More Lost than Symbol

Sometimes it is too much of a good thing, but this time it was just too much. Maybe I can be excused for not reading the books in order. I began with the Da Vinci Code, moved on to its prequel, Angels and Demons and now The Lost Symbol. I should have heeded the wild improbability of coincidences that brought A&D to its pre-confirmed end. But I excused the author (one is wont to do so) for not having polished his craft well. Not that DVC was more polished. It was controversial, chock full of conspiracy theories and what is more had earned the Church’s ire. Now the last is almost a guarantee to sell a book. PG Wodehouse had it at the center of his “Cocktail Time” and what holds in Wodehousian humor holds in real life. And the book was not half bad. True it was badly written, but that was seemed insignificant in the light of its other virtues ( which I cannot surprisingly remember as of now). A&D was a let down, but it came before DVC, so maybe all was alright in the Robert Langdon world.

Langdon by himself is a very attractive person. And Tom Hanks has just added to the charm. Of course I am a sucker for the Hanks (after the Clooney and the Depp), he does act well ( Forrest Gump, Terminal and so many more, anyone?). So much so that even the DVC movie, which was that side of lousy- it was far less entertaining than its review in the New Yorker - did not really deter me from watching A&D the movie. And that was more than adequate (or maybe the let-down after the DVC was so great that anything was a vast improvement). Of course I am trying to justify spending $18.99 in this time of recession. Justifying and failing miserably. The signs were all there. It was written. I should have known.

I imagine that if there is a Robert Langdon template that Dan Brown has (and now I am inclined to think he has one) it runs thus.

“RL swims in pool. Receives phone call/ fax/ both. Adoring fans, Harrison Ford in Harris Tweed reference. Someone extremely important has been decapitated most gruesomely. This important person is a high ranking official in the upper echelons of a secret society so secret that every internet search portal has a lot of detail on it. The very shape of the world as we know it is in danger. The government is also involved (like the health crisis, the recession, wars, fuel crises were not enough). Beautiful, accomplished woman, somehow related to the gruesomely decapitated important person is in the picture (fear not the book will end with her spending a few hours of romantic passion with Langdon, who while saving the world has enough time to fall in love with her, even while comparing her to the previous inamoratas, who mysteriously vanish after the adventure is over- maybe a fourth book could be about them confronting the Langdon). Running around in a modern city, police in hot pursuit- Langdon going into flashbacks of lectures he has with interested undergraduates ( now if I could get mine to show even 1/10^th that interest in the basic definition of Management, but then maybe I need to start wearing turtlenecks). Secrets of the old city laid bare- reference to the middle ages. Rosiacrucians , Templars, Sacred feminine, Masons not in that order, but maybe some combination of each. A truly evil bad guy. Arcane symbols and ancient parchments. Treasure hunt which is timed- usually by other gruesome decapitatees or horrendous deaths. Visits to a library ( the good thing about Dan Brown is he does seem to like ancient books- you would not find his novels set in a library-less land). Robert Langdon gets to face his fears of small places, drowning and so on ( he is a most fearful; character) and surprisingly never seems to learn from any of them, nor move on. And then the end like an anticlimax of sorts. For secrets may not be secrets nor be revealed nor indeed be worth the revealing. “

This template just needs a large city, some improbably faces of authority, interesting names and some esoteric and less understood branch of science- and voila a new novel is ready.

And lest you think I wonder why Mr Brown engages in such awful and predictable writing, I don’t. I just wonder why I bother to read the bilge.