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5/2/2005: Reads: The DaVinci Code

The DaVinci Code by Dan Brown

I'm probably one of the last people to read The DaVinci Code but it was interesting to be reading it during the Changing of the Pope. On the off-chance you haven't read it yet and plan to, you're probably safe to continue without too much fear of spoilers, but it's your call.

All in all, it's a good read that works on many levels: art history, the Holy Grail and other religious legends, murder mystery, puzzle-solving, secret society lore, and political goings-on within the Catholic Church to name a few. It's billed as a thriller - I can't say I found it exactly thrilling, so much as a mystery and travelogue through history, art, and theology.

The Louvre and its pyramid

The surface story revolves around Robert Langdon, an Indiana Jones-esque author and symbology professor (but without Indy's adventurous derring-do) and Sophie Neveu, a cryptologist with the French police. They're thrown together by circumstances revolving around the murder of Neveu's grandfather, the curator of the Louvre. Soon enough Langdon is wanted for the curator's murder and Neveu as accomplice, and they set off as fugitives, at the same time urgently working to solve a mystery of their own.

Dan Brown packs a tremendous amount of information into the book, most of which is interesting and quite a bit downright fascinating, and the story moves along at a nice pace. But there are quite a few things I didn't like about his style. For instance, most of the chapters have mini-cliffhanger endings: Brown tosses us some bait about something that was seen or discovered or remembered, but inevitably doesn't tell us what it was for a few more pages or chapters, and that gets irritating. We're going to keep reading: we don't need a cliffhanger every five pages to keep us coming back. Also, the fact that most of the 450 pages or so take place within a 24-hour time period is a bit much to swallow, and the fatigue of the characters as they cover the miles between French & British locales is barely referenced - even though that 24 hours begins around midnight, and Langon & Neveu, as well as all the other characters, are operating on full power intellectually throughout with a lot of adrenalin bursts and emotional highs and lows, particularly for Neveu. I don't think there's been this much going on in one literary day since The Brothers Karamazov, and I'm not sure that Brown is up to the challenge set by Dostoevsky.

Knight tombs in Temple Church

Langdon takes on the role of educating us, by way of educating Sophie, as to the massive amounts of history and legend that The DaVinci Code is really about. The archival information is presented well, usually without making us feel that we're drowning in tedious details or cramming for an exam, but it isn't always done smoothly. More than once Langdon lands in a dangerous or difficult situation and suddenly starts to "remember" minute architectural details of some church 1,000 miles away, or he takes 20 minutes to explain the significance of this artifact or that sect to Neveu while they are rushing around in life-or-death situations. Some of the informational and background segments are just a bit too contrived and they get in the way of the story at the forefront.. or perhaps vice versa.

But nothing defines "contrived" as much as the various wrap-ups for each of the characters toward the end. Everything falls into place just a little too quickly and neatly for me, much like a network TV cop show or movie of the week. At 15 minutes before 11pm we have trauma and chaos for all concerned that, amazingly, is all settled by 10:55 when we turn to the outlandishly ridiculous happy ending and sponsor commercials. The sheer number of happy coincidences and characters who turn out to be not what they seemed are just too much to be remotely plausible, and that was disappointing. I'll accept a lot when reading fiction, but I couldn't accept all this. Then again, I've never been big on happy endings that are tacked on merely for the sake of ending happily.

Sir Isaac Newton's tomb in Westminster Abbey

I am surprised this book is as popular as it is, given that so much of it is obscure details about art and religion, all of which seem extremely well researched. And it's a relatively easy read in spite of all those details, due largely to its short chapters that keep you thinking you'll read one more chapter before bed.. well, maybe one more.. okay, one more and that's it..

Symbolism is thick throughout, both within the text and surrounding it (Sophie Neveu's name, for example - the nouveau "newbie"), and many of the puzzles are up for solving before our heroes manage it. Langdon is a likeable and consistent character, probably because Brown has worked with him before; but Sophie goes from a bright, take-charge woman with initiative to a wimpy, ineffectual tag-along before we're done, and several of the side characters border on ludicrous accidents of convenient place and time for the plot's sake.

I haven't actually heard as much about the controversies the book is said to have stirred up in religious communities as I've heard about its potential to do so - I think much of that was created by the media because of the book's huge sales figures. After all, it is a work of fiction: religious scholars understand the definition of the word, even if network TV news magazines don't. Not that I don't think much of the controversial stuff in it is possible and even likely - but Robert Anton Wilson's Illuminati books are better for in-depth (if frenetic) looks at conspiracy theories intertwined among politicians, religions, and Masons. The DaVinci Code certainly didn't stir up as many hornet nests as The Last Temptation of Christ did with a similarly controversial theme.. but maybe when the inevitable movie comes out we'll get more of that. Here's hoping.

Carvings in Rosslyn Chapel

There's now an illustrated edition of the book that would be handy if you like seeing what you're reading about, although all the artwork and locations are easy enough to find on the web. (I've included a few examples here.) There are also a number of spinoff books now by both Brown and others. All in all The DaVinci Code is a pretty good read and I enjoyed it in spite of the problems I've mentioned.

Thanks to massive sales, author Dan Brown and publisher Doubleday have launched a couple of excellent web-hunt puzzles that relate to the book. They serve as today's double-feature Links o' the Day.