One of the things people have said is that The Da Vinci Code is a literary genius because of his impact in society. To be honest, from a literary point of view I liked somewhat that book, despite all its historical mistakes (which are all of them .... lol). I think it is "good", but it is not "genius".
Of course, I'm no literary authority, and I don't read fiction as often as I should. And, of course, in this post I won't pretend that my views are correct Many times I'm just submerged into philosophical, theological, political, historical and science books. However, I have read enough books to know what genius is and what isn't in the literary world. Specially, I've read the classics. Classics are not exactly in pop-culture. I've read some pop-culture fictions like It (which I like very much, but usually King ruins it in the end :P ) or The Green Mile, or Jurassic Park and Rising Sun by Michael Crichton, which are very good. One of the novellas which I like big time is "The Shawshank Redemption" by Stephen King, and loved its interpretation in the famous movie with the same name.
But classics are classics. Most people think classics as being something passé, something that should stay in ancient history, it's old, decrepit, in other words ... "who reads that anymore?" People miss the point that classics are classics because they last forever. Practically all of them deal with universal subjects, mostly ethical, human, religious, and existential themes which appear over and over again throughout the world and thoughout the centuries. And the literary genius in the truest sense of the word is in how are these subjects presented in these classics.
Take for example one of Sophocles' tragedies: Oedipus Rex. Suppose that you have never heard of it, read it, or watched it in your life. You watch it in the theater or read it for the first time. The thing is that you might have clues here and there about what is going to happen, but you have no idea what exactly is going to happen nor how will it happen. And of course, you enjoy the tragedy, and sympathize with Oedipus' own outcome and how destiny fits in with all of this. Now read it or watch it a second time. The experience you will have will be very different. Yes, you will sympathize with Oedipus, but this time, you notice more things you didn't notice before, because you did not know the outcome. Now, you notice, during the dialogue that Sophocles purposely uses ambiguous language to refer to Laius' killer, whom we now know is Oedipus himself. We notice that Oedipus talks about one killer, while the others talk about a multitude of murderers. This is filled with irony because Oedipus really does not know that he is the killer. Take, for example, this dialogue between Oedipus and Teiresias when Oedipus suspects him as the murderer and demands an information he's witholding:
TEIRESIAS
I say thou art the murderer of the man
Whose murderer thou pursuest.
OEDIPUS
Thou shalt rue it
Twice to repeat so gross a calumny.
TEIRESIAS
Must I say more to aggravate thy rage?
OEDIPUS
Say all thou wilt; it will be but waste of breath.
TEIRESIAS
I say thou livest with thy nearest kin
In infamy, unwitting in thy shame.
OEDIPUS
Think'st thou for aye unscathed to wag thy tongue?
TEIRESIAS
Yea, if the might of truth can aught prevail.
OEDIPUS
With other men, but not with thee, for thou
In ear, wit, eye, in everything art blind.
TEIRESIAS
Poor fool to utter gibes at me which all
Here present will cast back on thee ere long.
Notice the genius in this dialogue. Oedipus accuses Teiresias of being blind, and at the very end, Oedipus ends up blind, he takes out his own eyes! In other passages, Oedipus promises to punish the Laius' murderer with death or with exile, and later Teiresias will say to Oedipus that his only danger is himself. And you can read this on and on and see how rich is this play in irony, metaphors, and how things are intertwined with each other. This is literary genius! This is a classic! This is not like your usual book which you read for the first time and excites you, and then you read a second time and you're bored because you already know what is going to happen anyway. This is a play where you discover more and more things the more you watch it as a play or as you read it.
Another example of literary genius, for me is the Divine Comedy. First of all, take into consideration that all the three parts of that book are written in verse. Unfortunately most translations take away the beautiful poetic style by practically turning it into prose. Secondly, when you read the entire book you are aware that you'll find there all the knowledge, wisdom, beliefs, customs, and historical circumstances of the Middle Ages. This means that practically this poetic work presents the reader with almost all what the Europeans knew at that time. Now try to imagine how would it be to write in verse a book that would practically include all 21st century knowledge about philosophy, science, history, politics, fiction, non-fiction, religious beliefs, way of life, geographical knowledge, and so on. Only when you think about it, you never cease to admire such a literary gem.
