Inferno…

Bang has done for Dantes most famous poem something akin to what\nBaz Luhrmann did for Shakespeare in his 1996 film of Romeo and\nJuliet: updated the presentation of a classic for a contemporary\nsensibility without sacrificing its timelessness. Bang (The Bride\nof E) has preserved the feel and tempo of the originaland the many\nEnglish translations that readers will be familiar with: Stopped\nmid-motion in the middle/ Of what we call our life, I looked up and\nsaw no sky/ Only a dense cage of leaf, tree, and twig. I was lost,\nshe begins. She has, however, modernized the metaphors; where Dante\nlooked to the politics and culture of his contemporary Italy for\nallusions to illustrate his sense of faith and morality, Bang mines\nAmerican pop and high culture. Yes, traditionalists and scholars\nmay shriek upon seeing Eric Cartman (of South Park fame),\nsculptures by Rodin, John Wayne Gacy, and many others make\nanachronistic cameos in Bangs version of Hell, but this is still\nvery much Dantes underworld, updated so it pops on todays page. The\nresult is an epic both fresh and historical, scholarly and\nirreverent: Pope Satan, Pope Satan, Alley Oop! begins Canto VII\nwith a line in which Bang mines various previous translations of\nDante and the roots of the phrase Alley Oop in French gymnastics\nand a newspaper comic about a Stone Age traveling salesman from the\nkingdom of Moo who rode a dinosaur named Dinny, according to Bangs\ncomprehensive notes. This will be the Dante for the next\ngeneration. Includes illustrations by artist Henrik Drescher

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