[lit-ideas] tuesday Review
- From: Paul Stone <pas@xxxxxxxx>
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Wed, 19 Apr 2006 13:15:15 -0400
Dan Brown -- The Da Vinci Code
I have the picture book edition. I thought it was nice as a photographic
guide, but really, there were a lot more pics than were needed. Who cares
what Pope whomever looked like in a drawing. The art was cool. The
places/buildings were neat, but they must have shown that albino's pain
belt AT LEAST 5 times in various pictures.
Now... that said, the overuse of the pics, the very fact that there IS a
picture book, a forthcoming movie, a lawsuit etc is telling of this book. I
found it to be a real page-turner but not for any good reason. It was very
well put together, but in a rather sterile sense. This book is not riveting
unless you've lived in a cave for your whole life. Almost EVERY 'surprise'
was expected by the reader. I kept reading basically to SEE if there would
be any surprises. There weren't. After the first 4 or 5 'revelations', I
began to deliberately guess the most obvious solution to everything and I
was never wrong. And the ending was basically nothing. NOTHING, to speak
of, happened in the last 50 pages.
Now, in case you get the impression I hated this book, don't. I didn't hate
it. I rather enjoyed it, but I don't really know why. Perhaps it was in a
guilty way, the knowledge that what seemed like common knowledge to me
perhaps isn't. Maybe THAT's why it's so bloody popular with everyone. It's
got enough science to interest people who dabble in science, religion for
Theologians, art for art buffs etc. It's got a bit of everything.
But it doesn't really give me anything palpable. There were no new words.
There were no 'oh, that's pretty cool' moments for me. It was a bunch of
sparks of prodigiousness with no follow-through. I'm just really glad that
I knew NOTHING about the book before reading it. It would have been even
LESS interesting if I had. The thing is... it's a work of fiction that is
not presented as such and the conspiracy nuts just love that. I read that,
apart from the RCC, both the Opus Dei AND some albino organization (I'm NOT
kidding) are both upset about the popularity of this book and their
respective depictions.
In the end, it's abundantly clear why it's an extremely popular
'best-seller'. That's what it's designed to be -- from cover to cover. ALL
cliches are there. Stylistically, almost every chapter ends with a batman
moment "tune in, next time, same da vinci time, same da vinci channel"
where he leaves you hanging for exactly the time it takes to turn the page.
Once again, the short chapters of 3 or 4 pages makes it quite possible to
read this whole book in the bathroom and not lose any congruity. Brown sure
covered his bases.
It's extremely well researched, but is presented as such and because of
this, a lot of silly people think that the opus dei DOES all these
under-handed things that Brown puts on their plate. From interviews I've
seen/read since reading it, it is very evident that a ton of people
actually think this book is non-fiction. For those people, I suggest
reading "the Celestine Prophecy" and the other books in the "james
redfield" oeuvre. Now THEY are really believable (rolls eyes). If you want
a genuinely interesting book, written with a similar type of yarn, but in a
much better 'style', I recommend Philip Kerr's "Dark Matter: The Private
Life of Sir Isaac Newton"
So, in closing, I suppose I would have to rate this as an enjoyable
experience -- unfortunately, not for the reasons that Brown tried to write
the book.
Paul
##########
Paul Stone
pas@xxxxxxxx
Kingsville, ON, Canada
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