Brown's new book doesn't offer award-winning literary prose. But intellectual snobbery and review elitism is foolish in an era of growing cultural ignorance and counterproductive political sneering.
Perfect pitch review. Dan’s ideas are borderline preposterous and he writes woman characters as thin as high-finish 120gsm Stora Enso paper, but I couldn’t put his book down! Perfect airplane read…so long as you have a really long flight.
Haha thank you. To be fair, I think Langdon is pretty thin too. He seems to be primarily motivated by historical conspiracies, puzzles, and swimming. But I did love these lines from The Telegraph's review of The Secret of Secrets: "These criticisms miss the point: Dan Brown's novels have never been about sentence structure or turn of phrase. They are entirely plot driven, so it really doesn't matter if characters are lazily sketched and wooden – they are but cogs driving the narrative forward. Having a pop at the writing in Dan Brown's novels is akin to turning up at a music gig and complaining about the lack of comedy. You're in the wrong place, pal."
I agree with your opening view that anyone reading a book these days is in the plus column. So many people I know don't read anything. It is frightening how many leaders in our country don't have any notion of the complexity of language. Speech has become so inflamed with polarizing criticism and even hate, we do not need critics who bash writers. I remember John Updike's novels which famously provided clever autobiographical drama and lifestyle tales from the perspective of a white male in the United States in the 60s, through the 80s. My husband purchased his entire oeuvre over the years and I read along just because the books were so good. If he wrote something now it would probably be highly criticized by women but that's another story.
The New Yorker Magazine employed Updike as a literary critic. He made criticism fun with his descriptions of what the reader will encounter in the book (no spoilers), the strength of the writing, and some background on the author. Then he gave examples of problems in the story, holes in the plot, stories that just didn't work and why, or grammatical issues. It was a critical analysis not puerile negative criticism. An Updike review was nuanced, with enough information to decide if one wanted the book tomorrow or waiting for the paperback was a better choice. Keep on Brian! Thanks for your unique point of view.
A humane and stimulating assessment that made me . . . almost want to read Dan Brown, even as I am enthralled by the latest Ian McEwan!
Thanks, Catherine! Dan Brown is not for everyone, but he is for some people, and that's great!
Perfect pitch review. Dan’s ideas are borderline preposterous and he writes woman characters as thin as high-finish 120gsm Stora Enso paper, but I couldn’t put his book down! Perfect airplane read…so long as you have a really long flight.
Haha thank you. To be fair, I think Langdon is pretty thin too. He seems to be primarily motivated by historical conspiracies, puzzles, and swimming. But I did love these lines from The Telegraph's review of The Secret of Secrets: "These criticisms miss the point: Dan Brown's novels have never been about sentence structure or turn of phrase. They are entirely plot driven, so it really doesn't matter if characters are lazily sketched and wooden – they are but cogs driving the narrative forward. Having a pop at the writing in Dan Brown's novels is akin to turning up at a music gig and complaining about the lack of comedy. You're in the wrong place, pal."
Books are like wine.
1. Individual tastes vary greatly
2. We all like something others would consider swill
3. We only display our best bottles (for the record, Fluke made it onto a shelf with Moby Dick and Brothers Karamazov 🤷♂️)
I agree with your opening view that anyone reading a book these days is in the plus column. So many people I know don't read anything. It is frightening how many leaders in our country don't have any notion of the complexity of language. Speech has become so inflamed with polarizing criticism and even hate, we do not need critics who bash writers. I remember John Updike's novels which famously provided clever autobiographical drama and lifestyle tales from the perspective of a white male in the United States in the 60s, through the 80s. My husband purchased his entire oeuvre over the years and I read along just because the books were so good. If he wrote something now it would probably be highly criticized by women but that's another story.
The New Yorker Magazine employed Updike as a literary critic. He made criticism fun with his descriptions of what the reader will encounter in the book (no spoilers), the strength of the writing, and some background on the author. Then he gave examples of problems in the story, holes in the plot, stories that just didn't work and why, or grammatical issues. It was a critical analysis not puerile negative criticism. An Updike review was nuanced, with enough information to decide if one wanted the book tomorrow or waiting for the paperback was a better choice. Keep on Brian! Thanks for your unique point of view.