Obviously, the most fascinating part of the Divine Comedy is hell. Who doesn't like hell? And people take it to be merely a religious thing, to be talking about circles of hell, the devil, punishments, etc. But when you really read hell and purgatory, you realize something very interesting. Of course, the way hell is structured it refers to the seven capital sins. Capital sins, for those who don't know, do not necessarily mean "mortal sins", but sins which we fall into quite often. And it describes in a gross manner the huge tortures these souls have to endure. There is an existential aspect to this: morally speaking we know that what we do is sinful, and we enjoy sinning in such manners; however, even when they please us, that sin is a burden on the soul. How many times we enjoy overeating (which is my case), but we know it is not right, and we suffer emotionally because of what we do? The same with envy, the same with greed, and all the other sins. And we could continue analyzing hell, purgatory and heaven in such a way, condemning vices and praising virtues. A path that leads from pure hell and suffering to heaven, a place of total peace (which makes it for many people the most boring part of the Divine Comedy).
Another of my favorite classics is Don Quijote de la Mancha, a masterpiece of the Spanish language. What is Don Quijote about? Miguel de Cervantes criticizes a lot of chivalry novels and writings. And how does he do that? He presents this person, Don Quijano, who became crazy from reading all kinds of chivalry novels and wants to be a knight himself. All he does is to imitate exactly what he has read. Of course, there are no castles, there are no ladies, there are no kingdoms (the fairy tale kind), there are no giants, no gnomes, no anything! So what does he do? He makes them up: the windmills are giants, the owner of a brothal is the king of a castle, and other crazy stuff. For those reading it at the time, they would be laughing like crazy seeing how the chivalry novels were being satirized in Don Quijote. It would be no different than watching the movie Spaceballs, or Airplane II, or Duck Dodgers in the 24th and 1/2 Century, making fun of movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Buck Rogers, Star Wars and Star Trek.
But we have to add something to this genius. First of all, we must notice something very interesting: During all his crazy stuff, Don Quijote gradually becomes less crazy and more sound, until he finally is disappointed and dies; and Sancho Panza increasingly becomes involved in Don Quijote's way of thinking. Many have referred to this as the sanchization of Don Quijote, and the quixotization of Sancho. A second point we must notice is how much Cervantes exploit the lunacy of Don Quijote, even to the point of the absurd, but an absurdity that really makes you wonder! For example, when Don Quijote treats prostitutes like royal maidens: aren't prostitutes women which despite their profession, deserve better respect? When we see Don Quijote trying to help a young man being beaten by his master, is Don Quijote really doing justice by just threatening the master? Obviously no. But how many times do we try to solve problems at such a superficial level? And the incredible thing we find in many of the chapters is that within his lunacy, he can come up with genuine words of wisdom which would not arise if he was sane. Third, we must notice that Don Quijote is not the only story being told within the novel, but there are also within it short stories. So they become little novels inside the big one. And the incredible thing is that in these short stories, Cervantes uses a lot of literary devices which makes it very allegorical. In one of the short stories (I don't remember which one), the way he presented those characters seemed to recall the way Joseph and Mary in Matthew's Gospel were looking for a place to stay.
Finally, one thing we notice is a comment made by Miguel de Unamuno, a great novelist and philosopher. Unamuno said that the first time he read Don Quijote he laughed big time, the second time he read it, he smiled, and the third time he read it, he was crying. When we first read Don Quijote we think of it as a comedy about a crazy guy who wants to go out and look for silly adventures. But again, it is not the same attitude when you already know the outcome. Of course, when you read the end, your heart tears itself apart, because Don Quijano really died sad, even when Sancho was trying to revive his old delusions to make him happy. If you read Don Quijote for a second time, you are not reading a comedy anymore, but a tragedy. You see now that Don Quijote is paving his way to a tragic end. You don't laugh anymore when he attacks the windmills, you don't laugh anymore when he believes he is attacking bags of wine, or even when he continually invokes Dulcinea (his eternal love).
In the case of thrillers I love the Sherlock Holmes stories, but I also love Gabriel García Márquez's Crónica de una muerte anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold) based on real events. What makes this novel so very interesting is that from the beginning you know several things: you know who was killed, you know who the killers are, and how they killed him. So we say: there is no mystery in this novel, so why bother to read it? Very simple: it was a murder which everyone knew was going to happen, except the victim! And the novel has no chronological direction, so it goes back and forth continually. The novel is about how people came to know about the crime, and why did nobody tell the victim that he was going to be murdered. In this process, you get to meet the characters, they genuinely have much literary content, we know how they thought, why they did not tell him, what did they do. Furthermore, we know how the characters relate to each other, we know their custom, where they lived, their uses and customs, etc. This is a work of a genius!
