DaVinci Code - so sorry, but here we go again. *SPOILERS*

Cafe Society
1

Just finished reading it, and my overall impression of it is…eh, not bad. It’s like Umberto Eco Lite. Good, well-paced, rousing tale, but all the profound controversy over it is, IMHO, utterly unjustified. I mean, after all, for such a profound mystery, the two main characters unravelled it pretty fucking fast.

Several things bugged me.

First, most of the linguistic and etymological profundities Brown shared (sinister coming from Latin for the left side, being symbolically connected to the feminine side, etc.) just weren’t all that obscure. Pretty common knowledge, in fact.

Second, the level of complexity of the clues along the trail were far more fit for an old SierraQuest video game than the greatest mystery of the Western World. Mirrored English script? Anagrams, for God’s sake? And the final mystery, the code to the second cryptex (about the Rosy orb and seeded womb) was unbelievably easy. I figured out the puzzle as soon as the computer spit out the “Isaac Newton” clue. The symmetry of the apple symbolism (on many levels…apples are taxonomically related to roses, being members of Rosaceae, with five petals, yadda yadda yadda) was just too ripe (pardon the expression) not to be the truth.

Third, the history as presented was thoroughly tampered with. I know, not surprising for a work of fiction, but I would have thought that with the veneer of authenticity specifically asserted in the beginning of the book, Brown would have been more careful how he bent the facts. The hinge around which the entire story revolves, that the Templars “most definitely found something” during their dig at the Temple of Herod, appears to be fabrication. Every history of the Order I’ve ever read states that either nothing is known about the Templar dig, or that they quit after a decade in frustration. Also, while I can certainly buy that Urban III and King Phillipe were conniving, desperate bastards, I have a hard time believing that their motivations arose from anything deeper than the fact that the Templars were in fact richer than either the Vatican or the Throne at the time of their rather diabolical decaptitating strike. You’ll have to forgive me for that. I also recently giggled my way through Shlain’s absurd and unconvincing The Alphabet and the Goddess, so perhaps I’m not in the “mood” to listen favorably to how femininity has been ruthlessly and intentionally suppressed for millennia.

Fourth, and perhaps this is just me, since I’m fascinated with religious symbolism myself, but the whole secret of the Grail wasn’t all that tough to figure out, and after that, it was just a matter of satisfying my curiosity about how the story would end. As soon as Brown started talking about the “chalice” being a symbol for something else, my little theological mind pinged, “Aha! Chalice! Cup! Vagina! Either 1) Jesus was a chick, or 2) Jesus got somebody pregnant.”

Ding. Ding. Ding.

Then I went back to thinking about vaginas for a minute.

One little bit of playfulness I did rather enjoy came at the end of the book, however. When Marie and Langdon were discussing the Grail, Marie, tolerantly amused, asks, “Why is it that men simply cannot let the Grail rest?” This is amusing on several levels. It’s a veiled reference to male sexuality. Why can’t men stop chasing the “Grail,” or the female genitalia? Also, it’s a doubly veiled reference to ancient symbolism, and I have a hard time believing that two people so steeped in ancient magical lore as the female keeper of the Grail and the Harvard symbologist who just tracked it down are not aware of the ultimate male mystical role. We are represented by the sword…the blade…the phallus. We are that which seeks to penetrate the female veil of mystery, that which thrusts until the mystery lay exposed before us.

And if the Grail is the ultimate female mystery, then all us horny males must figure it’s the ultimate mystical and metaphorical fuck. That’s why men will never let the Grail rest.

2

Dan Brown can’t write. Period. I’ve read both Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, and had to struggle through terrible, cliched text, outlandish plot devices, and ridiculously flat characterization to reach the end (actually, I don’t think I even finished Angels). Just painfully bad writing. Writing so bad that it removes your suspension of disbelief all the time.

I mean, I recall in one of the stories you have a British reporter, working for the BBC, who’s goal in life (while working for the BBC, mind you) is to win a Pulitzer Prize. Yeah, ok. Not to mention he wants to be as famous as Dan Rather or Peter Jennings (don’t the English have their own famouns TV anchorpeople?). To me, this just shows me Dan Brown thinks his audience are complete and utter morons, but it also took me out of the book to say to myself “WTF, does the author know nothing?”

