9.24.2004
Dan Brown's Holy Grail
"It is the existential doubt that people have about modern experience" that drives them beyond the covers of a book to the places that inspired them, says Phil Cousineau, a writer and filmmaker who himself leads literary tours to Europe. "You can read a book or see a movie, but you're not quite sure it's real until you've been there."
Peter Ford gives us this offering in the Christian Science Monitor. The piece amounts to no more than an encapsulation covering a multitude of people who spend their time and money chasing, well, other people's time and money. In a deep way, I feel sorry for them. No doubt they feel as if they are on a meaningful quest, albeit a meaningless one.
Brown's novel 'The Da Vinci Code' is the centerpiece of the article. I read the book, and I can say it reads well; it raises many questions. After a little research, though, it becomes more fiction than fact (I love the 'divine ratio' and corresponding Fibbonaci sequence, notwithstanding), an anti-Catholic diatribe. The one sure thing: Mr Brown's estate is greatly increased.
To think people spend thousands of dollars on a quest for the truth about Mary Magdalene, to be found somewhere in the streets and alleyways of Paris, France, is a sad thing, indeed. Ms Magdalene praised the truth of the Christ; the Great Story was not about her. Yet, to a multitude who have not bothered to seek the simple, profound truths contained in the Gospels, red-haired Mary somehow is seen as one who trumps the greater, infinite love of the Lamb.
"The misfortune of our contemporaries," the priest sighs, paraphrasing the English Catholic poet G.K. Chesterton, "is perhaps not that they have ceased to believe, but that they are ready to believe anything."
That people's lives have become so empty, so devoid of meaning, they must seek spiritual happiness in the literary effort of Dan Brown -- speaks volumes about 'lost civilization' in this time. To be fair, it's not just Dan Brown. It's 'The Field of Dreams'; it's 'Anne of Green Gables'; it's Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass', or Wolfe's 'You Can't Go Home Again'. It's any compelling novel -- any 'deep' novel which raises questions. But the questions are only that, literary allusions which spur seekers down a thousand flittering paths to nowhere. Oh well, you know what they say about life...it's the journey...
Shape-shifters, to borrow a phrase. In the end, the winners are the authors, and more power to them -- they are a profitable product of an age of listless, unanchored search for truth.
"It is the existential doubt that people have about modern experience" that drives them beyond the covers of a book to the places that inspired them, says Phil Cousineau, a writer and filmmaker who himself leads literary tours to Europe. "You can read a book or see a movie, but you're not quite sure it's real until you've been there."
Peter Ford gives us this offering in the Christian Science Monitor. The piece amounts to no more than an encapsulation covering a multitude of people who spend their time and money chasing, well, other people's time and money. In a deep way, I feel sorry for them. No doubt they feel as if they are on a meaningful quest, albeit a meaningless one.
Brown's novel 'The Da Vinci Code' is the centerpiece of the article. I read the book, and I can say it reads well; it raises many questions. After a little research, though, it becomes more fiction than fact (I love the 'divine ratio' and corresponding Fibbonaci sequence, notwithstanding), an anti-Catholic diatribe. The one sure thing: Mr Brown's estate is greatly increased.
To think people spend thousands of dollars on a quest for the truth about Mary Magdalene, to be found somewhere in the streets and alleyways of Paris, France, is a sad thing, indeed. Ms Magdalene praised the truth of the Christ; the Great Story was not about her. Yet, to a multitude who have not bothered to seek the simple, profound truths contained in the Gospels, red-haired Mary somehow is seen as one who trumps the greater, infinite love of the Lamb.
"The misfortune of our contemporaries," the priest sighs, paraphrasing the English Catholic poet G.K. Chesterton, "is perhaps not that they have ceased to believe, but that they are ready to believe anything."
That people's lives have become so empty, so devoid of meaning, they must seek spiritual happiness in the literary effort of Dan Brown -- speaks volumes about 'lost civilization' in this time. To be fair, it's not just Dan Brown. It's 'The Field of Dreams'; it's 'Anne of Green Gables'; it's Whitman's 'Leaves of Grass', or Wolfe's 'You Can't Go Home Again'. It's any compelling novel -- any 'deep' novel which raises questions. But the questions are only that, literary allusions which spur seekers down a thousand flittering paths to nowhere. Oh well, you know what they say about life...it's the journey...
Shape-shifters, to borrow a phrase. In the end, the winners are the authors, and more power to them -- they are a profitable product of an age of listless, unanchored search for truth.
// posted by HunterByrd @ 5:23 PM 
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In some ways Dan Brown and others are trying to reignite a second century heresy of gnosticism. He and others want us to think that the church has secrectly keep back something from the populace. That in some way we are all missing deeper spiritual things.
And you're right DC is a good piece of lit. And it does raise questions. The problem is the question has been raised and dealt with centuries ago. But time has faded out the response to it.
Good post.
I've written a little on DC at crushed leviathan under Are You Getting the Heresy?
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And you're right DC is a good piece of lit. And it does raise questions. The problem is the question has been raised and dealt with centuries ago. But time has faded out the response to it.
Good post.
I've written a little on DC at crushed leviathan under Are You Getting the Heresy?
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