One dark winter's night I attended a Christmas Eve service that pretty much was the dictionary definition of "not as described."
The service, at a nice little ELCA Lutheran Church near our home, should have been very nice. Martin Luther was, after all, German, and Germans are renowned for lavish Christmas decorations, delicious baked treats, delicate blown glass ornaments on fragrant live trees, and wonderful music. The old pastor, who had just been called as the chaplain at Mum's alma mater, had preached marvelously lucid, intelligent sermons and chanted the liturgy in a rich baritone voice, and we had every confidence that the new pastor would carry on in this tradition.
Prince of Peace certainly looked the same as we joined our friends the Heleys in one of the pews near the altar, with a huge tree by the altar and seasonal wreaths and swags adorned with red velvet bows. The lights were dimmed enough to give the plain little building a romantic glow, but not so much that the many families who had brought their children to this family-oriented service had to worry about their tots being frightened in the dark. The organist struck up the first hymn, we opened our books to the appropriate number -
And got our first surprise, when we saw that they'd changed the words to "A Mighty Fortress is Our God."
Now, there is more than one English translation of this legendary hymn, one by no less than Thomas Carlyle. This doesn't mean that American Lutherans used any of the alternates. No, Prince of Peace and the other churches Mum had attended had always used the familiar one, the version everybody knows:
A mighty fortress is our God,
A bulwark never failing...
We were totally unprepared to see that Pastor Wayne, the new minister, had scorned the one that most of the congregation had memorized long since in favor of this:
A mighty fortress is our God,
A sword and shield victorious...
Mum and I exchanged glances, and our friend June raised her eyebrows. June's mother
hissed, "This isn't Lutheran!" and glared at the book fiercely enough that it's a miracle it didn't spontaneously combust in her hands. All around us people were wrinkling their brows and hesitantly singing along instead of making a joyful noise unto the Lord. It was not an auspicious beginning, and as we sat down Mum was muttering to June that this wasn't close to the original German, which she'd studied in college.
There was more to come.
The Christmas Eve homily, which should have been based on the familiar story from Luke about the Holy Family in Bethlehem, was a rousing fire-and-brimstone call to repent and give one's self to Christ to avoid the fires of hell and the horrors of the Last Judgment. Children who'd had visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads when they arrived at the church were shrieking in terror, while their parents stared in shock at their alleged shepherd preaching about the Apocalypse instead of Advent.
Mrs. Heley looked like she'd swallowed a lemon, whole.
Just as the hellfire seemed fit to ignite the gaily tinseled tree, Pastor Wayne took a deep breath, finished, and introduced his nephew. This lad, who was rumored to be a violin prodigy, was to perform the evening's anthem, "O Holy Night," accompanied on the piano by the church organist. The children, calmer now that the scary man with the bushy mustache wasn't talking about them all writhing in agony for all eternity, quieted long enough for the young soloist to raise his bow and begin.
The screams of the damned would have sounded better.
I'm not exaggerating. Mum, who had played the violin in her high school orchestra, was certain that Pastor Wayne's prodigy hadn't rosined his bow properly, for there was no way that a ten year old could have produced such a chillingly realistic imitation of a tortured cat if he'd actually prepared his instrument in the correct and approved fashion. And surely the adventurously atonal skreek on o niiiight divIIIIIne was this brilliant musician's homage to Bela Bartok's wilder moments and not simple ineptitude! Lutherans love good music, so this could not possibly be a talentless kid whose fond uncle had pushed him to do something beyond his ability, could it?
Could it?
Of course at the time I was so caught up in the moment that such lofty analysis was beyond me. I found myself kicking my left instep with the heel of my right shoe in hopes that pain would shock me out of the laughter that kept bubbling up past the Kleenex I'd clapped over my mouth in a desperate and fruitless attempt to keep anyone from noticing that I was damn near in hysterics. Mum, who normally could and did quell me with a glare, was equally helpless, and between us we were doing a fine imitation of the Lake Saranac All-Tubercular Chorus warming up for a concert. June, who was unlucky enough to sit between us, was making the most extraordinary wheezing noises as she fought for control.
And Mrs. Heley, who was at most ten years old than Mum, shook her head and muttered, "I'm ashamed of you girls! You should know better!"
