Dan Brown Day

By Brian Bethune - Tuesday, September 15, 2009 at 8:21 PM - 8 Comments

Dan Brown Day, Sept .15, 2009, dawned as auspiciously as anyone—fan, critic, quasi-disinterested cultural observer—could have hoped. The Lost Symbol finally rolled into bookshops (as well as some slightly less standard places), and everyone seemed to find something to enjoy. Brown himself, in the manner of those fortunate authors whose names appear on book jackets in letters larger than those of the title, has apparently gone all meta on us. In the most eagerly anticipated novel since Harry Potter VII, he has his hero Robert Langdon meet a female character who comments on Langdon’s scholarly exposé of the hidden codes embedded in Leonardo da Vinci’s art: “You do enjoy putting the fox in the henhouse!” That’s just what an actual female fan said to Brown about The Da Vinci Code novel of the hidden codes embedded in Leonardo da Vinci’s art. Which is to say that words once applied to a supposedly fact-based novel are now applied to a fictional non-fiction account. Deep.

In a more commercial corner of the Brown phenomenon, the price wars have been every bit as absurd as predicted. When the publishing world latches on to a good thing, one of its seemingly irresistible impulses is to sell it at a loss. To be fair though, a new Dan Brown novel simply escapes the category of “book,” and the control of booksellers. It becomes general merchandise. In Britain, a three-way battle between supermarket chains—yes, you read that right—saw the cover price of approximately $35 fall first to $15 at Sainsbury’s, and then  $12.50 at Tesco, before Asda cornered the market at $9, even as it loses an estimated $7 on every copy it sells. Soon all three stores will be handing The Lost Symbol out for free with the purchase of a bag of frozen peas. The whole process makes Amazon.com, that renowned bookshop killer, look like a piker with its British price of $17 a copy.

Others jumping on the bandwagon include the U.S. capital’s tourism arm. Unlike Parisian churches hostile to Brown-inspired tourists, Destination DC is looking forward to the rush. It launched a web page even before publication day to help readers plan their trips to places and themes expected to show up in The Lost Symbol, including the Capitol building (on the book cover) and the nearby U.S. Botanic Garden (referenced in a Today Show clue).

Popular media was hard at work leaving no Brownian stone unturned, with one enterprising journalist playing time zones to advantage by calling Masons in Australia, where Sept. 15 began hours before it did in North America. Not that they were burning with Vatican-level rage. To the contrary. Greg Levenston, Grand Master of the United Grand Lodge of New South Wales and Australian Capital Territory for the Freemasons—and an evident speed reader—pronounced his group well-pleased. “There is nothing in this book that will offend my organization.” Levinson even echoed the brave lemon-to-lemonade hopes expressed by the Catholic organization Opus Dei after the Code and its albino Opus Dei hit man swept the world. “It does give us the opportunity to open up a bit.” (In fact, local Masons were so excited by the novel’s arrival, the Sydney-based Levinson added, that they’ve started a book club. “Of course the first book we are reviewing is The Lost Symbol, I think it’s a wonderful start.”)

As for the writing itself, always grit between the teeth of Brown’s critics, it may actually have improved some. The Telegraph newspaper’s list of the 20 all-time greatest Brown clunkers includes 16 entries from The Da Vinci Code, including the title: “da Vinci” is a geographical locator, not a surname, and referring to Leonardo by it is the same as asking “What Would Of Nazareth Do? But the newspaper’s list contains only one passage from The Lost Symbol, the first chapter’s, “He was sitting all alone in the enormous cabin of a Falcon 2000EX corporate jet as it bounced its way through turbulence. In the background, the dual Pratt & Whitney engines hummed evenly.” Then again, perhaps the reviewer couldn’t get past Chapter 1, even if it is just four pages long. It’s safe to say that literary critics, who have always treated Brown with vastly more vitriol than they ever spewed on the likes of Robert Ludlum or Danielle Steele in their bestselling days of glory, won’t have to eat their words.

But enough of the fun the carpers are having. What about the Brown nation, has their man delivered what it’s been waiting six years for? On the whole, and bearing in mind that—even in America—George Washington is inherently less interesting than Jesus Christ, yes, he has. Brown has protected, even entrenched his brand. He’s upped the pace from the Code both in storyline (unfolding over 12 hours rather than 24) and in structure: 133 chapters over 507 pages of text delivers a puzzle or suspense moment every 3.81 pages, compared to its predecessor’s relatively sedate one jolt per 4.32 pages.

