So, I Bowed To Peer Pressure and Started Reading, "The DaVinci Code"

[Yavin4]

First, it's not exactly great literature, but it does have it strengths. It's the perfect novel for the modern American, short chapters, fast read, and quickly developed characters. So, I can clearly see how this novel is sweeping America. However, I don't think that this bodes well for the future of American literature.

As for the book itself, I've only read about 1/4 of it, and it's a mixture between the tv show, "24", art history, and a Women's Studies class, all of which make it a fascinating read. If you are a devout Catholic, you will be upset by this book. I fully expect to see protests when the movie opens. By far, it'll be the most controversial movie of the year.

I'll try to finish it tonight, and give you my final review.

[ScreamingMeemie]

1. My mother, a devout Catholic, down to Fish on Fridays...confession

on Saturday, LOVED it. Just goes to show I guess. :hi:

[Monkey see Monkey Do]

5. My Dad (not quite as devout) thought the same

He adored Angels & Demons too.

[nutsnberries]

14. my Catholic mom too- enjoyed both Angels&Demons &TheDaVinciCode

!

[Left Is Write]

2. I looked for it in paperback last weekend...

didn't find it, and came home with The Third Secret by Steve Berry (also a Catholic conspiracy type story, though I haven't started reading it). I was also intrigued by three novels surrounding the Knights Templar.

[Nailzberg]

26. The paperback hasn't come out yet, March 28th.

LA Times had an article on it yesterday cause it's a huge printing, 5 million on paperback. I wouldn't have known the release otherwise.

[Left Is Write]

28. That explains it, then!

I didn't want to spend the money on a hardback, and besides, I'll probably read it in the bathtub. Much easier to have a paperback!

[Richard Steele]

3. There really are MESSAGES in DaVinci's paintings: (possible spoiler)

[tjwmason]

4. This devout Catholic didn't get upset.

The supposed facts were mostly pure b***-****.

But it's a work of fiction - I've read fiction where aliens invade, where the Cuban Missile Crisis caused W.W.III, and where the sign of the T replaced that of the Cross.

As a work of fiction, it's utterly the work of a hack - but it's emminently readable.

[ScreamingMeemie]

17. It's very funny how generalizations are usually disproven. It was an

enjoyable book, although I am just an "average" American and don't consider myself any better read than anyone else. :hi:

[Richardo]

6. 1/4th of the way through? You must be on chapter 132.

It is one poorly written piece of scheiss.

[Yavin4]

7. I Kind of Hate Reading Books Where I Know That I Could Write It Better

and I can't write worth shit.

[Richardo]

8. Don't you hate books where you're smarter than the 'expert' protagonists?

That's one big reason why I hate DVC.

[Yavin4]

9. Also, The Short Chapters Makes The Reader Feel Good About His/Her

reading abilities.

[LynneSin]

10. I enjoyed the book and not all of it is bullshit

It is a fact that I believe it was Constantine put together a council to finally put the bible into print form and that there were literally hundreds of books based on the life of Jesus. I've done studies with the Gnostic Gospels (the ones that didn't make it) and I can see why they were not selected. Many of those gospels were so radical in thinking that they would little contradict everything the 'church' stands for. People keep forgetting that the definition of Church is not a building but a gather of people together to worship in God's name. So seriously, 5 of us at a DU party could grab a bar table and a bottle of tequila and talk about God and that would be considered a Church.

Thing is the Church wants the structure and the setup for incoming money so many of the Gnostic's were discarded because they would have broken down that structure.

Most important thing is that none of the Gospels were ever record at the actual time that Jesus walked the earth. And even the books in the bible cut off almost 25 years between Jesus as a boy in the temple until he was 30 and started his ministry. It really would be highly unlikely that any 20-something jewish man would remain single unless perhaps he was daft in the head, a leper or some other uber undesirable. So the concept that Mary Magdalene being Jesus's wife and not the ex-whore that happened to follow him around is quite feasible and believed by many to be real

[Bridget Burke]

22. Recent scholarship about Mary Magdalene....

Says that she was one of the most important disciples. Neither a repentant prostitute nor Mrs Jesus. And he may have remained single because he was NOT a "regular guy." He was a mystic and traveling preacher.

