Aristotle and Dante Discover the Secrets of the Universe, by Benjamin Sáenz, is a young adult novel about two middle class Mexican-American teenagers living in El Paso, Texas. It has won numerous awards, and is on the reading lists of many high schools. The book is well written, its extensive use of dialogue (both spoken and interior) believable and realistic. It is a moving story about growing up in the 1980s, and, especially, about the saving power of friendship.
Ari is 15 years old, the son of a kind but silent father who suffers from PTSD resulting from his active service in Vietnam, and a mother who teaches high school. Ari lives inside his own head. He speaks only when necessary. He is bright, but he acts tough and street-wise. He avoids others. He has no real enemies, but he also has no friends.
He is at a community pool -- alone, of course, and floating, because he can't swim --when another boy his age, Dante, approaches and tells him "I can teach you how to swim." Dante's father is an English professor. Dante is as open and optimistic as Ari is gloomy and closed off. He loves to read, to write -- and to talk. About anything and everything. The boys gradually become friends, despite every warning signal in Ari's brain telling him never to trust or open himself up to any human being outside his own family.
A year later, Dante has been hospitalized after being brutally assaulted by strangers. Dante's folks -- who by now consider Ari part of their own family -- talk to Ari at the hospital, hoping that Ari will continue to stand by Dante, will continue to be his friend. Ari tries to open up a bit with his friend's folks:
I looked at Mrs. Quintana and I looked at Sam. "Dante's my friend." I wanted to tell them that I'd never had a friend, not ever, not a real one. Until Dante. I wanted to tell them that I never knew that people like Dante existed in the world, people who looked at the stars, and knew the mysteries of water, and knew enough to know that birds belonged to the heavens and weren't meant to be shot down from their graceful flights by mean and stupid boys. I wanted to tell them that he had changed my life and that I would never be the same, not ever. And that somehow it felt like it was Dante who had saved my life and not the other way around. I wanted to tell them that he was the first human being aside from my mother who had ever made me want to talk about the things that scared me. I wanted to tell them so many things and yet I didn't have the words. So I just stupidly repeated myself. "Dante's my friend."
Everyone -- especially teenagers -- needs a friend. How their friendship affects the lives of both boys makes a story worth reading.
From all accounts, this book is highly popular among young people -- at least among those who read books. I suggest that adults -- especially parents -- might also want to give it a read.
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In 1985, he returned to school, and studied English and creative writing at the University of Texas at El Paso where he earned an MA degree in creative writing. He then spent a year at the University of Iowa as a PhD student in American literature. A year later, he was awarded a Stegner Fellowship. While at Stanford University under the guidance of Denise Levertov, he completed his first book of poems, Calendar of Dust, which won an American Book Award in 1992. He entered the PhD program at Stanford and continued his studies for two more years. Before completing his PhD, he moved back to the border and began teaching at the University of Texas at El Paso in the bilingual MFA program.
--Wikipedia
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