I don't remember much until we got home, but I do know that we laughed so hard once we were safely in the Heleys' car that it's a miracle no one else noticed. Perhaps they were laughing, too, or composing angry letters to Pastor Wayne, or simply comforting their sobbing children who were now convinced that Baby Jesus was going to leap up out of the manger and damn them all with a wave of his pudgy little hand.
Like I said, it was most definitely a service that was not as described.
That Christmas Eve at Prince of Peace was many things, but above all it had every element necessary for a Christmas Service So Bad It's Good: wailing children, poorly chosen hymns, an inappropriate and theologically worthless sermon, and music so bad one either had to laugh or grab the nearest fondue fork and puncture one's eardrums. In its own miserable little way it was perfection, and the fact that I remember it so clearly after over thirty years is a testament to its amazing awfulness.
So it is with tonight's book. There is but one, a bestseller that made its otherwise very ordinary author very, very, very rich. And though I don't usually write about recent books, there was no way I could ignore this monument to bad writing, non-existent characterization, limp plotting, and execrable research.
Gentle readers, tonight I give you -
The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. Dan Brown did not set out to become an author. The child of a faculty member at the distinguished prep school Phillips Exeter, he attended Amherst College, where he pledged Psi Upsilon not Chi Psi, where they burned a piano on the front lawn, played squash, and studied writing with Yaddo alumnus Alan Lelchuk.
Despite this expert tutelage, Brown decided to become a singer-songwriter. He formed his own record label, released a couple of CDs, and had a following in the hundreds when he moved to Los Angeles to follow his bliss. He married, released more albums that had all the impact of a pebble chucked into the Niagara Whirlpool, and eventually followed his father's example and took a faculty position at Phillips Exeter, supplementing his income by moonlighting at a school for somewhat younger children.
It wasn't until 1993 that he found his true path. This came about not through a revelation, but through holiday reading. It seems that Brown enjoyed a novel by well known hack author Sidney Sheldon while vacationing in Tahiti, and decided that he wanted to write his own thrillers. He warmed up by collaborating with his wife Blythe Newton on a humorous volume entitled 187 Men to Avoid: A Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman and published it under the name "Danielle Brown," then quit his job and began writing full time. Between 1998 and 2003 he published three potboilers (Digital Fortress, Deception Point, and Angels and Demons, which you may have heard of), plus another humorous trifle called The Bald Book. The latter masterpiece was published under his wife's name, although he later admitted to have done most of the work himself despite not being bald - perhaps he simply has a really good toupee?
It wasn't until 2003 that Dan Brown became a household name, when he unleashed the brilliance of The Da Vinci Code on the war-weary and Bush-ridden world.
We all know the story by now unless we've been living under monastic vows in Tibet: Robert Langdon, Harvard's finest and only symbologist, is asked to decode a cryptic message left by the murdered curator of the Louvre in his final moments. This seemingly simple request leads Langdon and French cryptographer Sophie Neveu, eventually revealed as the dead man's granddaughter, on a wild chase through France, England, and Scotland in pursuit of the solution. Along the way they find themselves caught in a clandestine war between Opus Dei, an ultra-conservative Catholic group, and the Priory of Sion, a secret society devoted to protecting the Holy Grail. The Holy Grail eventually is revealed to be the remains of Mary Magdalene, the wife of Jesus and mother of his child, St. Sarah, and - mirabile dictu et stupor mundi! - the ancestors of not only the Merovingian kings of France, but none other than Sophie Neveu!
This all sounds like a standard airport thriller, one of those thick books with plenty of plot, earthshaking political/religious secrets guarded by a mysterious organization, and so much action and adventure that the reader doesn't realize the plot holes until she is safely at her destination. Although no one quite expected The Da Vinci Code to outsell every book in 2004 except Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the publishers had been pleased enough to print plenty of copies, which is why first editions in good condition are still readily available at used bookstores and the finer tag sales of America's small towns and middle class suburbs.
So what elevates The Da Vinci Code from the racks of airport thrillers that are later made into profitable movies? Why am I writing about it and not, say, The Bourne Identity or the latest Nicholas Sparks novel? What makes this book not only bad but epically terrible?
Critics, most of whom haven't sold a tenth of one percent as many books as Dan Brown, are little help; surely Salman Rushdie, who hasn't been fatwa'd in years, was jealous when he said:
"Do not start me on 'The Da Vinci Code,' a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name."
