt and this more or less fell off the map, until its recent reissue. If I count it as a new edition, it is my favorite fiction book of the year so far. I don’t think all parts of the novel work equally well, but the best parts are superb and most of all it is a book written for smart people. Even before finishing, I went and ordered everything else she has done. That is not a lot, but I hear through the grapevine she has a good deal of writing in the works. Here is the lead Amazon review on Samurai:
This book is joyful and thrilling. The intimate and familiar story of a single mother struggling to raise a young son is made original and even epic by the sheer elasticity and power of author Helen DeWitt’s imagination. Mother and Son, Sybilla and Ludo, both possessed of gifted and versatile minds, are obsessed with the Kurosawa classic, The Seven Samurai (a film I always felt forced to appreciate until I read this book). Syb uses the film to provide the male role models the boy doesn’t have in his life, and Ludo uses it to develop his own version of a Samurai test with which he plans to find the best father possible for himself. Armed with the refrain that ‘a good samurai will parry the blow’ he sets out to test and win over men of samurai mettle who might recognize his merits. The true joy of reading the book comes in the fact that even though mother and son are both geniuses, multi lingual and well versed in history, literature, math and sciences, their pursuits in learning and discovery seem exciting and comprehensible. What at first description might sound intellectually intimidating (Ancient Greek, Old Norse, Ptolemaic Alexandria, Fourier Analysis and a blow by blow with variations on the theme of the Rosetta Stone) are made accessible and often hilarious by the dazzling ingenuity and finesse of the wonderful Dewitt. Reading it made me feel I had suddenly come across a vast unrealized potential in myself for the power of creative thought and the ability to comprehend complex ideas. All this disguised in a book of fabulous adventure and tremendous longing.
Here is her superb short LRB piece on being stalked. Here is one earlier and somewhat explicit profile of Dewitt, here is her response: “If you don’t see the dead books, turning down a $525,000 deal looks strange.” Here is a very good New York profile.
My conversation with Michael Orthofer
That is the latest entry in the Conversations with Tyler series, here is the transcript, audio, and video. Here is the overview:
Michael Orthofer, one of the world’s most prolific book reviewers, joins Tyler Cowen for a conversation on — what else? — books. Read to discover why Michael believes everyone should read more fiction, how we should choose books, why American popular literature is overrated, what he thinks about authors like Herman Melville, Fyoder Dostoevsky, Goethe, J.K. Rowling, Arno Schmidt, and many others, his recommendations for the best sites for readers, why studying literature at college was such a big disappointment, how much book covers matter, and why his opinion will never be the final word.
Here is one excerpt:
COWEN: Here’s another life hack which I totally reject, but it may just be because I’m an addict of sorts. You tell me why, for you, it’s wrong.
A lot of people say to me, “Well, I love fiction, but I’m never going to read new works because I can’t tell what’s really good. I’ll just wait 20 years and then look back on what was truly excellent from 20 years ago and read that 20 years later. In the meantime, now I’ll just read classics or things in other areas which are verified as being truly excellent.” Does that make sense?
ORTHOFER: I worry very much about people who rely on what gets that stamp of approval. Just because it has a cover review in the New York Times Book Review does not mean that that book really is, if we look at it from five or ten years down the road — that that book will still be a significant work. I find so much which is highly praised at any one point long‑term won’t be. Again, however — .
Another question:
COWEN: If we take American citizens, who are not necessarily the people who read you, but at the margin, we could give them more nonfiction, we could give them more travel, we could give them more fiction, or we could actually give them more of some really good TV, which of those things are we rooting for them to do more of, at the margin?
And this exchange:
COWEN: Bottom’s Dream. Most people have never heard of Arno Schmidt.
ORTHOFER: Regrettably, no.
COWEN: We have a chance now to read his masterwork. Some of his others are in English already. Tell us why we should care.
…COWEN: But you giggled when you read Bottom’s Dream, right?
ORTHOFER: Yes.
