Another quote from the I’m-Not-Making-This-Up file: The bad guy is in an airplane, crossing the Atlantic, and he whispers to himself, “They know not the war they have begun,” as he “[stares] out the window at the darkness of the ocean below.”
I know not why I’m reading this book.
*****
OK, so, the detective leads Langdon to the dead body of Jacques Sauniere, the renowned curator of the Louvre who was doing all of that staggering and lunging and heaving in the Prologue. Sauniere’s body is contorted in a mysterious way that will set Langdon on his quest. Brown describes the scene: “Using his [Sauniere’s] own blood as ink, and employing his own naked abdomen as a canvas, Sauniere had drawn a simple symbol on his flesh—five straight lines that intersected to form a five-pointed star.”
Apparently the symbol was so simple that Brown had to make it complicated, which, come to think of it, isn’t a bad summary of the book itself. Why he had to specify that the “five-pointed star” was drawn with “five straight lines” I don’t quite understand. I suppose there are other ways to draw a star—is a non-straight line an option?—but something like “Sauniere had drawn a simple symbol—a five-pointed star” seems to do the trick. Hell, use the word “pentagram” and shave off two more words.
In any case, Brown’s overwriting set me to thinking about other common objects that he could write to death, so I wrote “Olympic symbol” in the margins and had some fun thinking of how he would describe such an image: “The first thing the athletes saw when they entered the arena were two rows of circles of equal size, the top row containing three circles and the bottom row containing two. On the top, from the athlete’s left to right, the circles were blue, black, and red. On the bottom, also from the left to the right, the circles were yellow and green. The bottom two circles were centered beneath the top three. They both overlapped with the middle circle and also with the circle on their corresponding side. All five circles were set against a white background.”
And then, two pages later, in one of a number of passages that exalt the goddess Venus, Brown writes, “Nowadays, few people realized that the four-year schedule of modern Olympic Games still followed the cycles of Venus. Even fewer people knew that the five-pointed star had almost become the official Olympic seal but was modified at the last moment—its five points exchanged for five intersecting rings to better reflect the games’ spirit of inclusion and harmony.”
Holy shit! It’s as if he knew. I wrote “Olympic symbol” in the margins, and then two pages later—poof!—there it is.
Maybe the figure in the painting is me!
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| I wonder what event Mary Magdalene would have participated in if she were an Olympian? I'm thinking the one where you cross-country ski and then shoot at targets. |
*****
Chapter 6 is also when one of Brown’s favorite and more annoying devices begins to become apparent: A character will see or realize something—usually something shocking—but Brown will not share this revelation with the reader until later. The other end of a phone call, a ritual in a basement, a detail in a painting—these are all of the utmost importance to the characters but apparently not so much for the reader.
So, for example: “His [Langdon’s] heart pounded as he took in the bizarre sight now glowing before him on the parquet floor. Scrawled in luminescent handwriting, the curator’s final words glowed purple beside his corpse. As Langdon stared at the shimmering text, he felt the fog that had surrounded this entire night growing thicker.”
This is near the end of the chapter, and the only reason why it doesn’t conclude here is because Brown has another revelation roughly 50 words later that trumps even this one. This is pretty representative of the pace at which things happen in this book: The reveals come fast and furious. They’re kind of like those scenes in the cartoons when everyone slaps their hands down on top of one another and the stack of hands grows so high that no one realizes that there are far more hands than there are people who belong to the hands. I appreciate that the metaphor is far from perfect, but sometimes The DaVinci Code has too many hands.
That said, I’m of two minds about this technique. On the one hand (no pun intended), I recognize that, as a storyteller, I am not very good at plot, so I’m mindful that any resistance I have toward this dizzy procession of events comes from an honest place rather than feeling of jealousy. Truth is, I admire the hell out of people who can craft an airtight plot in which the events flow naturally one from the next and ultimately culminate in a way that is both inevitable and surprising. I admit that part of my initial interest in reading The DaVinci Code was to learn some of the secrets of the trade so I could apply them to my own work. The guy sold a gazillion copies of this book. He has to be doing something right.
On the other hand, however, as a reader I like to be led rather than led on, and Brown’s reliance throughout the novel on what amounts to a literary ploy feels more manipulative than respectful. The idea that Brown is counting on is that you, the reader, will want to discover what happens next so badly that you’ll just keep turning the pages until you find out, at which point he will give you another mini-mystery that needs to be solved. It’s a soap opera, I realize, and I also realize that soap operas have their place, but subjecting yourself to this kind of narrative tease is one thing when it’s once a week over the course of three months (hello, Breaking Bad!) and quite another when it’s condensed to an I Know Something You Don’t Know every five minutes.
There’s something to be said for an early hook, and a dead body is always a good start. But the hook isn’t enough to capture the reader. You’ve also got to reel her in, which is where things like, oh, character and style come into play. Brown’s characters are so flat and his prose so unremarkable, I am only reading to learn what happens next, which might work on page 39 but gets a little tedious by page 339.
Eventually I’m like, Fuck it, I don’t care anyway.
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| If The DaVinci Code is the All Valley Tournament, Brown just scored a point. |
*****
And, yet, 30 pages later, when Langdon and Sophie Nuveu, the inevitable love interest who, by the way, was introduced on page 49, begin to crack the first of a series of codes, I could see the secret revealed on the opposite page. I was on page 66, and the answer to the riddle was on page 67, and, damnit, I confess, my eyes impatiently darted across the page to learn the answer. I simply couldn’t wait an additional 100 words.
Of course, I was disappointed with the solution, but, still.
Point, Brown.
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