Certainly the most memorable of Pendergast’s relatives to date has been his brother, Diogenes, who became the antihero of his own trilogy: Brimstone, Dance of Death, and Book of the Dead. (We had intended it to be a single book, but it basically “ran away” into something much bigger than we’d planned, not unlike the Castle Bravo thermonuclear test.) Diogenes first surfaces-if you can call it that-in our third Pendergast novel, Cabinet of Curiosities. I wrote a chapter in which Pendergast takes a mental journey through a purely intellectual reconstruction, a memory palace, of his childhood house. (Please don’t ask; read the book and you’ll understand what I mean.) As he walks down the upstairs corridor and passes his brother’s room, he observes that the door is locked and chained, and would always remain so. There was no reason for me to add this other than sheer perversity; I knew this tantalizing tidbit would set our readers frothing at the mouth. But as with so many things in our books, it essentially took on a life of its own. Once he’d trodden the boards, Diogenes refused to leave the stage; and we began adding increasingly frequent allusions to his dreadful past and shocking misdeeds. It wasn’t long until he demanded-and got-his own trilogy.
Doug
It was only through the introduction of his brother, Diogenes, into the series that Pendergast’s character reached completion. We conceived Diogenes as a twisted Mycroft Holmes, brilliant, perverse, refined, and utterly criminal. His name alludes back to two sources: the Diogenes Club of London, where Mycroft Holmes lived, and the Greek philosopher Diogenes himself. The real Diogenes was a cold, unforgiving fellow who wandered the streets of Athens by day with a lantern, searching for but never finding an honest man. When Alexander the Great paid Diogenes a visit and asked the reclining philosopher if there was anything he could do for him, Diogenes waved his hand and replied that he could step aside and cease blocking his sunlight.
This seemed a perfect name for our über-villain.
The two brothers complete each other: one a top FBI agent, the other a brilliant criminal. Between them, the date of a perfect crime and a challenge: stop me if you can.
Slowly, bit by bit, as we wrote the trilogy, the full dimensions of Aloysius Pendergast’s life began to emerge. It was as if he were finally revealing himself to us. By this time, Pendergast had become a real person to us-more real, in fact, than many flesh-and-blood people we know. Living with this strange and enigmatic man for so many years, spending hours with him every day, watching and recording his every movement, had turned him into a real human being. I am sure we’re not the first novelists who have had this experience, but it is certainly peculiar when it happens.
The really odd thing is, it turns out we don’t like Pendergast very much. He is cold, haughty, judgmental, and unforgiving. He himself likes very few people-and those he does like are not often aware of that fact, since he is so reticent with his feelings. There is a kind and gentle side to him, but it is deeply buried in the eternal snows of his personality. You could not have a jolly dinner with Pendergast, a casual conversation, a lighthearted exchange of pleasantries. You certainly could not “hoist a few” with him.
I am afraid Pendergast reciprocates these chilly feelings toward us. Pendergast finds me a bit dull, slow on the uptake, of conventional morality and habits. He would not care to visit my house, where the chaos of children would disturb his peace. He would find my conversation charmless and most of my friends idiotic, vapid, uncultured, and middle-class. He would despise my interests in the outdoors, skiing, horses, and boats. And he would be horrified at the fact that I live in a small town in rural Maine where there are no restaurants, theaters, concert halls, museums, or even a decent grocery. Pendergast and I have little in common beyond a love of fine food, wine, art, music, and the Italian language.
I daresay he wouldn’t like Linc much better. Certainly he would find Linc more congenial than I, wittier and more charming, the effect marred by an unfortunately low and vulgar turn of mind. He would find curious Linc’s acquisitiveness, as evidenced by his collections of rare pens and books. He would shake his head in dismay at Linc’s suburban lifestyle, the Mercedes and Range Rover in the garage, the Dalmatian in the backyard, and the neat flower-beds and manicured lawns of his New Jersey neighborhood. He would, however, enjoy Linc’s connoisseurship of green tea, and he would approve of both his library and his reclusive impulses, and no doubt they would have a great deal to talk about when the subject turned to Dr. Samuel Johnson and eighteenth-century English poetry.
Linc
Most of all, Pendergast would consider our obsessive chronicling of his life utterly useless and a colossal waste of time-not to mention annoyingly intrusive.
I should add that while we may not like Pendergast very much as a person (in the way that we like, say, Bill Smithback), we most certainly admire his mind and relish his eccentricities.
How better to conclude this portrait than with a transcription of the original version of the one and only “interview” I mentioned earlier on? It took place-we like to think-at Pendergast’s apartment in the Dakota, Central Park West and 72nd Street, New York City, on August 31, 2004.
Pendergast: Gentlemen, welcome. Would you care for a sherry? I have a fine Amontillado aging in a back room.
Child: Why, that would be very kind-
Preston: Linc, remember what we talked about…?
Child: [Sighs] No, thank you, Agent Pendergast.
Pendergast: As you wish. I hope we can keep this short. I have neither the time nor the inclination to bandy civilities with a couple of writers, even ones as distinguished as yourselves [mordant smile].
Preston: We’ll try to keep it short. Let me begin by asking a fairly simple question: why do you always wear a black suit?
Pendergast: That kind of vapid query is precisely why I eschew interviews.
Child: Agent Pendergast, a lot of our readers are curious about your background and the history of your family. Can you tell us something about your parents, your childhood and later education?
Pendergast: I would prefer to keep the questioning on a professional level. Suffice to say I was born and raised in New Orleans to an old family of French ancestry. After the loss of our family home by fire, in which my parents were killed, I attended Harvard University, from which I graduated summa cum laude in 1982.
Child: We never knew you went to Harvard.
Pendergast: There is much you two don’t know, despite all your pretensions to the contrary. And much you will never know.
Preston: What did you major in?
Pendergast: Anthropology.
Preston: That doesn’t seem like an obvious major for a future FBI agent.
Pendergast: On the contrary.
Child: You did graduate work, didn’t you?
Pendergast: Yes, at Oxford University. I have a dual PhD in classics and philosophy, and I took firsts in both.
Preston: And then, I believe, you went into the Special Forces? We’ve heard rumors that you were engaged in a number of black ops.
Pendergast: If I was, I could hardly be expected to discuss them, could I?
Child: Getting back to your childhood, we know the Pendergast mansion was burned by a mob. Why?
Pendergast: [Long pause] The Pendergast family was, shall we say, eccentric, and not at all popular with the local folk-but it was my great-aunt Cornelia who was the proximate cause.
Child: Cornelia? The one in the Mount Mercy Hospital for the Criminally Insane?