The Dan Brown Code

by Posted on

I real­ly hate being a lit­er­ary snob. For the most part, I think that hav­ing a dis­crim­i­nat­ing mind does not serve me. It does not make me hap­pi­er to point out the flaws in oth­er peo­ple’s work; in fact, I’m much hap­pi­er when I can just sit back and enjoy some­thing that con­tains flaws galore.

*The Da Vin­ci Code* made it very dif­fi­cult. First of all, Dan Brown was deal­ing with heady stuff: cryp­tog­ra­phy and reli­gion. That right there rais­es the bar, engag­ing the log­i­cal, ana­lyt­i­cal side of me, which makes it hard to ignore laps­es in log­ic and sense.

I can’t rec­om­mend this book, as much as I’d like to. it cov­ers great mate­r­i­al: secret soci­eties and the truth behind the lies we’ve all been told, inter­pre­ta­tion of hid­den clues in famous works of art: this is rich stuff. Too rich for a writer who seems to lum­ber through with a con­stant declar­a­tive tone, too much expo­si­tion, shal­low char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, and pre­dictable plot twists.

OK, how did the New York Times Book Review call this «exhil­a­rat­ing­ly brainy»? I’d call this book an insult to the intel­li­gence of the aver­age read­er. All of the clues that left the char­ac­ters scratch­ing their heads were painful­ly obvi­ous. The twists and turns were vis­i­ble far in advance, and the few sur­pris­es did­n’t make sense. And the reli­gious truths unveiled were all yes­ter­day’s news.

Although this is where I give Dan Brown some slack. He opens a forum for a lot of reli­gious ideas that I don’t think are com­mon­ly avail­able to the mass­es. Maybe this is an impor­tant book because peo­ple who nor­mal­ly don’t chal­lenge them­selves with books with big words or lit­er­ary pre­tense can be exposed to ques­tions about what pre-Con­stan­tin­ian Chris­tian­i­ty was about, and can hear of the Tem­plars and the Sacred Fem­i­nine in a con­text that does­n’t too strong­ly threat­en their already-held reli­gious ideas. Sure, the Rec­tor of *my* church has been known to quote the Gospel of Mary Mag­da­lene in the ser­mon, but I don’t think that’s ter­ri­bly com­mon around America.

So as éli­tist as it makes me, I’ll back off and say that maybe this is an impor­tant book to have the pop­u­lar­i­ty it enjoys, even if I can’t rec­om­mend it to umm­mm… smart peo­ple. (Ouch, it hurt to say that)

Published by splicer

4 Replies to “The Dan Brown Code”

  2. He opens a forum for a lot
    >He opens a forum for a lot of reli­gious ideas that I don’t think are com­mon­ly avail­able to the mass­es. Maybe this is an impor­tant book because peo­ple who nor­mal­ly don’t chal­lenge them­selves with books with big words or lit­er­ary pre­tense can be exposed to ques­tions about what pre-Con­stan­tin­ian Chris­tian­i­ty was about, and can hear of the Tem­plars and the Sacred Fem­i­nine in a con­text that does­n’t too strong­ly threat­en their already-held reli­gious ideas.

    Most Chris­tians, even learned Chris­tians, haven’t heard all that stuff.

    Dude, can you read a book and just enjoy it as enter­tain­ment? You read comics for chrissakes. 🙂

    1. Most comic­books I read are
      Most comic­books I read are more inter­est­ing and intel­lec­tu­al­ly chal­leng­ing than most of what’s out there on the fic­tion best­seller lists.

      And yeah, I can just enjoy stuff as enter­tain­ment, but the enter­tain­ment val­ue gets dimin­ished when it’s a mur­dermys­tery that I can sec­ond-guess at every turn. Blows the whole “mys­tery” angle for me, which is impor­tant to the genre.

      But to your first point, yeah, that’s where I give Brown cred­it. He’s made some of this eso­ter­i­ca acces­si­ble to the mass­es. That’s pret­ty cool. Espe­cial­ly if some peo­ple take it seri­ous­ly enough do inves­ti­gate fur­ther. I’m down with that.