If you liked non-bullshit parts of the Da Vinci Code, look up the sources. There's lots to learn.

[LynneSin]

29. I have the book written by the folks who claim Brown plagerized them

bought that about a year ago

[TrogL]

30. 'Holy Blood, Holy Grail' has been out for ages

It's a wonderful book if you're a student of logical fallacies - there's a new one every page.

It's also hysterically funny that it's core evidence is based upon a dadaist hoax.

[Bridget Burke]

56. But HBHG is an amusing, sophisticated fake!

Fascinating bits of history are discussed. Who doesn't like the Knights Templar, the Cathars & the Grail stories? Of course, they don't "fit" together as claimed. (I doubt the Knights & the Cathars would have gotten along.)

And who doesn't love a dadaist hoax? At least the writers of HBHG have agreed they got suckered on that one.

[northzax]

51. or he was gay

I mean a charismatic 33 year old, hangs out with men all the time, washes people's feet? guys want to be him, women want to worship him. it's like a bad episode of Will and Grace.

[Bridget Burke]

61. The figure in Da Vinci's painting...

That some consider female, was John, the Beloved Apostle.

Da Vinci, himself, appreciated beautiful young men.

[Radical Activist]

34. It seems like a common response for some Catholics

to claim that any historical fact that makes the church look bad is a lie or an anti-Catholic attack. I haven't read the Davinci Code but a serious study of early Christian History doesn't exactly lend me to see the early Catholic Church as an accurate protector of what Jesus taught. Constantine further perverted Christian doctrine, which had already gone through serious changes, and he sometimes did it in a very brutal, un-christian way.

On the other hand, other Catholics are fully aware of the dark episodes in the Church's history and somehow reconcile that.

[CBGLuthier]

11. read an excerpt once

How something that poorly written could be so popular says some really sad things about the state of literacy in the world today.

[Yavin4]

12. Remember Who's President

I'm going to stick non-fiction from here on out.

[LouisianaLiberal]

16. Foucault's Pendulum

I haven't read the Da Vinci Code, and from what I've read about it probably will not.

If you want a complex, difficult, brilliantly written book about pseudo-history you will not be disappointed by Umberto Eco's book.

I don't want to give any of the plot away, but I've read it twice in the last fifteen years, and the second time was better than the first.

It is probably too difficult for most modern readers to follow or maintain their interest, but it was a best seller in the early nineties. Eco is a brilliant writer.

[Richardo]

18. If you want a complex, difficult, brilliant book about pseudo-history...

You WILL be disappointed by DVC. It's none of the above.

[CBGLuthier]

21. It was indeed a challenging novel

A friend got me to read it about 10 years or so.

It was a great read.

[Bridget Burke]

23. It may be time to read Foucault's Pendulum again.

I really enjoyed it.

"King Jesus" by Robert Graves is another take on the story--real knowledge of the Classical age--and the Goddess working behind the scenes.

However, I will FORCE myself to read the Da Vinci book--just for comparison's sake. I doubt it will take long.

[LouisianaLiberal]

35. Graves's historical novels are amazing.

And if you haven't read his two volume history of the Greek Myths you're in for a treat.

His "Goodbye to all That" is one of my favorite autobiographies.

Oh, and "The White Goddess" - it has been years since I've read it, but I remember finding it more thoughtful than Frazier, and feeling as if I had stepped back in time and could to some extent really understand primitive thought (well, on second thought, I should say "early" thought - logical thinking is still not one of our strengths in the early 21st century).

[Bridget Burke]

38. I love his Greek Myths.

Especially the way he tells alternate versions of just about every story. His own Goddess-centric viewpoint stands among the interpretations--so we can decide for ourselves.

I just took The White Goddess down from the shelf. Some of the new Pagans take it for Holy Writ, but his poetic viewpoint is unique.

Have you read "Homer's Daughter"? It explains who may have written the Odyssey--& why she did.

