I just finished reading DaVinci Code tonight. I thought it was poorly written, and that’s coming from an engineer. How many times can we have a cliffhangerbreaktothenextchapterwhichhasnothingtodowiththecliffhanger happen in one book? Seemed very formulaic.
Anyway, I did enjoy reading it though and found the adventure to be cool, though the end was a copout IMHO.
So I feel like a moron now that I go back and read the various threads on this book from SDMB which universally donkey-punch those of us (me) that found the book to be at least a little thought provoking. I feel like tool now because I wasn’t smart enough to disregard all the historafiction while reading it.
I feel fairly educated but now I feel like the only guy on this message board that was roped in by this historafiction story that everyone else seems to have seen thru from the very begining.
Just noticed there’s alot of feel’s in that post. Maybe it’s a code! Leading to an underground arcade in Japan where 1000’s of kids are playing Street Fighter 4 right now!
I haven’t read the book but I thought the concept was pretty darn cool. Hell, if they could mess with Mad King Ludwig of Bavaria and Wagner into a weird werewolf mystery in Gabriel Knight II then I can live with someone having some fun with DaVinci. I can’t even blame a lot of people for taking it seriously given how many “Real DaVinci Code” programs have popped up in the media and even on “educational” channels like Discovery.
So don’t feel like a moron. Everybody gets suckered, has the wool pulled over their eyes, or is fooled at one point or another. Usually both. Take pride in the fact that you’re willing to admit to yourself that you were fooled and be more careful next time.
At least one of those was hosted by Tony Robinson (perhaps better known to this board as “Baldrick”). He not only thoroughly debunked the book, he discovered (revealed? surely this was already known, but it was the first I’d heard of it) that the “Priory of Sion” was invented in the 1950s by the guy who claimed to be its current leader (de Sède?) and a couple friends of his who made up the documents as a lark. Also, the priest’s “mysterious” wealth wasn’t—he got it selling indulgences and things of that nature, and the income is recorded in the church account books.
MGibson, the book’s concept is fine. Other authors have done really great stuff with it. I’m a fan of both Illuminatus! and Foucault’s Pendulum, and I think Brown stole from both of those.
The Da Vinci Code IS a page-turner. I took it out from the library because I was so entertained by the way Dopers eviscerated it, and I was done with it in less than a week. I made a list of the worst bits of writing; it was like reading an Ed Wood movie for me.
Stinkpalm, many people here, myself include, loathe the book because:
*The writing is horrible. Could he have said “sacred feminine” a few more times, please? Seven times a page did not drive the point home for me.
*Brown’s attempts, often successful, to convince people that there are any facts in the book beyond “Da Vinci painted.”
*The factual errors, which are especially jarring in light of Brown’s claims and indicate he didn’t do any real research.
That stuff makes no difference to most people reading the book. That doesn’t really bother me; stupid movies often make a lot of money too, and I’m at peace with the fact that I’m kind of a snob. What does annoy me is the way some people have swallowed Brown’s ideas, both because they are not discriminating enough to know better, and because he pulled much of it out of his ass. None of this makes you an idiot. Posters to some of those threads say they were entertained by it and it’s not hard to see why. What would make you an idiot is if you said the conspiracy in the book was real.
There was some very reptitive writing in there. Basically anything that pointed up in the world was really a symbol of my cock and anything that pointed down was a symbol of something called a “vagina”. Chevrons? Generals stars date back to the pagan pentacles? WORD!
I was getting bored with the constant reference to “sacred feminine” me-self. Once he started talking about how catholic church entry ways were made to look like vaginas i kind of tuned out to the symbolism references because he seemed to be making them up as he went along.
I guess the thing that I started buying in to was the Grail as Christs bloodline, Mary Mag stuff. It sounded feasible, but I’m not religious nor am I a historian so I was probably the perfect sucker.
By the time Danny Boy was dragging the Virgin $#@!@ Mary as a representation of the secret hidden subversive female power, the stretches had outstretched the flexibility of my best reality-suspension and it was snapping back on me every page.
The end was indeed a rip-off. If you’re gonna posit the Holy Roman Catholic Church as the evil antithesis for the overwhelming majority of your book, don’t be sliding out of it in the end chapters to say “Well, umm, they are, actually, but this time it’s not their fault or their doing, nor is it time yet, so we’re bringing in a ringer to get defeated instead and no you don’t get to see the whole world going ‘Holy Shit’ or read of the collapse of the Evil Christian Empire, and in fact nothing changes”.
I hate that shit. It’s as bad as “Oh, all the stuff since page 3 when the main character sat down in the chair for awhile is all a dream so I don’t have to wrap up loose ends, nanny nanny naah naah”
Sounds to me like you got the best of both worlds: you bought into the ideas enough that you could enjoy the book while you were reading it; then afterwards you knew/learned enough not to take them seriously as though they had anything to do with reality.
Having started one of the pit threads myself, I have to say my problem wasn’t with thinking people who enjoyed it were idiots so much as the people who believed it, and the pandering industry that sprang up around it. And of course, the terrible writing, including the exposition that was absolutely brilliantly parodied by Mariemarie in this post. And I think that Eve really needs to develop her Tom of Finland Code.
I found it entertaining, but agree that it’s poorly written and was sorely in need of extensive editing. I’m still planning to see the movie next year, though.