Second, he uses one of the lamest writing devices available - explain something to the reader by forcing it through one character talking to another. I mean, first off, you don’t have to explain every little thing to your audience. Believe it or not, they can probably get a general gist of the thing through normal dialogue and actions within the story. Instead, Brown makes forced dialogue, where one person brings up a subject and the other goes “Huh?” and the first person then gives a dictionary-like explanation. What’s worse, on a few occasions the person who asked the “Huh?” clearly should have known what the hell it was in the freakin’ first place. Just weak. Weak, weak writing.

Plenty of authors are bad. So why do I hold a certain high level of vitriol towards Dan Brown? Because they looked promising, and I love books with these kind of mysterious, arcane themes. And the ideas, the story in its framework, could have been super cool But these are nothing but hack jobs with some research thrown in. I wouldn’t put Dan Brown on the same planet as Umberto Eco - he doesn’t deserve that proximity.

3

Agreed on the quality of writing–to me, the book read (I use “read” loosely–I listened to the Audio Book) as though it were intended to be a film aimed at the same people who adapt Clancy or Grisham. One of the opening chapters described Langdon as “Harrison Ford in Harris tweed”–I inwardly groaned when I realized he was already casting the film.

I found that Sofie quickly became one-dimensional. Rexnervous is right; although she started as a sophisticated cryptographer, she was soon reduced to a “huh” to carry on Brown’s exposition on why the Catholic Church has been lying to us for centuries.

As a Catholic, I found the whole grail/chalice thing correct, but completely misinterpreted. Take, for example, the Seal of Solomon discussion at the end of the novel. Brown postulates that the Seal is supposed to represent the intersection of the male and the female. This is correct only in the sense that there’s a traditional theological view (I don’t know if Jews hold it, but Catholics do) that God is “male” and his creation is “female” in nature. The Seal of Solomon represents the intersection of heaven and earth–or, if you will, the male and the female. IIRC, many cultures believe that humanity’s purpose is to make Earth into a reflection of heaven: i.e., the Egyptians patterned the pyramids after the stars in Orion’s belt in the hope of duplicating the heavens above. And even Christianity acknowledges this practice in the Lord’s Prayer: “Thy will be done on Earth as it is in heaven.”

The other ironic thing is that the Church actually has, in recent years, been pushing the idea of the divine existing in sexual union. (Really…check out John Paul II’s Theology of the Body for more on this.) The short of it is that the coupling of the male and female brings heaven and Earth together by opening the couple to new life. Although the couple can produce a physical body, God enters the marital act by infusing the new life with a soul. This perspective has growing popularity in the Church–it just hasn’t reached the public eye yet, which is probably why Brown is convinced that the Church is controlled by a bunch of 1950s nuns who believe anything remotely sexual is evil.

4

I agree with rexnervous. I thought the plot was quite interesting, but Dan Brown is just a poor writer. After I read it I found out that most of the things aren’t true anyway- Mary probably isn’t in the Last Supper, for example. The Priory never existed, etc. Putting it in perspective it was pretty disappointing.

5

I’m apparently not as demanding a reader as you guys. I thought Da Vinci Code was quite a fast-paced read and I enjoyed it thoroughly. I didn’t know the particulars of the history he described, but I assumed it was mostly made up or exaggerated. But then I didn’t expect a scholarly work I just wasnted something to read in a couple days. And I’m looking forward to reading more of his stuff.

6

Before reading more than a few pages, I could tell Dan Brown was not only a hack but a STUPID hack.

Pssst… Dan? There’s no such thing as a professor of “symbolism.” There’s this whole field called SEMIOTICS! Ever heard of it? Didn’t think so.

Sigh…

7

FWIW, my reaction was some combination of Ogre’s (the OP) and DaddyTimesTwo’s. I read it for entertainment, and I was entertained. If I had been reading more critically, I might well have had a significantly lower opinion. As it was, I recognized that a certain amount of BS was being slung and kind of imagined the novel as taking place on a parallel Earth where all of that stuff could be true, for the sake of the story.