Last summer, I picked up a cheap hardback of "I Claudius" at a thrift shop. It was battered, but definitely worth 50 cents. I got it home & found that it was an autographed copy--not all of the note was legible. Tucked into the book was a scrap of paper in the same handwriting: "Robert Graves, Deya, Mallorca"...

[LouisianaLiberal]

50. Holy Moly (a reference to Homer)

I'm just a little jealous that you have an autographed copy! The thing I love most about Graves is that he goes so far out on a limb as he conjectures, and its so much fun watching him do it.

Thanks for the recommendation. "Homer's Daughter" sounds fascinating. I will definitely read it.

(BTW - I have only a few autographed books, but my favorite by far is the one signed by Robert Bly. In college in the eighties I attended a lecture he gave at LSU. It went hours over schedule, and after a break he asked the audience to accompany him outside to continue. I still regret not following him out to hear the second half of the lecture (eight o'clock class the next day) but I asked him to sign my Oxford poetry anthology with some of his poems in it. He had just spoken about the evil of anthologies, but it was all I had of his poems, and he smiled as he drew an amorphous figure on the page, and labeled it "Man reading anthology."

I wish I had taped him that night - his talk was the most brilliant, eclectic mix of knowledge and mysticism I have ever heard. It was the kind of speech that gave meaning to things that seem disconnected and indefinable, and left me wanting to know so much more.)

[myrna minx]

60. You might like this article about Robert Bly...

http://www.rakemag.com/stories/printable.aspx?itemID=4230&catID=146&SelectCatID=146

The Rake is a local independent weekly in Minneapolis. I loved this article...

Robert Bly: The Dude Abides
The Rake takes up a seat at the feet of the master.

snip

So Bly the religious writer got up on his pulpit and cofounded American Writers Against the Vietnam War. He was a fiery presence on college campuses throughout the decade, and his journal, The Sixties, was a wellspring of dissent. “My poem ‘Counting Small Boned Bodies’ became one of the most famous poems, I guess, of the war.”

Let’s count the bodies over again.
If we could only make the bodies smaller,
The size of skulls,
We could make a whole plain white with skulls in the moonlight!

If we could only make the bodies smaller,
Maybe we could get
A whole year’s kill in front of us on a desk!

If we could only make the bodies smaller,
We could fit
A body into a finger-ring, for a keepsake forever.

So saving our souls meant saving America’s soul. Bly has continued weaving that thread into his mantle to this day. Throughout the eighties and nineties, when he became more widely known for his work with men, Bly was a persistent political gadfly.

In 1997, Bly published the Sibling Society, a full-steam admonishment of a generation that had, in his mind, stopped growing up and stopped parenting its children. He said, “Culture is defined by what it says no to. Not by what it says yes to. So what’s happening in the sibling society is, we say no to almost nothing. We say yes to preteen sexuality, we say yes to watching television forty hours a day, we say yes to pot and smoking and drinking and spending your life in a stupor. We say yes to all those things. What do we say no to?”

Bly wrote sharply: “People don’t bother to grow up, and we are all fish swimming in a tank of half-adults. The rule is: Where repression was before, fantasy will now be; we human beings limp along, running after our own fantasy. Adults regress toward adolescence; and adolescents—seeing that—have no desire to become adults.…We are living among dispirited and agonized teenagers who can’t find any hope. Genuine work is disappearing, and we are becoming aware of a persistent infantilizing of men and women, a process already far advanced.

“The old tradition is that you cannot change a child into a grown-up without a lot of conversation with adults. In America, the typical time a man spends in conversation with the son or daughter is ten minutes a day. In Russia, the old Russia, it was two hours a day. So the question then is, who teaches the child how things get done in the world? Well, the answer is the television.”
snip

[LouisianaLiberal]

62. Thanks for this recommendation.

I've bookmarked it for tomorrow morning. It looks great. Bly could teach the self-important thugs who control this government a lot about being a man. Thanks again.

[Orsino]

24. That one's a workout.

Every fifth line is in a different damned language. You build muscles reading that thing. It may be the greatest anti-conspiracy book ever.

