Respect Authority

Dan Brown dresses as Robert Langdon for Halloween.

Though an avid reader several times over, I have never considered myself much of a literary elitist—I’m as likely to be reading one of the Gossip Girl books as War and Peace. So when the release date of Dan Brown’s latest book, The Lost Symbol, was officially announced, it swiftly earned a notation in my Outlook calendar, right between “dentist appointment” and “pick up cat food.” Seriously, my itinerary is the stuff of legends.

But in my excitement—which has less to do with Dan Brown fandom, and more with the nerd-like joy I get from knowing there are a handful of authors who can convince anyone and everyone to read—I had forgotten one thing: Dan Brown really can’t write.

Indeed, much criticism has been made in recent weeks of Brown’s ascent to stardom – a great deal of it, I suspect, from jealous authors who haven’t yet accepted that America’s predilection for lowbrow entertainment transcends all media; why would a country that’s tolerated a half-dozen seasons of Survivor display anything different when it comes to books? In spite of the success of authors like Dean Koontz, Clive Cussler and James Patterson, the last of whom doesn’t even write all of his own books, people seem baffled that America is head over heels for someone like Dan Brown, someone whose writing classes appear to have revolved around the motto “More adjectives, please!”

So yes, I agree with the critics. I don’t really understand why Brown gets so bogged down in descriptions, especially since the content of his novels, the plots themselves, are complicated enough (in a good way). I don’t see why people can’t just have “gray eyes,” why they have to have “soft” gray eyes or “calm” gray eyes – also, how many people do you know that actually have gray eyes!? I don’t know why all of Brown’s leading ladies, in all of his books (save maybe Deception Point, and even then only because they were in some sort of tundra) are partial to cashmere sweaters and jeans. And I’m not sure why one of the first things every character seems to notice upon first introduction to leading man Robert Langdon is his “fit physique.”

But despite all of that, despite the cashmere and unusual eye coloring and ludicrous amount of introspection on the part of his characters, Dan Brown still knows how to tell a story. In fact, after 20 pages of reacquainting myself with what it means to read pulp fiction—because bad or not, Brown’s writing is hardly worse than the vast majority of mass-market paperbacks—I’m hooked. I want to know what those damn Masons are hiding, and where. I want to figure out some clues, and decode some symbols, and take out some mysterious bad guys with tattoos and weird clothes and an affinity for ancient rituals. I want to count the pages until cashmere and tweed meet, and fall in love. I want to, albeit temporarily, believe the government is taking part in some massive conspiracy involving secret societies and Noetic science.

In other words, I’m less than 100 pages into the massive tomb that is The Lost Symbol, and I thought it appropriate to pause and reflect: Why is that an adult can read 700+ pages of Harry Potter, a book openly written for and marketed to children, and be part of a cultural phenomenon? But the same adult can herald Dan Brown for writing intellectually stimulating (trust me, Brown is a welcome reprieve from an endless array of “Detective Alex Cross is at it again; a wealthy lobbyist has been killed on the Upper East Side and Cross must follow a dark web of lies to track down his assassin, before it’s too late”) mystery novels, and be considered a literary peon?

I say kudos to you, Dan Brown. I hope you land another bajillion dollars and fafillion weeks on the best-seller list. Anything that keeps people reading books, even if they do include perhaps a few too many adjectives (seriously, we don’t need patrician and elegant), is highbrow in my book.