The Essayist #15: The Real Da Vinci Hoax

Last night Family Guy had a minor minor sub-plot involving DVC, as sure a sign as any that we've hit the coveted point of over-exposure and will beging jumping sharks. What was interesting was how tame the gag was; Lois raves to some un-seen girlfriend over how much she loved it, Stewie grabs it, spends the night reading it, and falls asleep into his porridge. That's it. Gag at the people who denounce the book and then get sucked into it? Probably. But hardly a commentary. We leave that to South Park.

An entire industry has arisen in the wake of DVC by devout Christians into refuting its historical claims: that Constantine "invented" the divinity of Christ at Nicaea, that the Bible as we know it is a purged text, a fiction imposed by Constantine, and, most incredible of all, that Christ was husband to Mary Magdalene and fathered children with her, and that his descendents include the Merovingian kings of France. To this I will add no further input, except to point out that secular historians place the authorship of most of the so-called "alternative" or Gnostic Gospels as no earlier than the 2nd century, AD, and the authorship of the canonical Gospels in the latter half of the 1st century. Beyond that, the debate seems pointless.

But this is not the "Real" Da Vinci Hoax to which my title alludes. The historical claims of Brown's book are, as I said, as old as the 2nd Century, and they have had recurrences in the past, as with the Cathars in the Middle Ages. It's an enemy the Church has to deal with from time to time, in its struggle with the identity of Christ that has been with it since the beginning. Somehow, the Church finds a way to put it down.

No, the real hoax being perpetrated on the public is that Dan Brown is a good author, and that the Da Vinci Code is a good book. I cannot find an explanation for how otherwise intelligent people would not only accept this premise, but willingly transmit it to others, raving about the wonders of it. Admittedly, I came in biased, and perhaps hyper-critical, but even I was at least prepared for Brown to give me a ripping good yarn, a page-turner, if a theologically pulpy one. He did no such thing.

I could find not one element of good writing in this book. The dialogue is hackneyed, the characters one-dimensional, and the plot entirely predictable. Even the Twist at the end surprised me not at all; I had predicted it approximately halfway through the book. The main character, Robert Langdon, a professor of symbology at Harvard, serves no purpose other than to be a mouthpiece for the Brown's views of Christianity (and they are his, for he writes a sad little statement of "Fact" for a prologue, contending that the Priory of Sion exists, and thus, all the other claims of the novel are to be taken as true). Hardly a chapter goes by without Langdon, in answering a question from stock-ingenue Sophie Neveu in multi-paragraph form, until Brown stops even the pretense of dialogue and removes the quotations, lecturing directly to the reader with all the smugness of a bored adjunct professor. Nor is it ever explained how a symbology professor knows so much about the supposedly secret Priory of Sion without himself being a member. The whole novel seems to believe that the Deep, Dark, Secret Truth is something all educated people are aware of (Sire Leigh Teabing, Langdon's tag-team partner in babble, states this rather baldly) which rather undercuts the drama.

Minor characters are no better. Perhaps the most ludicrous idea in the Da Vinci Code is that there is any such thing as a devout Catholic in Paris. Brown proceeds from the notion that in France Christianity is more than a religion, it's a birthright, and as the stand-in for this notion gives us as the stubborn police captain Bezu Fache, a figure out of Beau Geste, who inexplicably says English idioms like "do something right for a change" to fellow Frenchmen.

Adding to this catalog of Don'ts for Novel Writing is the fact that Brown seems not to have done his homework. When one writes a novel about uncovering great secrets of history, it behooves one to get ones historical details accurate. Brown seems not to have bothered with simple fact-checking. For example, he describes Godefroi de Bouillon, the supposed founder of the Priory of Sion, as a "French king." He was no such thing. Godefroi the Bouillon was a count, and a leader of the First Crusade, and by all accounts a pious man. He is counted among the Kings of Jerusalem, but he did not himself bear that title, because he disdained to wear a crown of gold where Christ had worn a crown of thorns. Instead, he made do with the style of Defender of the Holy Sepulchre. To call him a French king is entirely misleading.

Another howler occurs when Brown/Langdon has the Knights Templar established by knights of the Second Crusade, after recieving their permission from Baldwin II of Jerusalem. That would have been a neat trick, inasmuch as Baldwin II(r. 1118-1131) had been dead for fifteen years when the Second Crusade (1147-1149)happened. Both military orders (Templars and Hospitallers) did come about during Baldwin's reign, true, but it had nothing to do with the Second Crusade. If Brown had taken a momentary glance at a few history books, he would know this, but as he seems to believe that the history he writes is possessed of more "truthiness" than contemporary records, he gets basic, verifiable facts wrong. All of which leads one to take all other ideas with a grain of salt.

But the final insult is the way the entire story becomes much ado about nothing at the end. I won't bore you with the details, but suffice to say that the rug gets pulled from under the readers, and the promised Holy Grail towards which the novel has been aiming evaporates into the morning mist. Such is de rigeur in Grail lore from time immemorial, of course; despite their suffering and holiness, the seekers rarely get their hands on the Grail at the end. But when it happens in Parzival it's a commentary on the sinfulness of man, and when it happens in Monty Python, it's a parody. Brown's post-modern transformation of the Grail from a world-shattering secret cache of information to an esoteric exercise in neo-paganism ("The quest for the Holy Grail is the quest to kneel before the bones of Mary Magdalene. A journey to pray at the feet of the outcast one.") is nauseatingly hollow, and a literary cop-out unseen since the days of Henry Miller.

To sum up: dull characterizations, bad dialogue, stupid factual errors, and a lame climax. And he's sold millions of copies worldwide, raided Hollywood, and been name-dropped on trendy shows.

All because we just can't accept a celibate Savior.

A Moment of Silence

It behooves us, now that the news of the death of Zarqawi has hit the lenght and breadth of the blogosphere, that we point out, in all fairness, the downside of his passing:

No more of his brilliant, witty missives to Iowahawk.

You know what they say about not appreciating someone till he's gone? Too true, too true...


UPDATE: I was wrong. I hoped I would be.

President Bush's Victories Receiving Little Attention.

So Sayeth the DC Examiner.

In other news, Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.

So it begins...

I finished the Da Vinci Code. I will write more, but to sum up: completely unimpressive book. Don't understand why its a best-seller. Well, actually I do, but that understanding brings me no peace.