Now .... let's take the Da Vinci Code. There is no room for the reader to really discover things the right way. In fact, sometimes the reasoning shown in the novel are so counter-intuitive that it really frustrates the reader's imagination. For example, in the murder we see a pentagram drawn on the victim's chest, and some things written in blood which suggest Satanism, and yet Langdon interprets it to be a symbol of the feminine despite the fact that evidence shows all the contrary. Of course, Langdon makes a very big mistake interpreting it that way (of course, he does not make a mistake in the novel when he says this because of plot purposes), because symbols should be interpreted according to one's time, not their ancient meaning. Originally the chi-rho symbol used by Christians today, originally was a pagan symbol; but if you see that symbol all over churches in Western society, it would be a mistake to interpret it as the symbol of the sun-god. Today it clearly means Christ. In real detective novels, like those of Sherlock Holmes, the detective has another point of view from the police because the way the victim is does not coincide exactly with the explanation given by the police or other characters. Usually the explanation given by the detective is far more plausible and fits better with phenomena. In The Da Vinci Code, we find that the interpretation of the French police is indeed correct, and nothing really suggests the contrary, but Langdon then interprets it another way. Of course, if this was not so counter-intuitive, the author would not explain it to us in so many words.
Secondly, after having read at least 1/3 of the novel, you know more or less what is going to happen, so there is no real space for the reader to have anything genuinely unexpected. At least when you reach 1/2 of the novel you know that Sophie is related somehow to a secret society, and when you have read 2/3 of the novel, you already know she is the Holy Grail, the descendant of Jesus Christ and the Merovingian dynasty, etc. etc. etc. Maybe there is a spark of intelligence by choosing the name "Sophie" for one of the characters, because it means "wisdom", and it is a feminine concept. But other than that, nothing seems to thrill me. So, when you read the end, you say sarcastically: "Surprise surprise!" And when you read this again, and again, and again, you get bored, because you do not discover anything new, and it is all the same story. Is this a good novel? Well, from pop-culture standards it is. But this is hardly a work of genius.
Of course, I'm no literary authority, and I don't read fiction as often as I should. And, of course, in this post I won't pretend that my views are correct Many times I'm just submerged into philosophical, theological, political, historical and science books. However, I have read enough books to know what genius is and what isn't in the literary world. Specially, I've read the classics. Classics are not exactly in pop-culture. I've read some pop-culture fictions like It (which I like very much, but usually King ruins it in the end :P ) or The Green Mile, or Jurassic Park and Rising Sun by Michael Crichton, which are very good. One of the novellas which I like big time is "The Shawshank Redemption" by Stephen King, and loved its interpretation in the famous movie with the same name.
But classics are classics. Most people think classics as being something passé, something that should stay in ancient history, it's old, decrepit, in other words ... "who reads that anymore?" People miss the point that classics are classics because they last forever. Practically all of them deal with universal subjects, mostly ethical, human, religious, and existential themes which appear over and over again throughout the world and thoughout the centuries. And the literary genius in the truest sense of the word is in how are these subjects presented in these classics.
Take for example one of Sophocles' tragedies: Oedipus Rex. Suppose that you have never heard of it, read it, or watched it in your life. You watch it in the theater or read it for the first time. The thing is that you might have clues here and there about what is going to happen, but you have no idea what exactly is going to happen nor how will it happen. And of course, you enjoy the tragedy, and sympathize with Oedipus' own outcome and how destiny fits in with all of this. Now read it or watch it a second time. The experience you will have will be very different. Yes, you will sympathize with Oedipus, but this time, you notice more things you didn't notice before, because you did not know the outcome. Now, you notice, during the dialogue that Sophocles purposely uses ambiguous language to refer to Laius' killer, whom we now know is Oedipus himself. We notice that Oedipus talks about one killer, while the others talk about a multitude of murderers. This is filled with irony because Oedipus really does not know that he is the killer. Take, for example, this dialogue between Oedipus and Teiresias when Oedipus suspects him as the murderer and demands an information he's witholding:
TEIRESIAS
I say thou art the murderer of the man
Whose murderer thou pursuest.
OEDIPUS
Thou shalt rue it
Twice to repeat so gross a calumny.
TEIRESIAS
Must I say more to aggravate thy rage?
