Dan Brown: why the hate?

[Careyp74]

How do you account for the fact that the so-called "good" writers are ignored while this supposedly "bad" writer is what the public prefers?

Is good story telling purely in the eye of the beholder?

The general population is getting dumber, and the media and writers are adapting.

 

[jadebox]

How do you account for the fact that the so-called "good" writers are ignored while this supposedly "bad" writer is what the public prefers?

It may sound a bit elitist, but I think a large number of the people who read The DaVinci Code were not regular readers. So, they didn't have much to compare it against.

To me, the novel seemed like a Hardy Boys mystery. Like the Hardy Boys, the protaganist didn't gather clues and use them to solve a mystery. He was lead directly to the solution through solving a number of (rather silly) puzzles.

-- Roger

 

[ZirconBlue]

I love that book. Show of hands in this thread: who has read and liked both Brown and Eco?

I didn't see the "and liked" until after I hit reply. I've read "The Davinci Code" and "Name of the Rose". I liked the latter. The former, not so much.

How do you account for the fact that the so-called "good" writers are ignored while this supposedly "bad" writer is what the public prefers?

Sturgeon's Law?

To me, the novel seemed like a Hardy Boys mystery. Like the Hardy Boys, the protaganist didn't gather clues and use them to solve a mystery. He was lead directly to the solution through solving a number of (rather silly) puzzles.

This. These supposedly brilliant characters are stumped by anagrams?

 

[Ron_Tomkins]

Dan Brown: why the hate?

No hate. He just... well.... sucks.

 

[Lurker]

I love that book. Show of hands in this thread: who has read and liked both Brown and Eco?

Brown is a quick read - kind of like how I like a good double cheeseburger from Burger King every once in a while. I'll give Brown credit for bringing up some intersting "what if" questions about Christianity. It certainly became topics of conversation around the country.

Eco's writing is far better, no doubt about it. Focault's Pendulum kind of swept me along in its craziness. Clearly he is the better writer.

 

[Tsukasa Buddha]

I came to dislike him when I found that all his books were the same. The bad guy isn't who you thought, it was the good friend you never suspected!

And some of his "twists" are extremely contrived. In one book, he spends a chapter killing a person without saying who that person is. It was dumb.

 

[poeatszeitgeist]

In Brown's case, though, it's just SO DUMB.

Oh yeah, there's no doubt about that. I picked up the Davinci Code a few years ago, and I remember a good friend of mine was SHOCKED that I couldn't get past the first 70 pages. Even after powering through the coarse writing, the plot was remarkably boring to me. The characters are too dumb to figure these "mysteries" out before the reader, and this completely kills any suspense in the plot. Instead, you sit there frustrated that you have to read another ten pages of the main characters working out a problem you already have before you can move onto the next mystery.

I think most individuals get past this with a very passive form of reading, and I think jadebox may have hit the nail on the head a bit. Though, I'm not sure if it's not that some aren't regular readers (my friend, for example, read quite extensively), but maybe more of an issue of the KIND of books they read regularly. When I think of a bookstore, I picture rows and rows of glossy covers with jackets that just pull the reader in. Most of these books are commercial fiction, and the "literary fiction", conversely, tends to have these understated covers. Not only that, but these glossy books are right up front! (With the poetry section nestled into some dark corner in the back of the store. ) I can see how an individual would get lost in this sea of books and continually pick up commercial fiction. Now, of course, there's some really great commercial fiction out there, but when that's all you have to compare a Dan Brown book to, how bad does it really look? Mix that with a controversy, some hype, a snazzy book jacket, and voila!

What I find most troubling about the Dan Brown phenomenon is how it has been received by the critics. All we ever hear about are the good ones, unfortunately. I remember when the New York Times was falling all over itself in its review of the Davinci Code. It was a huge hit among newspaper reviews.

Though, I do remember picking up a copy of The New Yorker in the library at school, which is quite well-known for its voracious snobbery. Inside, I found a review of Brown's newest book. The writer basically tore him a new one. Does anyone know how the major papers reacted to it?

And who is this Eco? I feel entirely out of the loop.

 

[Psi Baba]

This is what Tarcisio Bertone, Archbishop of Genoa had to say about the DaVinci Code: "It astonishes and worries me that so many people believe these lies. The book is everywhere. There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true." Do you think he even has a clue about the irony in that statement, considering his profession?

 

[BobTheDonkey]

I refuse to read any of Dan Brown's books. I've seen a few short passages and, well, to be honest...it hurt to read them.

Aside from the books, I enjoyed the Da Vinci Code movie - keeping in mind that it is a work of fiction. However, I thought Angels and Demons was a horrible movie. Most of what's been said about Brown's books can be directly applied to the movie and it's still accurate. While the first movie works to carry the movie-watcher with it and had puzzles that really needed some working out, in the second movie there was relatively no suspense. "Oh, another puzzle? Well, here's the answer. Let's move on to the next 'dramatic' scene."

 

[ZirconBlue]

I came to dislike him when I found that all his books were the same. The bad guy isn't who you thought, it was the good friend you never suspected!