The same sort of Fact page that provoked much of the controversy swirling around the Code opens The Lost Symbol too (“All rituals, science, artwork, and monuments in this novel are real”); the new killer bears the same highly visible Mark of Cain—one of Brown’s weirder quirks—as the last one (tattoos this time, rather than a melanin shortfall), and Langdon’s new female counterpart is again more than she seems (although Katherine Solomon’s last name is more of a giveaway than Sophie Niveau’s). Most characters still resemble living encyclopedias, constantly spouting enormous amounts of interesting if dumbed-down history; tourist-accessible secrets are hidden in plain view in well-known architecture; ingenious puzzles abound. And the key pieces of the book—the missing mentor, grotesque corpses, hints of hidden sources of “unfathomable power”—look more than a little familiar too. It’s a mix that even Brown’s worst critics have to admit—given the sheer number of imitators who have failed to pull it off since the Code began ruling bestseller lists—that nobody pulls off as appealingly as he does.

CSI Rome: Angels and Demons

By Brian D. Johnson - Friday, May 15, 2009 at 10:12 AM - 5 Comments

Tom Hanks and Ayelet Zurer in 'Angels and Demons'

Although novelist Dan Brown wrote  Angels and Demons before The Da Vinci Code, the movie version is being launched as a sequel to the Da Vinci blockbuster of 2007. The same formula is in place, along with the same director (Ron Howard) and the same star (Tom Hanks). So it would be reasonable to expect that the second movie would suck as much as the first, if not more so. Well, surprise, surprise.  Angels and Demons is better than The Da Vinci Code. Which isn’t saying much. But even though the plot is as farfetched and formulaic as Da Vinci’s, there’s a lot more going on. Da Vinci was an ecclesiastical mystery that unwrapped its narrative as a series of expositions. In other words, there was very little action, aside from the grisly bit of violence in the opening scene. No action, no drama. So the filmmakers had to rely on gimmicky set pieces like that chase scene in a smart car. And the film was really just a snakes-and-ladders tour of churches and cathedrals.  Angels and Demons is another Old World travelogue, a movie that will no doubt provide a template for a entire subset of the tourist industry, if it hasn’t done so already. But the story does have action, quite a lot of it. It’s a serial killer mystery, and although it’s hopelessly pedestrian, it’s never boring.  Plus it takes place against the backdrop of a Pope’s death and a power struggle to replace him.

Tom Hanks is back as Robert Langdon, the Indiana Jones of symbology. The actor’s wry wit has a little more room to move this time around, as if he’s playing off, and playing down, the mythic stature gained by his character in the first movie. And he has another French demoiselle to tag along for the ride, in this case a physicist played by Ayelet Zurer. The plot is more akin to a James Bond or Mission Impossible flick than to the last Dan Brown movie. It hinges on a ticking time bomb of anti-matter that has been stolen from a particle physics facility, and is hidden somewhere in the touristic maze of architecture. The device will level the Vatican plus much of Rome if it goes off. The Illumnati, a secret society of science lovers avenging a history of Vatican persecution, are the bad guys. Continue…

The Second Coming of Dan Brown

By Brian Bethune - Thursday, May 7, 2009 at 4:00 PM - 2 Comments

Dan Brown’s back, and in a big way. Six years after The Da Vinci Code took over the bestseller lists, and three years after the Hollywood adaptation became the second-highest-grossing movie of 2006, the film version of Brown’s other novel about Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon arrives in theatres on May 15. More exciting for Brown’s fans—not to mention for a publishing sector almost as hard hit economically as automakers—is the news his long-delayed third Langdon thriller is finally set for release. In September, five million hardcover copies of The Lost Symbol will go on sale, bearing a massive weight of expectation not only for Brown, but for an entire industry. No longer just the guy who popularized the notion that Jesus Christ had a family with Mary Magdalene, Brown is now cast as the Man Who Will Save Publishing. Talk about pressure: the mega-selling Code is a tough enough act to follow, but Brown’s chances of rescuing the book trade are no better than his chances of ruining it.

Brown, 44, has been a fairly prolific writer since he switched careers from singer-songwriter in 1994, and The Lost Symbol has probably been ready for years. But neither Brown nor his publisher, Doubleday, had any compelling financial need to jump on their own bandwagon any sooner. Estimates of Brown’s earnings from The Da Vinci Code tend to swirl around the figure of $250 million. The book stayed on bestseller lists for nearly three years, often—in an even more remarkable publishing first—sharing Top-10 listing with its own illustrated version. The total number of copies in print is now a staggering 81 million.

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