Discovering the Universe with Aristotle and Dante: A Review

Aristotle and Dante discover the secrets of the universe. I have been putting off buying this book for a while. Yeah, I kind of say that a lot.

I don’t know why I keep putting off buying books. I always end up loving the shit out of the books I’d put off buying. Haven’t I learned enough?

Well, I still don’t know. I’d like to say yes, though.

Well. This book. Umm. The title kind of made me think it would be one of those philosophy books that are swamped with all those funny and weird and perplexing and complex and heavy and just generally not-my-thing theories of the planet and stuff.

Well, that was idiotic. Again, I would like to stress I don’t know why I put off buying completely gorgeous novels.

Obviously I loved this book. It was just so full of heart. There were times it ripped my heart into tiny big shards, times when my heart expanded and stretched and kept expanding forever, times when something decided to squish and pinch it in the best possible way, and times when something felt like it would puncture the surface and have the blood spilling out.

Okay, that one's too coarse and graphic, I guess, but you get the feeling.

This book is beautiful. 

It was not really any work to feel this way if you read the book, I think. If you read how Dante was always so kind and helpful and charming, how he went to extend a hand (literally) to Ari to help him learn swimming. If you read how Ari was unhappy and miserable and caged and angry and didn’t want someone’s help but let Dante help him anyway because he was also thoughtful and decent and kind. 

Kindness. I think both of them had that in copious amount, so much so that it almost feels like they were taking away from other people’s share of it (well, it’d explain why so many people don’t know how to be kind). That kind of kindness was what made them so endearing. So unreal-but-real. 

Their friendship grew so swiftly and heartwarmingly, you could almost taste the pain and hurt and conflict and confusion and love they felt for each other and their family through their unseen actions and uncharted faces and  unheard words.

Another secret of the universe: Sometimes pain was like a storm that came out of nowhere.

Benjamin’s way with words is kind of simple, plain, charming, extraordinary. The sentences are short and pithy but hit you like a dart into the perfect point. The pages are suffused with dialogues that are just soulful and poignant and meaningful and good. The kind that makes you want to believe in them.

He deftly and brilliantly wove the issues of sexuality and race and how that fit into your identity, how to make them fit into your identity, and then how to make yourself be okay with that self-discovered identity.

"Were you scared?" he asked.

"No." "

I was."

"So?"

And there was quite a bit of discovery and revelation. Well, that part is typical of all YA coming-of-age stories, though not everyone manages to execute it so well. The story was plotted in the eighties, and it was that time when being a Mexican and a homosexual teen - neither weren’t treated too nicely. It was a time fraught with worn-out, imposing and narrow-minded prejudices and unfair, age-old judgments thrown at anyone who was different. Not that it’s totally disappeared now. But here Benjamin spoke of a time when television and mobile phones were not the toys kids would wake up to in the morning. It was both good and bad. And Aristotle and Dante, through two summers and one junior year, explored as much about themselves as about what it was to be in that world, in that time.

I got to thinking poems were like people. Some people you got right off the bat. Some people you just didn’t get – and never would get.

And both sets of parents. God bless them. If I had to draw models of perfect, ideal parents, it would be them. Not that they were perfect all the time. But that they understood that they weren’t – and that’s a lot, I think. That's...enough, really.

I liked that the parents had their own stories to tell, their own tale of the gruesome Vietnam war that still ravaged their souls, their tale of loss and grief that eventually eclipsed the life of their child, but also how they dealt with all of those together slowly, as a family. I liked how - subverting the normal teenage experience where you gradually drift apart from your parents, suppressed by the rift sprouting glaringly between you, created by their lack of communication and understanding, where you kind of already know without knowing that you would drift apart from your parents - Ari grew to meet them halfway and truly understand them, learnt to love their silences and tacitness as well as their more verbose, story-telling moments, his mother's affectionate parting of his hair, his father's quiet way of thinking.

And I really liked Dante's parents, and the causal camaraderie between them and their only child, wrapped up in the onslaught of familial love and understanding, as if it actually is quite easy to be the friend your child needs you to be, wants you to be. It’s a beautiful arc of two boys growing from pre-puberty children to post-puberty adolescents on the brink of adulthood.

“We don’t always make the right decisions, Ari. We do the best we can.”

So yeah, obviously I loved the book.

But then, it felt so much more than that. Just a book. 

I mean, okay, so right in the middle of it, I had this fleeting thought: That it’s not real. Which is weird because it’s not like I didn’t know it wasn’t. It’s not like I am an illusionary junkie who thinks all the stories are true, as Will says it. I know it’s all fiction, the stories, the characters.

But. Also. I know why I had that thought at that exact moment. Because Ari was telling his mother, “I didn’t know I could love you this much.” I thought that was the sweetest, kindest, and just the loveliest thing to say. To anyone. But maybe more to your parents.

So, I had this fleeting thought that Ari and Dante are not real. Like, they can’t be real. But it only pressed on my mind for a few seconds before vanishing. It was like a flicker. Came and went, both very quickly. 

By the end of the book, I couldn't believe there was even a flicker, because suddenly I could hardly stop myself from diving into the pages of the book and haul Ari and Dante out of them right by their shirt collars. They were the realest people in the world by then. I swear.

I guess after reading each book, the characters become part of your world, either the waking world or just your faraway place where this reality doesn’t invade. But with this book, somehow, they became more than just characters. They felt very much solid. Like some superstars who you can’t touch but at least you know they exist on the same axis of reality.

I wish they did, though. Ari and Dante, instead of being stuck on a parallel reality. Our world could use more of them. 

To be careful with people and with words is a rare and beautiful thing.