COWEN: You giggled a lot.
ORTHOFER: The English edition, I think, is just under 1,500 pages.
COWEN: A mere pittance compared to Dream of the Red Chamber, right?
Do read the whole thing.
Here is my short review of Michael’s big book on world literature: “If you measure book quality by the actual marginal product of the text, this is one of the best books written, ever. Reading the manuscript in draft form induced me to a) write an enthusiastic blurb, and b) order about forty items through Amazon, mostly used of course. The book is basically a comprehensive guide to what is valuable and interesting in recently translated world literature, a meta-book so to speak, with extensive coverage of most of the countries you might want.” And here is Michael’s blog. You can order Michael’s book here.
What should I ask Michael Orthofer?
Soon I will be recording a podcast-only, no live attendance, no live video Conversations with Tyler with Michael Orthofer. Michael runs the site Literary Saloon and is perhaps the world’s most productive book reviewer and book review blogger, with a focus on foreign fiction translated into English. Michael is a deeply devoted infovore, and I expect this to be one of the most interesting conversations in the series.
Here is my short review of Michael’s big book on world literature: “If you measure book quality by the actual marginal product of the text, this is one of the best books written, ever. Reading the manuscript in draft form induced me to a) write an enthusiastic blurb, and b) order about forty items through Amazon, mostly used of course. The book is basically a comprehensive guide to what is valuable and interesting in recently translated world literature, a meta-book so to speak, with extensive coverage of most of the countries you might want.”
Here is the New Yorker profile of Orthofer:
“I can’t imagine not doing it,” Orthofer told me. “A day in which I don’t read or write, I have trouble falling asleep.” His goal is to read a book a day, though he confesses that this is “unrealistic.” He works on weekends, too, and has written four novels that are in the drawer. His main interests, according to the site, are inline roller-skating in Central Park and building snow sculptures, some of which are big enough that he carves staircases inside them to get to the top. When he tires of working, he steps out to a library or bookstore, “to see, be around books.” Last year, and this year, he worked through Christmas.
OK, so what should I ask Michael? Comments are open.
Addendum: Here are previous installments of Conversations with Tyler.
Do I think Robin Hanson’s “Age of Em” actually will happen?
A reader has been asking me this question, and my answer is…no!
Don’t get me wrong, I still think it is a stimulating and wonderful book. And if you don’t believe me, here is The Wall Street Journal:
Mr. Hanson’s book is comprehensive and not put-downable.
But it is best not read as a predictive text, much as Robin might disagree with that assessment. Why not? I have three main reasons, all of which are a sort of punting, nonetheless on topics outside one’s areas of expertise deference is very often the correct response. Here goes:
1. I know a few people who have expertise in neuroscience, and they have never mentioned to me that things might turn out this way (brain scans uploaded into computers to create actual beings and furthermore as the dominant form of civilization). Maybe they’re just holding back, but I don’t think so. The neuroscience profession as a whole seems to be unconvinced and for the most part not even pondering this scenario.
2. The people who predict “the age of Em” claim expertise in a variety of fields surrounding neuroscience, including computer science and physics, and thus they might believe they are broader and thus superior experts. But in general claiming expertise in “more” fields is not correlated with finding the truth, unless you can convince people in the connected specialized fields you are writing about. I don’t see this happening, nor do I believe that neuroscience is somehow hopelessly corrupt or politicized. What I do see the “Em partisans” sharing is an early love of science fiction, a very valuable enterprise I might add.
3. Robin seems to think the age of Em could come about reasonably soon (sorry, I am in Geneva and don’t have the book with me for an exact quotation). Yet I don’t see any sign of such a radical transformation in market prices. Even with positive discounting, I would expect backwards induction to mean that an eventual “Em scenario” would affect lots of prices now. There are for instance a variety of 100-year bonds, but Em scenarios do not seem to be a factor in their pricing.
