The Lair

Sage points me towards the Da Vinci Code movie. After the recent legal tussles were resolved in favour of Dan Brown, the movie was pretty much given the all clear to proceed. Given that the book was such a monumental best seller, it seemed almost inevitable that Hollywood would be all over the movie rights.

I’m going to make a revelation that will surprise/shock/enrage all those determined to drag down Dan Brown as being a mediocre writer. I actually liked Da Vinci Code. Of course, I’m a person who listens to 80s cheesy pop and enjoys some of it and my sense of style can only be called “roadkill chic” tinged with a healthy dose of “I don’t give a flying furball”. But still, I liked Dan Brown.

Oh, so the other books he wrote (and which I devoured within a few days/weeks of reading Da Vinci Code) were pretty much predictable crap. I won’t even go into how bad I felt (having a passing interest in cryptography) after reading Deception Point and Digital Fortress. But still, as a premise and a story, Da Vinci Code worked for me. I wouldn’t have discovered Umberto Eco (Name of the Rose) without reading the much better marketed Da Vinci Code first.

There are only three classes of books for me these days. Books I read, books I read and thoroughly enjoy (and can quote from at will) and books I never bother finishing. The last category is surprisingly infrequent, actually. There is so much choice since I switched to mostly electronic books that I start reading a book or a series after careful selection (and/or a recommendation from someone who’s literary choices interest me). Da Vinci Code was a book I read for pure escapism, a book with an intriguing premise. On that basis, it worked. Is it the equivalent of the utterly fascinating and much better written Pliocene Exile or The Galactic Milieu? Almost certainly not. But it’s better than the venomous thoughts of throwing into the rubbish heap of history, as the more vehement critics would suggest.

Picking up and reading a Dan Brown is like reading a Ludlum or a Cussler. Prepare to suspend disbelief, prepare to snort skeptically while reading some of it, but at the end: you will be entertained. Look beyond the more or less obvious warts and you’ll find escapist literature. Is it going to win a literary prize any time soon? Maybe not. But then, Shakespeare wrote his work for the bawdy houses and the commoners of his day, didn’t he? Ludlum wrote a trilogy of books which struck a chord with me in my early teens; the Bourne series. So the more recent movie editions (Matt Damon variety) weren’t quite what I had in mind… I rather preferred the Richard Chamberlain/Jaclyn Smith TV series better. Da Vinci Code has all of the ingredients to make a decent movie too. Literary classic it may not be – but as a story it worked. And Dan Brown just happened to be the right guy at the right time to make a killing.

Don’t hate if you can’t create. *grin*