OEDIPUS
Say all thou wilt; it will be but waste of breath.
TEIRESIAS
I say thou livest with thy nearest kin
In infamy, unwitting in thy shame.
OEDIPUS
Think'st thou for aye unscathed to wag thy tongue?
TEIRESIAS
Yea, if the might of truth can aught prevail.
OEDIPUS
With other men, but not with thee, for thou
In ear, wit, eye, in everything art blind.
TEIRESIAS
Poor fool to utter gibes at me which all
Here present will cast back on thee ere long.
Notice the genius in this dialogue. Oedipus accuses Teiresias of being blind, and at the very end, Oedipus ends up blind, he takes out his own eyes! In other passages, Oedipus promises to punish the Laius' murderer with death or with exile, and later Teiresias will say to Oedipus that his only danger is himself. And you can read this on and on and see how rich is this play in irony, metaphors, and how things are intertwined with each other. This is literary genius! This is a classic! This is not like your usual book which you read for the first time and excites you, and then you read a second time and you're bored because you already know what is going to happen anyway. This is a play where you discover more and more things the more you watch it as a play or as you read it.
Another example of literary genius, for me is the Divine Comedy. First of all, take into consideration that all the three parts of that book are written in verse. Unfortunately most translations take away the beautiful poetic style by practically turning it into prose. Secondly, when you read the entire book you are aware that you'll find there all the knowledge, wisdom, beliefs, customs, and historical circumstances of the Middle Ages. This means that practically this poetic work presents the reader with almost all what the Europeans knew at that time. Now try to imagine how would it be to write in verse a book that would practically include all 21st century knowledge about philosophy, science, history, politics, fiction, non-fiction, religious beliefs, way of life, geographical knowledge, and so on. Only when you think about it, you never cease to admire such a literary gem.
Obviously, the most fascinating part of the Divine Comedy is hell. Who doesn't like hell? And people take it to be merely a religious thing, to be talking about circles of hell, the devil, punishments, etc. But when you really read hell and purgatory, you realize something very interesting. Of course, the way hell is structured it refers to the seven capital sins. Capital sins, for those who don't know, do not necessarily mean "mortal sins", but sins which we fall into quite often. And it describes in a gross manner the huge tortures these souls have to endure. There is an existential aspect to this: morally speaking we know that what we do is sinful, and we enjoy sinning in such manners; however, even when they please us, that sin is a burden on the soul. How many times we enjoy overeating (which is my case), but we know it is not right, and we suffer emotionally because of what we do? The same with envy, the same with greed, and all the other sins. And we could continue analyzing hell, purgatory and heaven in such a way, condemning vices and praising virtues. A path that leads from pure hell and suffering to heaven, a place of total peace (which makes it for many people the most boring part of the Divine Comedy).
Another of my favorite classics is Don Quijote de la Mancha, a masterpiece of the Spanish language. What is Don Quijote about? Miguel de Cervantes criticizes a lot of chivalry novels and writings. And how does he do that? He presents this person, Don Quijano, who became crazy from reading all kinds of chivalry novels and wants to be a knight himself. All he does is to imitate exactly what he has read. Of course, there are no castles, there are no ladies, there are no kingdoms (the fairy tale kind), there are no giants, no gnomes, no anything! So what does he do? He makes them up: the windmills are giants, the owner of a brothal is the king of a castle, and other crazy stuff. For those reading it at the time, they would be laughing like crazy seeing how the chivalry novels were being satirized in Don Quijote. It would be no different than watching the movie Spaceballs, or Airplane II, or Duck Dodgers in the 24th and 1/2 Century, making fun of movies like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Buck Rogers, Star Wars and Star Trek.
But we have to add something to this genius. First of all, we must notice something very interesting: During all his crazy stuff, Don Quijote gradually becomes less crazy and more sound, until he finally is disappointed and dies; and Sancho Panza increasingly becomes involved in Don Quijote's way of thinking. Many have referred to this as the sanchization of Don Quijote, and the quixotization of Sancho. A second point we must notice is how much Cervantes exploit the lunacy of Don Quijote, even to the point of the absurd, but an absurdity that really makes you wonder! For example, when Don Quijote treats prostitutes like royal maidens: aren't prostitutes women which despite their profession, deserve better respect? When we see Don Quijote trying to help a young man being beaten by his master, is Don Quijote really doing justice by just threatening the master? Obviously no. But how many times do we try to solve problems at such a superficial level? And the incredible thing we find in many of the chapters is that within his lunacy, he can come up with genuine words of wisdom which would not arise if he was sane. Third, we must notice that Don Quijote is not the only story being told within the novel, but there are also within it short stories. So they become little novels inside the big one. And the incredible thing is that in these short stories, Cervantes uses a lot of literary devices which makes it very allegorical. In one of the short stories (I don't remember which one), the way he presented those characters seemed to recall the way Joseph and Mary in Matthew's Gospel were looking for a place to stay.
