Salon.com > Dan Brown

Why we love bad writing

Wed, 15 Dec 2010 01:20:00 +0000

Forget peace on earth -- there won't even be peace among the bookshelves after the salvo against popular fiction launched in the pages of the Guardian newspaper this week by the British novelist Edward Docx. Docx, dismayed to find himself on a train full of passengers with their noses stuck in Stieg Larsson thrillers, announced "we need urgently to remind ourselves of -- for want of better terminology -- the difference between literary and genre fiction." This, all too predictably, ignited multiple charges of outrage across the Internet.

Guardian readers have already ably dismantled the straw men in Docx's essay. I don't agree with most of what he says, but he has a point when he suggests that the other side often resorts to arguments as trumped up as his own. In fact, ferocious defenders of genre fiction seem far more numerous to me than its (public) detractors, and Docx may have even done them a favor; they seem to enjoy their indignation an awful lot. The not-so-secret reason why pissing matches are so common, after all, is that some people just really love taking it out.

Dan Brown swaps pseudohistory for pseudoscience

Tue, 15 Sep 2009 20:15:00 +0000

Let's face it, who really cares about Robert Langdon, professor of the (imaginary) discipline of symbology at a fictionalized (and apparently woefully indiscriminate) version of Harvard University? Who cares about those unfortunate patriarchs of the confidential class, one of whom always turns up dead or mutilated or both -- a martyr to his own secrets! -- at the beginnings of Dan Brown's breathless, treasure-hunt thrillers? Who cares about the academic babe, invariably a blood relative of the stricken patriarch, who inevitably materializes to accompany Langdon on the hunt and to play the admiring audience to his lectures on the aforementioned secrets? Sure, there's something kinda Oedipal going on in all this, in the way Langdon (40-something, but with a "toned physique"!) swoops in to rescue the academic babe along with Western civilization itself after the close-mouthed elitism of her dad/grandfather/big brother has failed, and in the way he demonstrates his enlightened, democratic, woman-positive attitudes in the process. But who even cares enough about the psyche of Dan Brown to contemplate the significance of that?

E-book of new Dan Brown novel coming Sept. 15

Thu, 13 Aug 2009 07:01:00 +0000

E-book readers can relax: The electronic edition of Dan Brown's "The Lost Symbol" is coming out on the same day as the hardcover.

Doubleday announced in April that Brown's first novel since "The Da Vinci Code" was coming out Sept. 15, but had hesitated to say when the e-book would be released, leading to speculation that the publisher was concerned that digital sales, a quickly rising market, would cut into purchases of the more expensive hardcover.

But in a statement released Thursday, Doubleday spokeswoman Suzanne Herz said the e-book also would be available on Sept. 15 and cited concerns not about sales, but about "security and logistical issues," since resolved.

The book has an announced first printing of 5 million copies and is under embargo until its publication date.

“Angels & Demons”

Fri, 15 May 2009 10:27:00 +0000

"Angels & Demons," Ron Howard's follow-up to the stiff, stately 2006 "The Da Vinci Code," might have been classy, entertaining junk -- if only it were entertaining. The picture is based on the Dan Brown bestseller of the same name, which was published in 2000, three years before Brown really hit big with "Da Vinci." As in "The Da Vinci Code," our hero is once again Harvard symbolist Robert Langdon (once again played by Tom Hanks, this time with a strange, matted coif that looks as if it should be topped by Ruth Buzzi's hairnet). Because he knows so much about symbols and stuff, Langdon is summoned to Rome to investigate a mysterious threat: Apparently, an ancient secret brotherhood of eggheads known as the Illuminati have hatched a plot to annihilate -- or should that be annihilati? -- the Vatican with a giant ball of light. Langdon is persona non grata at Vatican City -- the officials have repeatedly refused to let him riffle through their archives for his research, much as, in real life, the Vatican refused to let Ron Howard film there -- but now the guys in the lace dresses really need his help. When he shows up, he's met by Stellan Skarsgard, as the commander of the Swiss Guard, with a glare of disdain. "What a relief, the symbolist is here," he deadpans. Little does he know that Langdon's brilliant ability to say, "Hey! That ecclesiastical emblem is upside-down!" could possibly save his skin.

The Da Vinci crock

Wed, 29 Dec 2004 23:24:00 +0000

Recent history offers many examples of Americans' inability to tell fact from fiction, but none more tangled than the story of Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code." The book is among the most popular novels of all time, with 8 million copies sold since its publication last year and what seems to be a permanent reserved slot on the bestseller list. You see people reading it on planes and trains, and if at a social event you happen to mention that you write about books for a living, someone is sure to pull you aside eagerly to discuss it. This baffles and annoys a lot of literary types, many of whom haven't read "The Da Vinci Code" or couldn't get past the first few hackneyed pages. Why is the public so preoccupied with this cheesy thriller? they wonder.

"The Da Vinci Code" is indeed a cheesy thriller, with all the familiar qualities of the genre at its worst: characters so thin they're practically transparent, ludicrous dialogue, and prose that's 100 percent cliché. Even by conventional thriller standards, the book isn't particularly good; the plot is simply one long chase sequence, and the "good guy who turns out to be evil" is obviously a ringer from the moment he's introduced. Dan Brown is no Robert Ludlum, so why has his thriller so outdistanced the work of his betters?

“The Da Vinci Code” by Dan Brown

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 21:00:00 +0000

Trust me.

Sometime in the next few weeks, someone you know is going to tell you they've read this fantastic new thriller called "The Da Vinci Code," and before you can stop them they will have launched into a breathless description of the plot. Carried away by the pleasure of reliving each twist and turn, every narrow escape, they'll spill all the book's secrets and stare at you expectantly, as if to say they'll forgive you for leaving them in the lurch and dashing right out to the bookstore to buy it.

When that happens, you should cut them off quickly -- and then dash right out to the bookstore and buy it. Dan Brown's novel is an ingenious mixture of paranoid thriller, art history lesson, chase story, religious symbology lecture and anti-clerical screed, and it's the most fun you can have between the sort of covers that aren't 300-count Egyptian cotton.

If the idea of a mystery that draws on the history of religion and art sounds like the kind of "must read" you've picked up before only to find yourself bored silly (i.e., Umberto Eco's "The Name of the Rose"), let me hasten to reassure you that Brown, for all the facts he throws around, operates squarely in the territory of the pop bestseller. "The Da Vinci Code" doesn't offer the kind of solid descriptive writing you find in the work of the best practitioners of crime fiction. Brown appears to be the kind of writer who hits on a snazzy gimmick and then mines it for all it's worth. And it's one hell of a gimmick.