And some of his "twists" are extremely contrived. In one book, he spends a chapter killing a person without saying who that person is. It was dumb.

Apparently they tend to start in the same way, too:

Renowned author Dan Brown staggered through his formulaic opening sentence



From another article on the same site:

You may remember that in my earlier post Don't look at their eyes! I mentioned that in preparing to read Dan Brown's Digital Fortress I was expecting a novel about cryptanalysis, probably one in which on the first page a renowned male expert at something dies a hideous death and straight away a renowned expert at something quite different gets a surprise call and has to take an unexpected plane flight and then face some 36 hours of astoundingly dangerous and exhausting adventures involving a good-looking (and of course expert) member of the opposite sex and when the two of them finally get access to a double bed she disrobes and tells him mischievously (almost minatorily) to prepare himself for strenuous sex. Well, a renowned male expert at something (cryptography) does indeed die a hideous death on the first page, and a renowned expert in something else (foreign languages) does indeed then get a surprise call to face an unexpected plane flight and some 36 hours of astoundingly dangerous and exhausting adventures (though he has to do it without the company of the good-looking (and of course expert) member of the opposite sex; there is one, but she stays three thousand miles away across the Atlantic).

There is of course a ghastly sadistic foreign hit man (an obligatory ingredient for a Dan Brown; this one is Portuguese, but otherwise just another mysterious cold-blooded death machine like the Arab in Angels and Demons). The happy couple do get access to a double bed at the end and do have strenuous sex, and there are some pretend threats from the female. So no real surprises at all.

In short, to call this novel formulaic is an insult to the beauty and diversity of formulae.

 

[Jorghnassen]

Seconded. Though, I have yet to finish my first Umberto Eco novel.

You know, my dad bought me The Da Vinci code so he could borrow it to see what the hype is about. In return, for his birthday I bought him Foucault's Pendulum. He read it through, and said that there wasn't a page where he didn't have to look up a word in the dictionary at least twice.

 

[ZirconBlue]

You know, my dad bought me The Da Vinci code so he could borrow it to see what the hype is about. In return, for his birthday I bought him Foucault's Pendulum. He read it through, and said that there wasn't a page where he didn't have to look up a word in the dictionary at least twice.

Does he have short-term memory problems? I would think he could at least remember the definition of the word for the time it takes to read one page.

 

[whatthebutlersaw]

What's NOT to hate about Brown? The crappy language grates - and I am A: Not a native speaker of English and B: Definitely not picky - I read a lot of crap, put it away and forget about it.

I felt really insulted by the ladidah code - and very dirty afterwards. Like someone had come up to me in the library and stuck their dick in my ear.

But worse than the crappy language is the Mary Sueing of two characters who are so dense that

They find it fiendishly clever to use your granddaughter's - and only living relative's - name as password. It takes them over a hundred pages to figure that one out. Clearly it's Bletchley for all the grannies at the County Council who keep getting themselves locked out from their work accounts and have to call Mr WtBS to get it reset. Every Monday.

Oh, and painting a picture of Paris is not the same as "rip a travelguide, verbatim".

I read that book - I wish I hadn't, but I felt I had to in case I was missing out on something avoiding a lowest common denominator read, but noone could have prepared me for how low that denominator could go.

The riddles. The motherloving riddles? How can you not be insulted by how stupid they are? It's the kind of riddles you get in a Christmas Cracker, only dumber. The kind of riddles that would momentarily confuse a newborn crack-kitten. For about a second.

It was just so godawful. I hated it. And I can't help but wonder, if Dan Brown wrote that faeces, put the last full stop in place and thought to himself: "Man, that's some literature there" of if he at least knows how bad it is? And tacking some CT crap onto it to make it sell.

It's like with psychics - are they deluded or are they cynical? I don't know and I don't know which would be worse.

 

[Rasmus]

Regarding inaccuracies: what did Brown get wrong that was profound and important? I know one friend said he got some of the geography wrong in Angels & Demons but are there other things that were messed up? Things integral to the plots?

Digital Fortress:
http://kasmana.people.cofc.edu/MATHFICT/mfview.php?callnumber=mf340#math

 

[Skeptic]

How do you account for the fact that the so-called "good" writers are ignored while this supposedly "bad" writer is what the public prefers?

I do not wish to make the logical mistake of claiming that if you are not sold, it means you are good. But there are many known, serious, "mid-list" authors of recognized merit that sell 1/1000th of what Dan Brown does.

 

[EeneyMinnieMoe]

The riddles. The motherloving riddles? How can you not be insulted by how stupid they are? It's the kind of riddles you get in a Christmas Cracker, only dumber. The kind of riddles that would momentarily confuse a newborn crack-kitten. For about a second.

It was just so godawful. I hated it. And I can't help but wonder, if Dan Brown wrote that faeces, put the last full stop in place and thought to himself: "Man, that's some literature there" of if he at least knows how bad it is? And tacking some CT crap onto it to make it sell.

It's like with psychics - are they deluded or are they cynical? I don't know and I don't know which would be worse.

