For a good while now I've avoided reading the annoyingly successful The Da Vinci Code, not because I'm jealous that someone has sold forty million books and created some sort of completely undeserved and unqualified following, that is not the reason, but because everyone I've spoken to who's read it says it's rubbish, a poor read.
But before you think I'm going to deride The Da Vince Code, having not even read it, nothing can be further from the truth. Even if the book's without much merit, I have nothing but admiration for Dan Brown. Look at him! There are people all over the world paying thousands of pounds to visit churches and sites he mentions in his work of FICTION in the search for 'clues' or evidence, with countless debates raging around the Church, with millions actually thinking there's some grounding to the characters in his book, and yet he remains perfectly silent on the matter. This is what he should do. If you've created a monster, and if it's a multi-million, even multi-billion pound monster, then for the love of God shut up about it and hide under the duvet. The best bit about the whole Dan Brown emergence is he's never said anything - and that's perfect.
Can you imagine a stronger spell broken if he were to be interviewed in an Ohio bowling mall and shrug the whole thing off as something he wrote in his mother's attic as a break from building model aeroplanes?
I think he's great without ever reading one of his apparently ordinary books because he could save a lot of people a lot of time and money by explaining his simple theory's a complete load of goat's vomit but he doesn't... and I rather like that. Be it his publishers, be it him, this will go down as the greatest press silence of all time. What price the first interview? I don't know how he sleeps at night, what with laughing so hard.
I've got to read his book, damn it, because I can't slag it off unless I do. It would be unfair. So I'll read it this week. I might make a song and dance around buying it by pretending to the staff member in Waterstones that I'm looking for a thriller... something a bit controversial but ultimately just a page turner.... If she says "Like The Da Vinci Code?" I'll say "Like the...What's that?"
It would be great to have the assistant pick up the book and explain "It's, like, the best selling book ever, since, like, ever." And then look at it as if you're a granny who's just be shown a new video game.
And so I'll read it before I make fun of it,
"Why do you think you're going to make fun of it, you arrogant idiot, if you've not even read it?"
Because all the stuff in it's false and misleading and utterly ridiculous from every bit of information I've heard. The book, from what I can make out, makes some claims against the Catholic organisation Opus Dei, which is bunch of lads who are basically Catholic Hardcore, but not evil or even suspect. They do stuff along the lines of having to wear something around the top of your leg once a year that really hurts (but doesn't draw blood or anything) that proves you love God enough to give some pain. This is translated in The Da Vince Code as someone whipping themselves into semi-consciousness and torturing their ungodly flesh. So Dan's taken a bit of a liberty there.
The other organisation in The Da Vinci Code is Priory Of Sion, which is meant to be this ancient organisation started thousands of years ago to protect The Holy Grail but was actually started in the fifties by someone who already had a criminal record and was a bit of a wag. So that's a far as the Da Vinci Code goes on historical fact.
"But you've not read it!"
I know! But this much I know and this much is annoying because all these people keep going on about it. Like there's something to it, when everyone - and it must bother you right minded people to even be told this - knows there isn't.
The most annoying thing is when you explain to someone that the work of fiction they're banging on about is fictional, and they say "But how do you know?"
We've created two histories. One that is written down, and one we would like to believe. We love the idea of deception and the theory we're being ripped off. We imagine that there's one history that's official, and another we've somehow yet to discover through uncovering the truth.
People are now standing in The Louvre staring at Da Vinci paintings because they think that's part of some new religious truth. Dan Brown invented the Da Vinci bit, as he might have suggested a book about a code hidden in the timetable of the Frankfurt rail network, but he chose the Italian painter for his novel. I think it would be better if he'd chosen the Frankfurt rail timetable, as it is surely more complex than the faded works of Leonardo, and would cause a more confusion and bizarre press coverage than idiots ramming every church imaginable looking for signs of ghostly rectangles - or whatever they...
"READ THE BOOK!"
I will! But as yet I'm trying to write a criticism of it, having not even picked it up and read what it says on the back.
"How can you do that? Dan Brown spent ages on that. And so how can you criticise the novel and the organisations in it??"
"History and that. Anyway, I'm going to read it and I bet it's rubbish."
"Well you're definitely not going to like it if you think like that."
Yeah you're probably right. A complete slagging off of The Da Vinci Code next week.
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