[LouisianaLiberal]

37. LOL

NT

[myrna minx]

39. I love Foucault's Pendulum.

It is one of my favorite books of all time. I was in HS when it first came out. I plowed through it and understood about an 8th of it. ;-) I didn't have the internet or google back then, so I had about 8 encyclopedias open at a time. My subsequent readings have brought so much satisfaction. That is one book that I never receive back whenever I "loan" it to someone. :hi:

[LouisianaLiberal]

54. Wow. If I had read it in HS

I would have had a difficult time. Like you, I loaned by my copies out years ago, and have no idea where they are.

Why couldn't I meet girls like you and Bridget in high school? (Well, I did, but lacked the self-confidence then)

[myrna minx]

59. In HS, I was fortunate to know all of the smart, nerdy, arty, punk rock

kids who had such an incredible influence on me. When I read the book in HS, I was exposed to so many new concepts, ideas and history that I didn't know how to process it all. While reading this book, a dictionary was merely an extension of my hand because I didn't have any clue that Eco was writing about.:silly: Haha.

I always keep paperbacks on hand to "loan" out, but the 1st edition hardcover stays safe in my home.

When I read The Name of the Rose in HS (which lead me to Foucault) I felt cheated out of most of the book because I didn't read latin. :rofl:
Take care. :hi: PS--In HS, I was friends with the shy fellas. Especially those who worshiped Harlan Ellison and D&D.

[northzax]

13. it's airplane lit

you can start it at JFK and leave it on your seat at LAX. that's why it's popular. it seems deep and meaningful, but it is really just brain candy. Still, it's better than watching the TeeVee.

[Yavin4]

15. Funny. That's How I Started Reading It! At The Airport!!!

Got stuck due to bad weather.

[kwassa]

19. I really think it is just trash lit.

It is airplane lit. I read it in one or two sittings, pretty typical potboiler. I knew 20 pages in that I really didn't need to finish it, but I did.

Unlike the "Bridges of Madison County", which I could only read about ten pages before the gag reflex became overwhelming.

[uppityperson]

20. read the DaVinci Cod next

satire on this book. DavinciCode problems:
too frequent segues into "facts" that make the reader think they are learning things and are intellegent when often the "facts" are fiction (regardless of the intro to the book that says everything is real, it is a work of fiction).

Stooooooooopid world famous expert master crytololologist. Spoiler: Did you know the Star of David is 2 triangles? WOW!!!

Read the DaVinci Cod, I got it from the library, made me laugh which is a rare and good thing.

[Arugula Latte]

25. I really enjoyed it. I thought it was fun & interesting.

So sue me, all you pooh-poohers.

[terrya]

27. It's an airplane book

The perfect book to take on that 3 hour flight.

I have to admit it's an engrossing story. It does hold your interest.

But it certainly isn't great literature, as you said. I'm a lapsed Catholic, so it didn't outrage me at all.

I may see the movie, I don't know.

[Richardo]

41. Two words: Audrey Tautou

May make the movie worth seeing.

[Nailzberg]

31. The movie release got me to read it.

I never can pick up a book after the movie, I prefer to etch out the characters in my mind, and you can't do that after seeing the movie.

Yes, it was an easy read. Yes, I did figure stuff out faster than Professor Harvard Know It All. The curves in the road never surprised me. While I wasn't terribly impressed with it, I still found it enjoyable. The same way one can enjoy watching "Stripes". It doesn't need to be a work of genius to be enjoyable. Wait, "Stripes" was a work of genuis. Um, let's say "Good Will Hunting" instead.

And it sold something like 45 million copies, which is astounding cause I didn't think that many people still read books. It got a lot of people to open books again.

[Nikia]

32. My husband had the book close to when it came out

He likes the author's stories. I read it last year after my superviser mentioned something about it. I found it entertaining and interesting. Reading it is sort of like watching one of a number of adventure/action movies.

[tigereye]

33. I found it exciting but lacking depth

much prefer Ian Pears if you want a good art-oriented mystery type read.

[Robeson]

36. I'm sure the author is very rich off that book....

...wish I'd written it.

