Background
Aloysius Xingú Leng Pendergast was born circa 1960 and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. Pendergast retains his Southern manners and mellifluous Deep Southern accent. He studied Anthropology at Harvard University (graduating summa cum laude) and received a dual Doctor of Philosophy degree in Classics and Philosophy from Oxford University in England (which one of Oxford's component colleges he attended has never been specified).
Pendergast once served with the U.S. Special Forces.
A number of years before the series began, Pendergast was married to Helen Esterhazy Pendergast. She was presumed killed in a hunting accident, but reappears in the so-called Helen Trilogy.
Pendergast is generally described as being stoically aloof and eccentric, though his ineffable politeness and unerring intellect imbue him with an irresistible charm or enigmatic sense of danger if the occasion should call for it. Well-learned in many subjects, he converses easily with doctors, scientists, intellectuals, vagabonds, highly specialized masters of specific disciplines, and people of a wide variety of language and culture alike. He is a master of psychological manipulation, disguise, and improvisation.
Pendergast appreciates the finer things in life, including expensive cuisine and wines. Foods and drinks he enjoys include Château Pétrus wine, antipasto, green tea of only the purest and most spiritual kind, gelato, and steak tartare. He has a great distaste for opera. His interests encompass a wide variety of vastly differing walks of life, yet all focus on the enlightenment of the human mind, body, and soul. His cloistered and elegant habitat in the famed Dakota building of Manhattan, NY, has been described as being elegant yet sparsely furnished. It contains well-tended bonsai trees and a large waterfall cascading down one wall.
He spent a year in Tibet studying the deep meditative art of Chongg Ran, taught to him by the monks of the Gsalrig Chongg monastery.
Pendergast is polyglot, demonstrating mastery of French, Italian, Latin, Greek, and Cantonese, and appears semi-fluent in Mandarin. He also has some knowledge of Japanese.
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