Who is Umberto Eco to say, after his own mewlings were favorably compared to the bestselling novel of 2004 that didn't involve a nearsighted fourteen year old:
"Dan Brown is a character from Foucault’s Pendulum! I invented him. He shares my characters’ fascinations—the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist."
Stephen Fry isn't even a novelist, so where does he get off calling this book
"complete loose stool-water"
"arse gravy of the worst kind"
"botty-dribble"
As for The New York Times, they have some nerve calling The Da Vinci Code
"Dan Brown's best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence."
Even Stephen King, who's only been writing bestsellers since Dan Brown couldn't wipe up his own botty-dribble, is less than charitable toward his fellow scribe when he dismisses Brown's novel as the
intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese.
This is clearly yet more evidence of the East Coast elite dissing the simple tastes of the common man; after all, books don't sell billions and billions like Big Macs unless they're actually good, or interesting, or both.
Or do they? Surely the following samples of Brown's finely-honed prose will prove that the American people know best!
I can't imagine your complaint, sir. You trespassed in my home and placed a nasty welt on the skull of a dear friend. I would be well within my rights to shoot you right now and leave you to rot in the woods.
These books can't possibly compete with centuries of established history, especially when that history is endorsed by the ultimate bestseller of all time."
Faukman's eyes went wide. "Don't tell me Harry Potter is actually about the Holy Grail."
"I was referring to the Bible."
Faukman cringed. "I knew that.”
"My friend," Aringarosa had told him, "You were born an albino. Do not let others shame you for this. Do you not understand how special this makes you? Were you not aware that Noah himself was an albino?"
"Noah of the Ark?" Silas had never heard this.
Aringarosa was smiling. "Indeed, Noah of the Ark. An Albino. Like you, he had skin white like an angel. Consider this. Noah saved all of life on the planet. You are destined for great things, Silas. The Lord has freed you for a reason. You have your calling. The Lord needs your help to do His work."
Over time, Silas learned to see himself in a new light. I am pure. White. Beautiful. Like an angel.
If this isn't enough proof of Dan Brown's mastery of English letters, consider the billions and billions many, many, many chapters, some only a few paragraphs, that make this book so easy to read while standing in line to have one's junk touched by bored TSA workers in airports. And names like "Leigh Teabing" which sound like a rejected brand of Twining's oolongs are so much more realistic than "Frodo" or "Tess." And what's not to love about a book where the female lead turns out to be not only the granddaughter of the murdered curator but a direct lineal descendant of the Merovingians AND Jesus H. Christ and his charming young wife Mary M. Christ?
Even better, the book is true! Every single historical fact! Brown said so himself, and if professional historians, theologians, and conspiracy buffs have pointed out numerous errors, misinterpretations, and outright falsehoods, why, they're just what my late aunt Betty would have called "jelly on the bread" because their works haven't sold anywhere so well.
Ditto the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail, who sued Dan Brown for plagiarizing their ridiculous hoax non-fiction bestseller, or Russian art historian Mikhail Anikin, who claimed that Brown had ripped off his Leonardo Da Vinci or Theology on Canvas. They lost in court, so why should anyone pay attention to them?
Brown, who first introduced Robert Langdon in Angels and Demons, used the character in his next book, The Lost Symbol. Both Langdon books were adapted for the screen by Tom Hanks and Ron Howard who can and should have known better, and despite Hanks being saddled with the least flattering hairstyle since Billy Ray Cyrus inflicted the mullet on the American people, the adaptations were nearly as profitable and critically acclaimed as the novels. That's why The Lost Symbol, with a script by Brown himself, is slated for release sometime in the next couple of years.
Even better, Dan Brown said in an interview that he had ideas for another ten novels featuring Harvard's most heroic and only symbologist. Think of all the hours you can waste! The trees that will be sacrificed! The critical brickbats that will fly! The future diaries I can write!
Doesn't that just make your withers quiver with delight?
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On a personal note, may this holiday season bring all of you, my gentle readers, peace, prosperity, and above all, love. It's a joy to write for you all, and I'm honored to give a little of that joy back in the form of these weekly forays into the world of terrible books.
Pax vobiscum, mi amici!
Love -
Ellid
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