Posted on 05/23/2006 9:42:06 AM PDT by Caleb1411
Lost in all the brouhaha about "The Da Vinci Code" is a simple observation that seems to have gotten lost with all the protests and condemnations and threats of boycotts.
It's just not very good.
I'm a latecomer to this whole kerfuffle. Blissfully oblivious to the controversy, I didn't even know what the book was about until a couple of weeks ago, when I picked it up to kill some time on a long airplane flight. I wasn't more than 20 pages into Dan Brown's thriller when I realized what a woofer it was going to be.
Readable? You betcha. I cranked through almost the whole thing on a flight to San Francisco and back again. Reading "The Da Vinci Code" is like eating popcorn: You keep reaching into the bowl, hardly aware of what you're doing, and suddenly, you're through.
But good? Hardly. With 105 chapters — each about the length of a potty break — and sentence structures not too far removed from "See Dick run," the book seems to be written at about a sixth-grade readability level. The plot advances in a series of enough improbable "a-ha!" moments to burn through a couple of grosses of light bulbs. And the galloping, thinly strung conspiracy theory makes your typical Kennedy assassination theorist look scholarly by comparison.
To call the thing a piffle is to insult piffles.
The film breathlessly packs the book's 450 pages into about 2½ hours. Tom Hanks is a much more skeptical protagonist than you'll find in the book, and the cinematic version soft-pedals the whole church-as-thug idea, assigning most of the malevolent deeds to a rogue, beanie-bedecked "shadow council" of clerics instead of Mother Church herself. Still, the movie is, if anything, more laughably strung together than the book.
Does it offend? The book irked plenty of people — just take a peek on the Internet. And protests broke out around the world before the first frame of the film was shown to the public.
But as a practicing Catholic, I find the idea of corrupt churchmen and Holy Grails far less troubling than the insinuation that any person with any cartilage whatsoever in their spiritual spine would find "The Da Vinci Code" the least bit threatening to their faith.
Faith is the acceptance of things we can't see, after all, and the idea that someone would suddenly believe that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married just because "Da Vinci" actor Ian McKellen said so suggests a faith that probably wasn't all that strong to begin with.
But linking art and faith is a tricky thing. If you believe in the power of "The Passion of the Christ" to kindle passions in the hearts of the reverent, then I suppose you also have to believe in the power of "The Da Vinci Code" to make the faithful falter.
Art has a unique power to open eyes, to foster conversation and critical thinking, and it's no secret that that provocative power represents a threat to organizations that rely on unquestioning obedience to authority.
Which, I suppose, puts me in the position of defending "The Da Vinci Code." And I don't really want to do that: I mean, I was so embarrassed to be reading the book in public that I peeled off the dust jacket so I could pretend to be perusing, say, Proust.
I'd just feel a lot better if the art that provoked us was as rigorous and well made and profound as the questions it tries to ask. Neither the best-selling novel nor the movie rises to anywhere near that level. They're just pop-culture schlock.
Is Dan Brown responsible? Well, no. He's a novelist, not a prophet. He just wrote the book — it's the millions who bought "The Da Vinci Code" who turned it into the kind of a best-seller that would inevitably be spun off as a movie. With its bite-sized portions and its pretensions to intellectualism, it's the perfect, easy-to-settle-for menu item in our fast-food nation.
And so, maybe it's not a crisis of faith we should be worried about. Maybe it's a crisis of taste.
This is a forerunner to Microcsoft or something akin to that? See, I was asking you because I am not a techie...baby steps, please...
Haven't seen the movie-YET. I couldn't put the book down.
Sad if Ron Howard couldn't keep the suspense the book had.
LOL...there are plenty of repeats of that series. They're on today. Anyone who wants their kids to watch a cute clean tv show has them watching that series. Kids know who Opie is...today. ;o)
To each his own, to be sure. As a representative work in its genre, it may have merit. As to its literary merit, one of FR's favorite pundits, Mark Steyn, is singularly underwhelmed.
