| Monday, February 07, 2005 |
 | Returning to work on Monday, I found that Amazon had finally made good on their nebulous threat to deliver Le Tigre. Yay! I heard Hot Topic on the radio what must be two or three months ago, and was reminded how much I needed this album, as I think I have been pretty regularly since it was released. I saw Le Tigre in Brighton... um... perhaps three years ago - when they were touring Feminist Sweepstakes, in any case - and remember bouncing enthusiastically to Deceptacon. That was a good evening: steaming venue, and a walk home through cool night air. I do miss Brighton, and the sea.
The sea. Thoughts:
1)Lost in the Irish Sea on a sailing boat. Dodging cruise ships, rolling in storms.
2)Looking out from a dying seaside town on the south coast in the dark, the sea as an absence, the coast as noise. On top of an observation tower, and cold.
3)Brighton, sitting on the wall above the beach at 3 in the morning, breath visible, wishing the world still.
4)The Blackwater and the sea. Between the water and the land is a vast, flat level of grassy mud. It looks like another planet. It feels like nothing could grow or live there, but life, as is its tradition, finds a way. The earth is rich and dead, and offers treacherous footing.
So anyway. Today, over coffee before work, I finally brought down the curtain on a very low period in my life. I finished Angels and Demons, by Dan Brown. My life is once again my own.
I don't entirely blame the fuck. After all, it is not his fault that a whole lot of people bought The da Vinci Code, and thus that his publishers rush-released his terrible sophomore novels, which until then had been gloriously unread. As such, how was he to know that it would become painfully clear that he had strip-mined the latter to provide ideas for the former?
Each begins with a killing. We then cut to Robert Langdon, Harvard symbologist. He is awoken in the night. The ensuing conversaton, in essence, goes like this.
Hello. You are Robert Langdon, esteemed Harvard symbologist. You have devoted your life to the study of religious symbols.
I have. Who are you, and why are you telling me my own autobiographical information?
Although mysterious, we need your help. We will send a vehicle, which will pick you up shortly.
I am confused. This will happen quite a lot, necessitating further exposition, because I juggle my duties as a Harvard symbologist with my hobby of being a fucking cretin.
There has been a symbologically intriguing death. Please to look at the funny picture.
My God! A gruesome image of a murdered man ... with some symbols.
Langdon is then rushed to the scene of the crime, where he has the opportunity to look at the corpse and repeat the symbological hook over and over again. He will also meet the fiery daughter/granddaughter of the victim, who will be understandably miffed about the whole matter, or antimatter. The parameters of the quest will be broadly defined, and Langdon will be packed off. It will be depressingly clear that, despite an age difference of around fifteen years and a relationship based primarily around moving rapidly from one point to another, she will at some point shortly after the conclusion of the novel sex him up.
Oh, cut to the sinister assassin, by the way. The sinister assassin is surprisingly picturesque for a killer. The Da Vinci Code excels at this point. A word of advice: if you are a giant albino, do not become an assassin. You are exceptionally easy to spot. The sinister assassin has some issues.
Langdon and femme then find themselves tasked with solving some very simple puzzles. The fiendish puzzles of the Da Vinci code include two anagrams, a pair of riddles and some mirror writing. Yes, mirror writing, which defeats a Harvard professor and an Oxford-educated historian. Angels and Demons revolves around solving a four-line riddle, and then moving in the direction that some statues are pointing until one encounters another statue. At some point we will hear the same disquisition on the iambic pentameter in both books. We will also be told that English is la lingua pura, both books being based around secret societies opposed by the Vatican. The writer will not notice that he is repeating himself almost word for word. He may be distracted by his hero's uncanny ability to dredge up lengthy memories of lectures he had delivered which helped to fill in exposition on the action currently taking place. Later, we will learn that the halos worn by saints in devotional art are based on the depiction of the divine in Egyptian art. Twice. As Langdon does battle with these surprisingly easy puzzles, we witness a battle of wits not matched since Richard Whitely met Chris Maslanka in a low-oxygen environment.
In a shocking reverse, it will transpire that one of the good guys introduced to aid Langdon is in fact the pseudonymous villain of the piece, and both Langdon and the sinister assassin have been mere dupes, played against each other. The vast plot holes created by this revelation are to a very great extent ignored.
Fortunately, it all turns out all right in the end.
The da Vinci Code is certainly more ambitious than Angels and Demons, but only in the sense that allowing your dog to crap in somebody's driveway is less ambitious than entering their house in the guise of a meter reader and defecating into their DVD player.
With a bit of luck, I may never have to read another Dan Brown book. For those who have yet to do so, I would recommend playing Deus Ex instead. It has all the same nouns, and the dialogue and plotting are actually better. It seems that Dan Brown includes among his top ten books of all time Kane and Abel by Jeffrey Archer, Robert Ludlum's Bourne series, and Strunk and White's Elements of Style - "Because who can possibly remember all the rules of grammar and punctuation?". I am unsure whether one can actually end another human being's life through papercuts inflicted by the target being secured to a chair in front of a snowblower into which an entire paperback run of The da Vinci Code is being poured, but I'm ready to try.
1 Comments:
It's all good fun though. The type of book I take to the beach because if it does happen to get washed away on the tide well... no big loss.
Between him and James Patterson my disbelief is almost permanently suspended.
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