The Da Vinci Code...

[fajrdrako]

I read The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.

It's a good read.

It is also fairly unsatisfying. Not as a thriller: it's a great page-turner. It's certainly fun. But it's wide rather than deep - scattered rather than focussed. It's over the top in a charmingly straightforward manner, as it leads the reader, though a murder mystery plot, through the whole Jesus-secret-society history as detailed in books like Holy Blood, Holy Grail by Leigh, Lincoln and Baigent.

This is a thriller that ought to have footnotes and bibliography. It's the kind of book you want to discuss with somebody. (Anyone? blackbyrde? Marion?)

Good things about it: It made me want to reread the biography of Da Vinci on my bookshelves, and get back to medieval history just because of the many references in it whetting my appetite. At Costco this afternoon, I leafed though a book of Da Vinci's art (I would have bought it if it had been less than $40) to get a good look at The Last Supper. Unfortunately the picture is a mess, restored or otherwise (of course - it's famous for it) but it was fun to look at it after reading the comments in the book.

Though the protagonists of The Da Vinci Code were pretty bland, the villains were fun, particularly an albino religious-fanatic assassin called Silas.

Another good thing about it: I failed to guess the secret master villain. I was pretty sure it was one character; it turned out to be another I hadn't expected. Cool. I love a book that can surprise me.

Another good thing: I loved the idea of the cryptex, an ingenious Davincian device used significantly in the plot.

I loved the juxtaposition of the high-tech and the medieval.

Frustrating thing about it: I know the history (particularly of the medieval church and symbology) far too well to be surprised by any of it, especially having read some of the books that were no doubt sources for Brown's plot. In fact, I was usually interpreting clues before the protagonists did because they were annoyingly thick. Not just in matters of history. One protagonist is a historical semiotics expert; the other is a cryptographer; they follow a trail of clues of which symbols in Da Vinci's art are the beginning. But they can't recognize mirror-image handwriting in English: they think it's some sort of obscure Semitic alphabet. You'd think, with Da Vinci on their mind, they'd at least have some idea. At another point they need to get into a bank deposit box. They need a ten-digit account number. They are flummoxed. They don't have an account number. It isn't as if the murdered man hadn't written a ten-digit number for them on the floor beside himself in his last moment of life, or as if they hadn't seen it and wondered what it was only a couple of hours earlier.....

I tried to catch historical errors, but on the whole the history - even when questionable - isn't erroneous, though I caught one error - a bit of a technicality: the author refers to Godfroi de Bouillion as the first Crusader King of Jerusalem, but Godfroi was never king: he was offered the title, refused it, and took the title "Defender of the Holy Sepulchre".* I also didn't know what Brown was talking about when he talked in passing of the Grail Quest as being the reason for the Crusades. Say what? I could tell you a dozen reasons for the Crusades - there are many books and monographs on the subject - and that isn't high on the list, but I'm not sure what Brown meant by it. Since he doesn't have to explain anything if he doesn't want to, I see no reason to argue with the idea. The history here is fun, but simplistic. (For instance, few objects in medieval or Renaissance art had only one symbolic meaning. A many-petaled rose might well have meant Mary Magdelene, but it often meant God, as it does in T.S. Eliot.)

This one is bound to become a movie.

Oh, perhaps I should confess: I didn't understand the punchline in the last chapter, when the protagnist finds - essentially - the Grail, or at least, the object of the search. What was the significance of that?

--
*If you guess from this that I am something of a fan of Godfroi de Bouillion, you'd be right.

Comments

[moonchildetoo.livejournal.com]

I won't be getting to the DaVinci Code until it's out in paperback, but at the moment I'm in the middle of Angels and Demons, the book Dan Brown wrote introducing Langdon. Now that DaVinci is such a big hit, it's been reissued in p/b. I'm enjoying the hell out of it; it's a page-turner in the style of Lincoln and Child. It mixes history, the Catholic Church, and nuclear physics... I won't say any more.

