I don’t usually believe in the concept of Satan, but Dan Brown selling 50 gazillion copies of a book that reads like something John Grisham would write during a bad acid trip in the Vatican almost makes me reconsider- Brown not only sold his soul to get this success but had a damned good broker. The book itself is lame- I’ve seen more subtle exposition in thrice translated entertainment unit assembly instructions, the characters are about as fleshed out as Karen Carpenter during Lent and anybody who isn’t familiar with the “Jesus and Mary Magdalene had theyselfs a baby” lore apparently hasn’t read much beyond the Left Behind series by way of Christian mysticicsm and history- the book is in a word, crap. But what’s really pissing me off is the fucking industry that is revolving around this piece of ordure:
—The History Channel seems to have forgotten their primary mission (i.e. to recycle public domain Holocaust and Nazi rally footage into yet more forgettable schlockumentaries [The Dental Work of the Third Reich: Part VII- Hermann Göring’s Bicuspids) in their zeal to make one documentary per page for the damned thing
—PBS is reairing everything they’ve ever done on da Vinci and even introducing them with how they relate to the Code
—at book megastores there are literally entire sections devoted to this book (*Da Vinci Code, Illustrated Da Vinci Code, World of Da Vinci Code, Scratch n’ Sniff Da Vinci Code, *etc.) and the dozens of related books both pro and anti
—even Wal-Mart has several related books and videos
and people are reading this stuff who I would wager gonads to pesos have never even heard of Umberto Eco and wouldn’t go anywhere near really inspired historical fiction (Neal Stephenson’s Quicksilver for example) or even far more interesting re-writes of Jesus (Kazantzakis or even Robert Graves’s King Jesus). What in hell is the appeal of this book and why won’t it just die? And mroe importantly, how can I cash in? (The DiCaprio Code perhaps, or The Michelangelo Message- does the Sistine Chapel ceiling really reveal that every Pope since Gregory the Great is actually a direct descendant of a time travelling nun named Verna and a half-space alien clone of the Apostle Peter… it’s all in Adam’s navel).
I want to write a book called “The The Da Vince Code Code” in which it is revealed that anagramming various sentences in the book indicate that Dan Brown is actually paid off by Prilosec to make the bile rise in our esophogi.
Haven’t read the book (though I’d probably spring for a copy of Scratch ‘n’ Sniff Da Vinci Code), but I very much enjoyed the rant. “I’ve seen more subtle exposition in thrice translated entertainment unit assembly instructions”–I’ll be stealing that, sufficiently paraphrased, of course, to avoid law suits.
Well, if you think guys who can write are annoying, feat your eyes on a novel by somebody who can’t. And that somebody is Dan Brown.
IF YOU READ ONLY ONE BOOK THIS YEAR…
The Da Vinci Code doesn’t count. Awful, awful book. Bad in small ways, bad in big ways. Trite plot, stupid details, cliches up the wazoo.
Easter dinner at my mother’s was eaten in front of the tv so we could watch “The real DaVinci code” To my extreme delight, the presenter wandered around the world finding and explaining all the ways the book was completely fiction.
Amusing, that.
It however makes me worry. I read Holy Blood, Holy Grail 25 years or so ago. Does this mean that some novelist is going to pick up Chariots of the Gods or The Spaceships of Ezekiel sometime down the road and turn it into a bestselling novel that provokes this sort of insanity? Or, God forbid, The Sirius Mystery!? (I’m doggone afraid of what they might turn that one into!)
But hey, you could always publish a scholarly tome about the secret symbolism in Donatello’s work!
Oh, I’ll admit that Eco can write, and even if I was annoyed sometimes, I enjoyed his stuff. He requires a little more effort to read than I enjoy putting forth, I guess–I discovered him when I was in grad school, slogging through the likes of Hegel and Heidegger, and I wanted my “for fun” reading to be a little less challenging. I had become a bit of a lazy reader by the time I came across Eco. Also, I was deeply into Michel Foucault when I read Foucault’s Pendulum, and was disappointed to discover that it referred to a different Foucault!
Still, lazy reader though I may be, I rarely read anything as best-selling as The Da Vinci Code. If I read it, it will be so that I know what my teenaged students are talking about when they boast of having read it.
Grrr, grrr, grrr, grrr! I HATEThe Da Vinci Code. Thank you, Sampiro. Holy Blood, Holy Grail has been enjoying a resurgence in popularity, too. We keep selling out of it at work. Bleh.
Terrible writing, terrible characters, a painfully thin plot, bad research, and it’s inspiring thousands of tinfoil-hatters. Yesterday, someone leaving the bookstore where I work said very loudly, 'Yeah, you should really read The Da Vinci Code. It’s pissing off the Catholic Church because they don’t want anyone to know that Jesus was married.".
:rolleyes:
Grrr.
That’s fair. I’m not criticizing you for not liking it. I’m just saying at least the man can write, and Dan Brown can’t. He doesn’t ask you to put for any effort, though, I’ll give you that.
I found * The DaVinci Code * mildly entertaining, but mediocre. On the other hand, * Deception Point *, also by Brown, kept me interested enough to read it cover to cover without a break.
