That Damn Book (And Film)

[poliphilo]

The Da Vinci Code comes too late for me. I did all this stuff in the 80s and 90s.

I'm not saying I was in the vanguard. As someone in the Observer pointed out this morning, people like Robert Graves and Margaret Murray were putting together theories involving the Great Goddess, the sex life of Jesus and centuries-old ecclesiastical conspiracies over fifty years ago.

And behind them lies Frazer's Golden Bough- one of the key texts of the early 20th century.

What was once the prattle of a few off-centre scholars and pseudo-scholars has finally gone mainstream.

There was a time when I hoped and half-believed it was all true.

But now I know it isn't.

There never was a Goddess worshipping Golden Age.
The Priory de Sion was the invention of a mid-20th century fascist hoaxer.
Opus Dei may be sinister- but it doesn't employ albino hit-men.

And so on...

That's what irritates me about Brown. If he'd done proper research- instead of cherrypicking the conspiracy websites- he'd have known that most of the ideas he's playing with here were shot to pieces ages ago.

Comments

[hardrada.livejournal.com]

Having read the Da Vinci Code, and enjoyed it guiltily, the way one enjoys a pot noodle, I decided I wanted more of the same, but with better writing and fewer inaccuracies, which I could admit to reading in mixed company. I lighted on Foucault's Pendulum, and decided it was one of the most wonderful books I'd ever read. No screaming factual inaccuracies that I could discern, and characters who were genuine, flawed and tragic. At the very end of the book, one of the characters reveals, through his diary, his own personal discovery of the Grail during his childhood. It's a piece of writing so beautiful, it brings goose bumps to my neck even now.

As for the Da Vinci Code, as much as I would love to pour scorn all over the whole work, and as much faith as I have in my own writing, I recognise implicitly that I couldn't write a thriller as compelling and readable. His writing is vain, shallow and profane. The statement "Have you READ the Da Vinci Code" is an instant confession of ignorance. But I still couldn't put the blasted thing down.

There is a certain genius in what he does, that triumphantly defies my intellectual snobbery. And I think if a writer could summon that same base appeal, and combine it with comparable depth and integrity, we will have another Shakespeare on our hands.

[hardrada.livejournal.com]

PS. In the same way that "His Dark Materials" went to the National while the Harry Potter franchise was playing its dreary through the cinemas, I would love to see a stage adaptation of "Foucault's Pendulum" to complement the Da Vinci Code film. Done correctly, it would run and run.

[methodius.livejournal.com]

I've recently re-read both Foucault's pendulum and His dark materials, and enjoyed both more on the second reading than on the first.

Foucault's pendulum is a good antidote for The da Vinci code and is certainly the best in the genre I have come across.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I agree with you about Foucault's Pendulum. My son "borrowed" my copy and took it off to Japan with him and I'm feeling bereft.