Then, later: “It was an image she could barely believe to this day.”
Believe me, Sophie, you're not the only one having a difficult time shaking that one.
*****
Few authors handle flashbacks as inexpertly as Dan Brown. Whether it is Langdon remembering a key piece of information from a lecture he delivered (and in which he was utterly charming and beloved by his students) or Silas (the bad guy by virtue of being an albino) recalling the upbringing that turned him into an all-too-willing goon for the Catholic church, Brown’s transitions are reminiscent of the old Saturday Night Live sketches in which the actors would put their arms above their heads and sway back and forth to indicate that they are now going back in time, only the Saturday Night Live sketches were funny on purpose.
I’m reminded too of Donald Bartheleme’s Snow White, in which he just drops a resume into the middle of the book when a new character appears, which is about as subtle as Brown and all the better on account of its transparency.
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| You don't even want to know what "naked spread-eagle grandpa" turned up in Google Images. Consider this an antidote. |
Anyhoo, Sophie has a number of flashbacks that are intended to pique the reader’s interest. This one, however, strikes me as being especially loaded: “Sophie could suddenly hear her own heart. My family? Sophie’s parents had died when she was only four. Their car went off a bridge into fast-moving water. Her grandmother and younger brother had also been in the car, and Sophie’s entire family had been erased in an instant. She had the newspaper clippings to confirm it.”
Oh, well, newspaper clippings…. I guess that’s that.
*****
One of my favorite aspects of noir is that it typically include an average guy (and, yes, it’s almost always a guy) who, through a series of escalating events, finds himself in a very un-average situation. Sure, there are babes, money, and guns, but what is noteworthy is that the guy face-to-face with the babes, money, and guns has never encountered them before. He just wants to sell insurance or get his car fixed or, in the case of the Dude, clean his rug. Saving the world is the farthest thing from his mind. What I like about this kind of story is that someone who is decidedly not a hero is asked to behave heroically. If you want to get sappy about it, you could say that noir allows for the possibility that there is a hero in us all, but I don’t want to get sappy about it.
I admire this part of Brown’s story, anyway. Robert Langdon is an academic, and, even though Brown asks us to believe otherwise, he is no Indiana Jones, who, let’s face it, is a professor by day and a superhero by night. Langdon is a lecturer, and that’s about it. I really do like watching him outmaneuver his pursuers, and the way in which Brown leads Langdon farther and farther down that path of no return is, at the very least, identifiable. I never faulted Langdon for any of his choices.
The problem is that it would be a more interesting story if I did, for the other defining characteristic of noir is that the average guy who suddenly finds himself in un-average situations might be average but that doesn’t mean that he’s flawless. Something haunts him, whether that something be drink, a dame, or a bad decision years ago that he’s just never been able to shake and if only he could have that one shot at redemption, if only.
Characters in noir behave selfishly, cravenly. They are driven by greed, by sex. In short, they behave like human beings, which makes them all the more sympathetic because they are relatable.
Robert Langdon displays none of this complexity. To pull for him is to pull for a robot, and not even an interesting robot like Hal from 2001. Rather, a robot that is programmed only to do good.
And that’s no fun. That’s no fun at all.
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| The DudeVinci Code. Now that's a book I would like to read. |
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