After the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls, Edmund Wilson, the literary critic, wrote a book about it. Wilson reflected the hope of his generation that archaelogical and liutereay evidence would be found that would put paid to the whole "myth" of Christianity. What it did. of course, was to make historical Christianity more credible by showing that the "Greek" imagery of the Gospels, especially St. John , was part of Jewish thinking at the time. Of course there was enough new information to hatch any number of hypotheses about Christianity, including the idea that Jesus/John the Baptist were connected the Qumran somehow. They refuse to take Christian writings at face value, with Jesus as a true religious genius (at least) who represented a new element in a very complex Judaism. Goes back to the 18th Century when writers like Voltaire could recognize the signficance of Issac Newton but could not give the same tribute to Jesus.
I have one problem with the likes of Mark Belling hammering at the DaVinci Code.
He is confusing "belief" with "knowing".
He and many other Christians - all religions, for that matter- BELIEVE what they are being taught about Christ- or whoever.
Those BELIEFS are based on a BIBLE that has been re-written a number of times, and I don't think anyone knows how many times. Some of the Popes that ordered the "revisions" were not litterate themselves, depending entirely on the few members of their court that could read and write. There is also the issue of "translations" from one language to another.
Since NO ONE is alive today who was alive when Jesus walked the Earth, then there is no KNOWLEDGE of what really occured. ONLY fragments of words written sometimes long after Jesus had to be dead and gone, no matter how long he lived. That is why the various books of the Bible I learned from are called "the Gospel according to _______, or are called "the Book of ______.
I am not trying to bash Christians or their beliefs.
I am only trying to point out the difference between KNOWING something and BELIEVING something.
Each is welcome to their belief. Da Vinci Code is a book and a movie- It is not the Gospel according to Dan Brown.
Fascinating. You have mail.
Geez, maybe I have a short attention span, but I found the book to be completely unreadable.
There are thousands ancient manuscripts which show the bible is unchanged in substance. (Changes consist of transposing a letter or leaving out 'an'.)
The bible has been TRANSLATED a number of times. 'Rewritten' it hasn't been.
Threat to a Christian's faith is NOT the problem. The problem is that non-Christians are lapping up the outrageous lies concerning the history of the church and the divinity of Christ.""
I don't get your point.
If someone is NOT Christian, and doesn't believe in Jesus and the Resurrection in the first place, what difference does this book make????
There truly is no PROOF of either position--Resurrection or lived on and did have a few years of life with a female companion.
Early versions of the Bible had many references to reincarnation. A Pope of earlier times had it all re-written and all such references removed, according to some books I have read. Dead Sea Scrolls have other references not included in today's Bible.
This current version of the Bible is just that:
THE CURRENT VERSION!!!!!
See post 86. From all accounts, high-powered detractors and supporters abound.
I enjoyed the book for the pure entertainment of it. That being said, the movie was flat out bad. It held none of the same entertainment value that the book had (which is always the case).""
Not always:
Seabiscuit was a great book and wonderful movie.....
Appreciate your patience. Since I'm Macless, that explains much of the problem...since I'm blond, that explains the rest! ~snorrfle!~
[age about to show] You mentioned DOS...Fortran? I recall that old name for what I think was a dinosaur operating system...my Dell at home just crashed and I wonder what you'd recommend to replace it...
That notwithstanding, even if you reject the testimony that is preserved in God's word, the Dan Brown fantasy still has the burden of proof. It does not meet that burden and again as between the two cases the finding must be for the resurrection.
First, it's intended to be simply an entertaining mystery, not a work of substantive literary merit. Like just about every thriller and mystery writer today, no one will remember him or his books 50 years from now, unless they google him! Second though, I enjoy Steyn, a good political pundit. But make no mistake, his conservative religious persona creaps into his "review" of this book. He is clearly not an unbiased reviewer.
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