8

I gave up reading this book after a few pages. The reason was his statement that Interpol know where every hotel guest and tourist is staying, every night, anywhere in Europe. Utter Bull-S**t. I thought that if he was wrong about a simple fact as that, the rest of the book will be stuffed full on inaccuaracies and not worth reading.

9

Thank you, Ogre! I, myself, am a hardcore fan of the subject, but in the factual, researched ( with this or that measure of success), bks of Paigent et al, Gardner, Hancock etc.
I pondered over buying and reading the bk, or not. Now even buying it, I’ll know my way thru.

10

I mentioned this in an earlier thread when the book first came out. I saw Dan Brown give a fairly interesting talk earlier this year about ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ and when he took questions some kid asked, “Who is the widow’s son?” Brown told him he was only the third person in the country to pick up on this and ask him about it.

There is a ‘secret code’ hidden on the flapjacket of the hardcover edition of the book…or is it ‘jacketflap?’ Anyway, look on the inside front- and back-cover of the book…the part that gives a summary of the story, about the author, blah blah blah. If you have good enough eyes you may be able to make out that some of the letters are barely…and I mean, barely…of a larger font than the rest of the jacket. The larger letter spell out a phrase…Brown told me it has something to do with the Masons…the subject of his next book.

For what it’s worth…

11

Actually, this is one of the things that I thought Brown got correct (if incomplete.) The Star of David is a surpassingly ancient symbol that may literally be the world’s first pornographic doodle. It literally is supposed to be a graphic representation of a penis penetrating a vagina. The holy union of male and female principles indeed being “done on earth as it is in heaven.”

The idea of God being male and his creation being female has always rung false to me on a basic symbolic level. It would seem from the Christian viewpoint that God is the male principle, and if there’s a cosmic symmetry as described in the Bible, then he should be paired with a female principle, and the product of their union would be creation. It seems that the female half is conspicuously absent, and that “done on earth as it is in heaven” thing isn’t really accurate.

What appeals to me more (strictly from a perspective of narrative completeness…I’m an atheist) is the Jewish Kaballist take on matters. They, like the Christians, actually believe in a triune Godhead. Their lore may, in fact, be where the early church go the idea for a Three-in-one deity. Anyway, the three heads of the Kaballistic YHWH are Kether, or God as the Source…the Prime Mover, Chokhmah, or God as the male, and Binah, God as female. In the cosmic flow of power from the highest plane of creation (Kether) to the lowest (Malkut, or our material plane), Kether provides the ultimate impetus, and the relationship between Chokhmah and Binah is the Primal Sex Act. It is that which gives rise to everything else.

Males are therefore symbolically connected with Chokhmah, the Fountain. We penetrate the female secrets. We literally part the veils of mystery that hold the dark (as in, secret, not evil) and holy Grail…the female Principle. We fertilize the female in an act that directly reflects the act of Divine Creation.

It’s a lovely concept, really. Pure symbolism, but lovely.

12

Oh, and the code in the jacket’s flap is there. I don’t think the font is larger. I think the letters are ever so slightly bolded.

The message is “There’s no help for the widow’s son.” (punctuation mine.)

13

I’m about 1/2 way through…I’ve read some of the conspiracy books about the Grail, so I was familiar with the ideas of this book…and after reading Cryptonomicon (and just finishing Quicksilver), the “codes” and cryptology of this book seem fit for grade school level.

It’s like reading a children’s book. The logic used by the main charachters to solve the various puzzles is absurdly simple, by thinking about a puzzle for 5 minutes, the solution always “pops” right up…there is no code breaking at all…just moments of divine inspiration.

If you want to read a book about code breaking, go read Cryptonomicon…if you want a book about Grail conspiracies, go read Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

DaVinci code is pathetic…I’ve never been more disappointed with a book.

14

I recommend highly the bk “Bloodline of the Holy Grail” by Laurence Gardner.

15

I just started reading the book. Didn’t pick up on the hidden code on the dust jacket (the proper term). And the part that gives the summary of the story is called the “anno” (short for annotation).

I am reading solely for enjoyment. If I had to critique the history and logic of every fiction book I read, it would cease to be enjoyment. And I can tell you that whatever historical facts have been altered or whatever plot devices have been used, it is because the publisher wants a bestseller .

