Imagine If He’d Gone on Oprah…

Barnes & Noble has just issued a press release to announce that they’ve sold over a million copies of Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code. Sigh.

The book (which I admit I haven’t read cover to cover) bugs me. Not so much for the alleged anti-Catholic undertones, about which Amy Welborn, among others, has written eloquently about, and I sorta see but not entirely. Maybe it’s just the way that Brown’s mainstreamed tropes that go back at least as far as the Illuminatus! trilogy and got a somewhat more highfalutin’ expression about 10-15 years ago in Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum. (Although it is rather amusing, I must admit, to see Holy Blood, Holy Grail on the bestseller lists after, what, 20 years? Especially since I can dazzle neophytes who only know this stuff from Brown with my mastery of the field, heh heh.) But mostly it’s the bad (from my point of view, anyway) writing. And as a lifelong science fiction and, to a lesser extent, mystery/thriller fan, believe me, I know from bad writing. Oh, Brown can string together a roller coaster ride, but characters? From what I’ve seen, ptui.

I suppose somebody was going to get rich off the Illuminati someday, though.

6 January 2004 | uncategorized |