Read Holy Blood, Holy Grail and related books in the past and loved them. Am fascinated by the Templars. At the time the books were first released, it was like a Chariots of the Gods type of thing; now this many years later, both Von Daniken and Leigh/Baigent have sort of been thoroughly debunked. Still, it's fun...

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I want to read Angels and Demons. I have it on request at the library. Thank goodness for that library! Yes, I'm fascinated by Templars too - anything medieval of course - and they are such ripe fodder for fiction: a rich, powerful military organization surrounded in conspiracy and mystery.

As for the debunking: there are many games you can play with history (and symbolism) and I find the Leigh/Baigent type a cut above Von Daniken. It's like concocting a giant puzzle and trying to make it coherent.

It mixes history, the Catholic Church, and nuclear physics...

Yup, that sounds sort of like The Da Vinci Code! When you read it, I hope you can explain the meaning of the last chapter to me.

[silveraspen]

I don't have my copy of the book with me, but if I remember correctly -- when he finds the location that they'd been seeking (having already found the bloodline and having talked to ... oh drat I can't remember her name either, but you know who I mean, the older lady), it turns out that he'd nailed the location in his published article/book (mentioned at the very start), sort of as a one-off example guess which he hadn't intended to be serious.

So, he'd figured out the hidden site by chance and was about to publish the secret openly, hence the contact and all the rest of it, and found at the very end that he'd been right all along without knowing it.

Am even now reading "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." Fascinating.

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

Thanks for helping to elucidate the ending of the book! What I didn't get was... what was there? I understand the location, but was there a physical object associated with it - or just the symbolic shapes? I guess my question is - I know it was the secret location, but the secret location of what? The pyramid shapes were on public view, not secret at all. And Sophie's grandmother and brother were in Roslin. It was a treat to read a story about a place I'd been - wanting to look at all those carvings and "clues" for myself after the Dunnett gathering in Edinburgh in 2000. The book didn't do the chapel justice - it's far more weird, eclectic and symbolically complex than Brown implies!

Yes, Holy Blood, Holy Grail is fascinating, though I take some of their conclusions and connections with a grain of salt. And I'm a lot more savvy on the early medieval portion of the history than the 18th-19th century stuff. On the other hand, I'm simply thrilled to read any book that talks about Merovingians.

[blackbyrde.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed it. It's definitely fast-paced and exciting. Because I'm not well-versed in Medieval history, I took the history and historical interpretations as presented, though it's eerie to think that it could all be true.

I had a look at The Last Supper online when I read that particular part, and it does look the way he described it. Rather eerie. I picked up on the backwards writing before the characters did too ;) and I have to admit, the Fibonacci numbers at the beginning. Crytography is so cool, and I wished there was more of it in this book. Much more readable than something more math-based like Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon, which I have yet to get through.

I tried looking for Holy Blood, Holy Grail at the bookstore, but it seems it's no longer in print. Library, here I come.

BTW, I plan to get Dan Brown's other books. I'll be happy to lend them to you when I'm done reading them. :)

And did you try the code-breaking questions at the publisher's website? Uhh...can't remember the exact link, it's Random House...I think I linked to it on my LJ.

Must do work now, unfortunately. We can discuss more on Wednesday. :)

[fajrdrako.livejournal.com]

I took the history and historical interpretations as presented

Generally speaking, the assertions are interpretations of facts which could be read various other ways, but there's nothing impossible in the thesis - just that it presents a narrow view. It persents facts but not all the facts.

Thanks for the offer to lend me Dan Brown's other books, I'd love to read them. I'll see if I still have my copy of Holy Blood, Holy Grail to lend you. Though I'll swear I read it under the title of The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail. Perhaps the American publication had another title? It isn't a page-turner like Brown's book, but it's interesting.

Crytography is so cool, and I wished there was more of it in this book.

What he presented wasn't cryptography at all - at least, not much of it. Most of it was clues and symbols - treasure hunt, not cryptography. But that's fun too.

And did you try the code-breaking questions at the publisher's website?

Haven't had time yet, but I'd like to.