[bridgit]

40. no, it's not 'le miz'...

[kay1864]

42. Why do so many DUers attack it?

It's a good read, a fine thriller IMHO, and has an interesting historical backdrop (some of which is bogus or in dispute). It's not Shakespeare (nor does it pretend to be), but it is a good read, and a fast-paced thriller.

So why do so many here call it "poorly written"? Because of the short chapters? Pfui, that doesn't make the writing bad; it's just a style. The classroom "Phi" scene doesn't read well, but the rest of the book does.

Now "A Million Little Pieces", THAT'S poor writing. :P

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

43. I think it's because so many people think it IS Shakespeare.

I, for one, refuse to read this book based solely on the fact that so many people whom have less than adequate literary prowess claim this book to be the end-all be-all of literature.

[kay1864]

45. That's odd, I haven't heard that at all

In the past couple years, I've heard comments like "You've gotta read this!" but I took those as "it's a great thriller" or "the stuff you'll learn will amaze you". Not "this is great literature". I have yet to hear anyone make that claim, at least not in my circle of friends.

So if I tell you it's NOT great literature (nor does it pretend to be), does that address your objection at all?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

46. Not really.

My best friend and fellow literature degree holder read it (because he reads EVERYTHING) and said it sucked too.

It's more of an issue of "If the particular people whom are recommending it to me think it's good, it probably isn't worth my time to read" type of thing. Yes, I know that makes me a snob. I'm okay with that. :-)

[kay1864]

47. What did your friend say

that sucked about it?

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

49. That it's a poorly written waste of a half an hour.

And then we promptly went back to talking about Philip K Dick and HP Lovecraft.

[kay1864]

52. FWIW, I've read

Philip K Dick and HP Lovecraft. Enjoyed them quite a bit. Enjoyed DVC quite a bit too.

I'd be interested in why your friend thought it was poorly written.

[Nicholas D Wolfwood]

58. I'll ask him next time I see him.

Be assured though - it most definitely was not because of the "religious bias" reason. He's a good ol' god-hatin librul like the rest of us. :-)

[kay1864]

44. Oh, and after you're done reading it...

If you want to read an overview of the historical inaccuracies, Wikipedia has a good entry:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticisms_of_The_Da_Vinci_Code

[Richardo]

48. Actually, the 'phi' discussion was the one scene I liked...

...because Langston actually came off as an expert in something in that scene.

The reason I rag on it so bad is that I was expecting a lot of arcane cryptology, code-breaking and deep and unexpected symbology, and all I got were these 'experts' that could not recognize an anagram when they saw one.

Twice.

So there it is: The stupidity of the characters got me. I actually liked the plot - I like ambitious 'big idea' plots. But the execution was so poor that I can not get past it.

[kay1864]

53. Oh yes, I liked the topic of 'phi'...

I just didn't think the scene itself read well. It was not at all like any college class I've ever been in--the students acted way too contrived, so it came across as unrealistic.

[Polly Hennessey]

55. The Code

I have to admit I became bored a little more than half way through. The characters are cardboard (slightly handsome man and cute, little brainy broad find love in the Louvre); I thought if they chase each other through one more hallway I'm going to let my Golden Retrievers shred the book. I gave up after reading about two-thirds. What an intriguing subject - too bad it was written by a hack. I finally left it on a bench in front of Von's Supermarket; let someone who voted for Bush read it.

I agree that the movie may be worth seeing only because of Audrey Tautou.

[hedgehog]

57. It's a paint by the numbers "thriller" and the "facts" are hocus

pocus (just take a look at some of the paintings mentioned - the pictures are not as described in the book!)On the other hand, I think this book has stirred a lot of interest among Catholics who are devout but not necessarily in thrall to the hierarchy. They know that there are a lot of things wrong in the Church today and this book touches a lot of bases - treatment of women, treatment of laity, secret groups within the Church, power structure within the Church, interpretation of Scripture, nature of the priesthood, etc, etc. This may be a diversion into a side channel full of nonsense or it may be a first step into asking some serious questions.