Robin himself believes that market prices are the best arbiter of truth. But which market prices today show a realistic probability for an “Age of Em”? Are there pending price bubbles in Em-producing firms, or energy companies, just as internet grocery delivery was the object of lots of speculation in 1999-2000? I don’t see it.
The one market price that has changed is the “shadow value of Robin Hanson,” because he has finished and published a very good and very successful book. And that pleases me greatly, no matter which version of Robin is hanging around fifty years hence.
Addendum: Robin Hanson responds. I enjoyed this line: “Tyler has spent too much time around media pundits if he thinks he should be hearing a buzz about anything big that might happen in the next few centuries!”
The economics of *Hamilton*, and money left on the table
The average resale of “Hamilton” tickets on StubHub is roughly $872, according to a New York Times analysis, a markup of $700 above the current average original ticket sale price.
For any given performance, roughly 13 to 22 percent of the seats at the Richard Rodgers — somewhere between 180 and 300 tickets — are available on the secondary market, according to The Times’s research and interviews with ticket sellers. So for each performance of “Hamilton,” ticket sellers and brokers are reaping roughly $150,000. With the Broadway cast putting on more than 400 shows per year, that means these sellers could reap about $60 million per year, just in New York — money the producers, investors and Mr. Miranda will never see.
I still find this equilibrium puzzling. By the way, here are some numbers on book tie-ins:
“Hamilton” can even sell books. “Hamilton: The Revolution,” a behind-the-scenes book about the creation of the musical by Jeremy McCarter and Mr. Miranda, went on sale in April with a list price of $40. In less than two months, it sold more than 101,000 copies, according to Nielsen, and hit the No. 1 spot on the New York Times hardcover nonfiction best-seller list. (Other authors have benefited from “Hamilton” fever, too: Ron Chernow’s 2004 biography, which inspired Mr. Miranda to write the musical, has spent 33 weeks on the paperback best-seller list. This fall, Three Rivers Press will publish Jeff Wilser’s self-help book “Alexander Hamilton’s Guide to Life.”)
Here is the Michael Paulson and David Gelles NYT piece, it has much more of interest on the economics of the show.
What I’ve been reading
1. Tom Bissell, Apostle: Travels Among the Tombs of the Twelve. Fun, engaging, and informative, worthy of the “best of the year non-fiction” list.
2. China Miéville, Embassytown. The first of his novels that has clicked with me, perhaps because it is the one that comes closest to being a true novel of ideas, Heideggerian ideas in this case. A new prophecy is needed, and the nature of the new prophecy, like the old, will be shaped by language. Just accept that upon your first reading you won’t enjoy the first one hundred pages and you should at some point go back and read them again.
3. Yuri Herrara, Signs Preceding the End of the World. Sometimes considered Mexico’s greatest active writer, this novella draws upon the Juan Rulfo-Dante-Dia de los muertos tradition to create a convincing moral universe in 128 pages. I find this more vivid and arresting than Cormac McCarthy’s treatment of the other side of the border.
4. The Gene: An Intimate History, by Siddhartha Mukherjee. This book filled in a number of gaps in my knowledge, plus it is engaging to read. Overall it confirmed my impression of major advances in the science, but not matched by many medical products for general use.
The other books I read weren’t as good as these.
*Dante: The Story of His Life*
…Dante’s fame as a necromancer is also in a certain sense documented.
Such notoriety shouldn’t be surprising. For one thing, he had a reputation as an expert in astrology, and we know that this discipline could easily spill over into magical and necromantic practices. And then, above all, he was famous after the publication of Inferno for having descended live into the realms of the afterlife and for having encountered devils there, the souls of the damned, and having spoken to them. It must have been a rumor widely spread and also disturbing. It seems, according to Boccaccio, that the women who used to pass him in the street would say to each other: Look, “he who goes into Hell, and returns whenever he likes, and brings back news of those who are down there…”
That is from the new Dante biography by Marco Santagata, Belknap Press at Harvard, definitely recommended, it will make my best non-fiction of the year list for sure.