Beware of The Lost Symbol

      Literature lovers of the world, unite! There’s a threat forming on the horizon, and it’s coming our way this Tuesday, September 15th. Together we can defeat this menace! Yes, I’m talking about the new Dan Brown novel, The Lost Symbol.
     Last week Amazon.com posted a banner ad on its home page promising to deliver my copy of the new book before breakfast on release day. The ad touted the manuscript as so secret that it was under lock and key at the publisher’s location and required “two separate people” to access the supply. Pray tell, what is the alternative to “two separate people?” Would it be two conjoined people or simply a staffer with a dual personality? Maybe Mr. Brown wrote the copy for the advertisement, too.

     I know, I’m just a neophyte writer who can barely give away 500 words to the local paper, and Dan Brown is a bestselling jillionaire with movie deals and everything. But come on, his books (and the movies too, with Tom Hanks and his bouffant hair) are laughable. Very profitably laughable for Mr. Brown, to be sure, but that doesn’t make them any better for the rest of us.

       Back in the dark ages of 2003 I began hearing buzz about a new book called The Da Vinci Code. A pretty cool title, I admit, it jiggles the imagination of art lovers and mystery lovers alike. Critics were raving and friends were reading it while waiting in the carpool line, so lemming-like, I got a copy. At first, I was willing to go along with the wild yarn about the Knights of Templar and their secret antics. But then Mr. Brown veered down the path of Jesus’ supposed dalliance with Mary Magdalene and the whole "royal bloodline" business. At that point I began to feel the same way about The Da Vinci Code as I had felt about The Celestine Prophecy back in the 90’s. Both books seem just real enough to get people all riled up, debating whether the claptrap could actually be true. But in the end it’s all just pure hooey. I finished the book but had completely lost interest by then--I saw that red-haired brother coming a mile away.

     As if I didn’t hate the book enough already, another nail was driven into the coffin when I visited Paris in 2006. According to our Parisian tour guide, Mr. Brown apparently didn’t even consult a map of the city while writing. In addition to offering educational tours of real French historical sites, Isabella also led tourist groups on The Da Vinci Code walks in which they tried, unsuccessfully, to retrace Robert Langdon’s path through Paris on the fateful night described in the story. The main problem with the attempted tour was that Brown’s geographical references are so disjointed that it is impossible to follow the alleged route. My own knowledge of Paris is limited, but from Isabella I understood the problem to be something like saying Langdon went from downtown Dallas to Oak Cliff via Plano. You just can’t get there from here.

     Then came Angels & Demons, written first but (rightly in my opinion) not deemed publishable until The Da Vinci Code became such a hot item. Where do I start? Ludicrous does not even begin to describe this ‘prequel’ to Langdon’s Paris adventure. The story is so outrageous that after I read it I yearned for a good Danielle Steel classic to rid myself of the bad taste. I don’t remember the exact point at which I began to gnash my teeth in response to the dopey tale, but it may have been when Mr. Brown reveals the bad priest to be the love child of The Pope and a nun, conceived via artificial insemination. The love child part is not so bad--even celibates can fall in love--but artificial insemination? Give me a break. It all came apart for me though, when Robert Langdon falls out of the helicopter and into the river, not too worse for the wear and ready to go jump Vittoria’s bones. At that point I just wanted to toss the book into the trash, but had to restrain myself because it was a borrowed copy. As my grandmother used to say, that book just got “worser and worser.”

     I’ll probably read Mr. Brown’s new offering, if only to give myself justification for complaint. I wouldn’t actually want a The Lost Symbol on my bookshelf where others might see it, so I’ll probably have to wait a while and sneak a library copy into the house. I’m sure that even then it will still be on the New York Times best-seller list. If this all sounds like sour grapes, maybe I’m guilty. But another part is just morbid fascination with bad pop-culture writing. Maybe if I read another amazingly awful tale, and get a big bottle of whisky to wash it down, I’ll start getting some ideas for my own outrageous pseudo-historical novel. Like the saying goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” But if I do write something so crazy, I’ll definitely need a pen name. Suggestions, anyone?