The riddles are so silly and so stupid, I wouldn't try them on a smart 5 year old. One of them is...writing in mirror image! How clever! These Holy Grail keepers sure knew how to keep a top secret under wraps. None of their enemies would ever figure that out! Unless they had participated in a single scavenger hunt when they were 1st graders. Or had read one Encyclopedia Brown book.

That's what Dan Brown's riddles are- Encyclopedia Brown for adults with some (false) factoids thrown in.

Every single reader figured that one out the second they saw it but it somehow takes one of the three brilliant minds 2 or 3 pages to get.

Also, as a former art student and failed aspiring professional artist, I have to deeply complain about the false art history factoids and pseudo art history. Now, I'm no expert. I dropped art years ago. My knowledge is nowhere near what it once was.

And even I want to take a big red marker to all his descriptions of art and architecture, correct them all and send them back to Browne with detailed footnotes.

This would be the gist of it:

"No! NO! NO, NO, NO! Da Vinci never did that! Michelangelo never did that! YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT RENAISSANCE ART! NOTHING!"

I also have to complain about the explanations of science, the explanations of history, the explanations of religion, the explanations of math, the explanations of art, the explanations of culture, the explanations of literature, the explanations of politics...oh, the list goes on and on. And I'm not even an expert on any of these subjects! And I know a world more than Mr. Brown does.

My guess: he thinks he's a great writer. He thinks he created a work of art. I bet he loves those books. You can tell.

And he says he really believes in the CT stuff.

So he is sincere and self deluded on BOTH fronts.

 

[AgeGap]

He used an ice bullet in Deception Point. But I think the main one is the whole "Jesus moves to France and has kids" bit.

There is another book where that Jesus character does some really crazy things like walking on water and reanimating his own corpse. Dan Brown is a genius compared to the people who wrote that other crap.

 

[Lucian]

The riddles are so silly and so stupid, I wouldn't try them on a smart 5 year old. One of them is...writing in mirror image! How clever! These Holy Grail keepers sure knew how to keep a top secret under wraps. None of their enemies would ever figure that out! Unless they had participated in a single scavenger hunt when they were 1st graders. Or had read one Encyclopedia Brown book.

That's what Dan Brown's riddles are- Encyclopedia Brown for adults with some (false) factoids thrown in.

Every single reader figured that one out the second they saw it but it somehow takes one of the three brilliant minds 2 or 3 pages to get.

Also, as a former art student and failed aspiring professional artist, I have to deeply complain about the false art history factoids and pseudo art history. Now, I'm no expert. I dropped art years ago. My knowledge is nowhere near what it once was.

And even I want to take a big red marker to all his descriptions of art and architecture, correct them all and send them back to Browne with detailed footnotes.

This would be the gist of it:

"No! NO! NO, NO, NO! Da Vinci never did that! Michelangelo never did that! YOU KNOW NOTHING ABOUT RENAISSANCE ART! NOTHING!"

I also have to complain about the explanations of science, the explanations of history, the explanations of religion, the explanations of math, the explanations of art, the explanations of culture, the explanations of literature, the explanations of politics...oh, the list goes on and on. And I'm not even an expert on any of these subjects! And I know a world more than Mr. Brown does.

My guess: he thinks he's a great writer. He thinks he created a work of art. I bet he loves those books. You can tell.

And he says he really believes in the CT stuff.

So he is sincere and self deluded on BOTH fronts.

Oooh, I thought of something else I dislike about Brown. It's not just that he gets facts about art and literature and, you know, everything else wrong--patently, obviously wrong. What really burns my biscuit is the idea that the world's greatest works of art and literature are just secret messages for the mentally challenged experts to figure out. Last Supper? Yeah, I guess it's pretty enough, but that's coincidental. The important thing is that it encodes a conspiracy. Hamlet?* Sure, it's a bit clever, but that's really irrelevant. It's all about the secrets.

*I don't remember that Brown actually discusses Hamlet, but as I recall, Shakespeare was part of the Priory of Sion and therefore one of the keepers of the secret and hinters at the secret.

 

[ZirconBlue]

I felt really insulted by the ladidah code - and very dirty afterwards. Like someone had come up to me in the library and stuck their dick in my ear.

Does that happen to you often?!

 

[athon]

How do you account for the fact that the so-called "good" writers are ignored while this supposedly "bad" writer is what the public prefers?

Is good story telling purely in the eye of the beholder?

If you look at why most people read Brown, it's because they perceived it was a book everybody was reading. Of course, this wave of hype had to start somewhere. It might explain it's immense popularity but not how it reached a critical mass.

I suspect part of it was the controversy. Nothing sells like 'based on a true story'. I also think it appealed to a certain less-critical subset of the population who don't normally read. It's been my experience that this is the case with books by Reilly and Brown.

I also know that publishers take a lot of gambles to market books to reach that critical mass point. The ones that pay off fund all of those books that are published without hope of ever making it big. So marketing would have something to do with it as well. Beyond that...well, if I knew, I wouldn't be wasting my time sitting and whinging about it.

Athon