Finally, one thing we notice is a comment made by Miguel de Unamuno, a great novelist and philosopher. Unamuno said that the first time he read Don Quijote he laughed big time, the second time he read it, he smiled, and the third time he read it, he was crying. When we first read Don Quijote we think of it as a comedy about a crazy guy who wants to go out and look for silly adventures. But again, it is not the same attitude when you already know the outcome. Of course, when you read the end, your heart tears itself apart, because Don Quijano really died sad, even when Sancho was trying to revive his old delusions to make him happy. If you read Don Quijote for a second time, you are not reading a comedy anymore, but a tragedy. You see now that Don Quijote is paving his way to a tragic end. You don't laugh anymore when he attacks the windmills, you don't laugh anymore when he believes he is attacking bags of wine, or even when he continually invokes Dulcinea (his eternal love).
In the case of thrillers I love the Sherlock Holmes stories, but I also love Gabriel García Márquez's Crónica de una muerte anunciada (Chronicle of a Death Foretold) based on real events. What makes this novel so very interesting is that from the beginning you know several things: you know who was killed, you know who the killers are, and how they killed him. So we say: there is no mystery in this novel, so why bother to read it? Very simple: it was a murder which everyone knew was going to happen, except the victim! And the novel has no chronological direction, so it goes back and forth continually. The novel is about how people came to know about the crime, and why did nobody tell the victim that he was going to be murdered. In this process, you get to meet the characters, they genuinely have much literary content, we know how they thought, why they did not tell him, what did they do. Furthermore, we know how the characters relate to each other, we know their custom, where they lived, their uses and customs, etc. This is a work of a genius!
Now .... let's take the Da Vinci Code. There is no room for the reader to really discover things the right way. In fact, sometimes the reasoning shown in the novel are so counter-intuitive that it really frustrates the reader's imagination. For example, in the murder we see a pentagram drawn on the victim's chest, and some things written in blood which suggest Satanism, and yet Langdon interprets it to be a symbol of the feminine despite the fact that evidence shows all the contrary. Of course, Langdon makes a very big mistake interpreting it that way (of course, he does not make a mistake in the novel when he says this because of plot purposes), because symbols should be interpreted according to one's time, not their ancient meaning. Originally the chi-rho symbol used by Christians today, originally was a pagan symbol; but if you see that symbol all over churches in Western society, it would be a mistake to interpret it as the symbol of the sun-god. Today it clearly means Christ. In real detective novels, like those of Sherlock Holmes, the detective has another point of view from the police because the way the victim is does not coincide exactly with the explanation given by the police or other characters. Usually the explanation given by the detective is far more plausible and fits better with phenomena. In The Da Vinci Code, we find that the interpretation of the French police is indeed correct, and nothing really suggests the contrary, but Langdon then interprets it another way. Of course, if this was not so counter-intuitive, the author would not explain it to us in so many words.
Secondly, after having read at least 1/3 of the novel, you know more or less what is going to happen, so there is no real space for the reader to have anything genuinely unexpected. At least when you reach 1/2 of the novel you know that Sophie is related somehow to a secret society, and when you have read 2/3 of the novel, you already know she is the Holy Grail, the descendant of Jesus Christ and the Merovingian dynasty, etc. etc. etc. Maybe there is a spark of intelligence by choosing the name "Sophie" for one of the characters, because it means "wisdom", and it is a feminine concept. But other than that, nothing seems to thrill me. So, when you read the end, you say sarcastically: "Surprise surprise!" And when you read this again, and again, and again, you get bored, because you do not discover anything new, and it is all the same story. Is this a good novel? Well, from pop-culture standards it is. But this is hardly a work of genius.
2 comments:
In my opinion, The Davinci code is nothing but a fair piece of FICTION
Hi,
This post does not discuss whether this book is fiction or not. What this post discusses is supposed literary genius of Dan Brown.
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