I have worked in a particular aspect of the publishing business for over 10 years and to appeal to the masses and achieve a New York Times bestseller, you have to dumb down the books. To me, that does not make the book less appealing. Like I said, if I am reading a fiction book, I don’t really care about historical accuracy.

16

I can’t for the life of me understand the absurd popularity of this book. Michael Baigent, whose books read like a febrile JFK Conspiracy Theorist trying to solve the mystery of the second nail-man at the Crucifixion, at least keeps the same subject interesting (and for the exposition scenes he should have just cut and pasted Baigent outright).

Several plot problems I noticed (most of them spoilers):

-So Sophie and her brother are direct descendants of Jesus and the Magdalene- big flipping deal. It’s been 70 generations since the first century AD, so unless all of those generations were brother-sister marriages (which actually would have been an intriguing premise), the amount of divine DNA in their bodies would be a miniscule fraction of 1% of their composite genetics, besides which Jesus and Magdalene would by now have millions of descendants.

-Sophie’s grandfather, Sonnier, was 72 at the time of his death, which makes him generally too young for his biography. For starters, his granddaughter is in her early thirties, meaning he would have become a grandfather in his late 30s/very early 40s- that’s certainly possible, but it’s not very likely that a man who, along with his family, had devoted so much of his life to study and who loved him some sex rites would have only one child and that one born when he was around 20, said child then having a child around the same age. Also, Sonnier was said to have been active in intelligence during the WW2 resistance, which means he was an intelligence operative as a pre-pubescant child. Again, it’s remotely possible, but not likely.

-Cryptex- cool idea, but why not just put it in a highly protected database?

-Sonnier lives EXACTLY long enough to leave garbled cryptic messages in his own blood, one of which makes the man he wants to help his granddaughter the most obvious suspect. I think Brown wrote that whole chapter after 3:00 a.m. the night before his manuscript was due.

-The villain (I can’t remember his name, but he’s the British lord living in France) reminds me of Graham Chapman’s bunny hugging “and because I’m soooo evil, you’re going to die the slow way” character from MP. The albino monk from Opus Dei was also like a Monty Python character gone amuk.

This was one of those books I had listed on half.com before I was even finished with it. Truly dreadful and I can’t understand at all why it’s achieved this degree of success when the works of Eco don’t sell nearly as many copies and so many really really good cloak/dagger/conspiracy theory books get sent to the discount bin.

17

My two cents:

This would have made a great graphic novel (not up to, say, Gaiman’s level of story telling, but entertaining none the less).

As the novel that dominates the top spot of the best seller list of the NYTimes for weeks on end, welcome to the MTV generation’s idea of good fiction.

18

The most glaring flaw in the book for me was the “DaVinci lock”–if you remember it was a locked box where, unless you dialed the combination juuuuuust right, a vial of vinegar would shatter and dissolve the paper that was wrapped around it, right?

That would be a spiffy threat in the 15th century. But today, not so much*. Y’take the box. You put it in the freezer. You wait 2, 3 hours. You smash the box open. The glass shatters. A rock-solid tube of vinegar thumps to the bottom. You pick the paper out, being careful to not cut your fingers on the glass.

It took me about 4 seconds to figure that out. Why couldn’t the main characters? I hate “idiot plots” (a plot that only works because the main characters are idiots)

Fenris

*actually it wouldn’t have been all that great a threat in the 15th century either. Climb to one of the higher Italian alps. You don’t have to go to the top, just to where the permafrost starts. Bury the thing for a day or so. Same thing.

19

Wow… you people are picky. Take the book for what it is worth.
It is not meant to be a history lesson. It is a fun fiction book most likely meant to be made into a movie.

It was fun, I am glad I read it.
If anything, this book has popped into the hands of people who do not regularly read books, and are now more interested in reading because it was fun. That is a good thing.

although… after I read Da Vinci Code, I read Angels & Demons and was very disappointed. I liked the first half of the book because of the subject matter, but after that it just got worse and worse, and was no longer fun to read.

20

This book came highly recommended by at least 6 people whom I thought had similar tastes to my own. The “it’s about art” was the promise that got me.

I agree with the naysayers–The Da Vinci Code is empty, superficial and not even a fun quick read. It’s not about art either.