The Da Vinci Code (review)
Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code (2003; repr. London: Corgi, 2005), 593pp. 3/5
This pacey but overexcitable thriller lets itself down by claiming to be more than fiction.
By now The Da Vinci Code has well and truly been cracked. Reading the tale of how religious symbologist Robert Langdon races against time, accused of murder, to acquit himself and save the secrets of the holy grail from Catholic fundamentalists Opus Dei and a mysterious villain working behind the scenes, should offer few surprises. The secret of the grail, as Brown has it, is of course that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were lovers and companions, spawning a bloodline that continues into the present.
What’s most surprising about the Da Vinci code is just how surprised the characters act when they find out the secret. Langdon, the book’s hero, a Harvard Professor, is suitably nonchalant, having been in on it the whole time. But, like slack-jawed American fundamentalist yokels, just about everybody else concerned is completely flabbergasted when they hear the truth. That Brown treats the Jesus/Magdalene love story as earth-shatteringly scandalous has undoubtedly prompted overly pious Christians of many different stripes to take more offense at the book than they ought. These ideas are not new. Quite apart from the inspiration that Brown took from The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, revisionist Christian scholars like Barbara Thiering and Bishop John Spong have been exploring the theological ramifications of the Jesus/Magdalene story for years. Readers: be aware that these ideas are not original, and not shocking. Retain your composure.
Even when one knows the secret, though, The Da Vinci code is a compelling read. Though his prose is, well, prosaic, his story is more tightly plotted, and his sentences more solidly constructed, than those of that other great blockbuster-writer of recent times, J.K. Rowling. Yet Brown does not have Rowling’s gift for evoking magic. The Da Vinci code disappoints us at its ending by leaving the grail hidden. Langdon finds out exactly where it is, but declines to disturb it. Just as in the Indiana Jones movies, the powerful religious artefact that draws people and events into a whirlwind around it recedes into obscurity at the finale, never to trouble the world again. But where in Indiana Jones we get to see the magic of the ancient world at work, melting Nazi faces, helping Indian priests pull hearts out of helpless victims’ chests, or turning Nazis into skeletons (yes, Nazis again), in The Da Vinci Code Brown is too anxious to make his story seem real to ever let magic of any kind, miraculous or merely emotional, enter the equation.
And this is where Brown really trips himself up, by making false claims that parts of his story accurately reflect historical fact. A documentary I recently saw, narrated by Tony Robinson, concluded that there was no credible evidence that the Priory of Sion, a secret brotherhood Brown credits with guarding the secrets of the grail, ever existed. Yet Brown makes this claim: “Fact: The Priory of Sion … is a real organisation.” (15) Brown also claims that “all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate,” (15) but the Rosslyn Chapel’s “official web-site”: notes that Brown’s description of a Star-of-David-shaped pathway worn into the chapel’s floor by visitors is inaccurate.
It’s a shame, because by leaving his claims to historical veracity out, Brown could have led readers on a merry chase without exposing himself to the criticism that he misleads his readers. Not knowing what in the book is real or not makes The Da Vinci Code a sort of Thomas-Pynchon-Lite, The Crying of Lot 49 played straight, aiming to entertain rather than to befuddle its reader. And while Brown might not draw his readers into dizzying conspiracies that tempt the reader to wonder what is real, he’s far better than Pynchon at inviting his readers to learn the truths behind his tale, because he preserves the idea that there is, indeed, a truth to be found.
Brown educates his readers on the workings of Interpol, the geography of Paris, the art of Leonardo Da Vinci, the agencies of the Vatican, the Fibonacci sequence, Swiss depository banking, and myriad other points of fact. While one would be a fool to take his book as an encyclopedia, it is in its own way informative, and it is, more powerfully still, an inducement to learn. A fine achievement.
Loose change
Looking around modern Japan, I don’t know why, but invisible rules have grown up everywhere. Lifestyle, human relations, clothing, deportment—each of these is enclosed in a framework. Just as the audience at a wedding stands up, sits down, and points their camera at the MC, so people are bound up in rules. (Nakano Kiyotsugu, quoted in Alex Kerr, Dogs and Demons: The fall of modern Japan, 307)
At the Citibank branch in Shinsaibashi, Osaka, I just deposited 5168¥ in loose change. That’s 8 months worth of living in Japan, plus the contents of a moneybox someone left behind in my old apartment in Gunma-ken. At today’s exchange rate, that’s A$60.37 in individually nigh-worthless pieces of metal, including exactly 1268 individual one-yen pieces. It took maybe 15 minutes for the tellers to count, with the aid of a machine, and at the end of it I had to fill in the amount on a deposit slip I’d already written my name, the date, and my account number on. It was then I made my mistake.
I’d been marking up my copy of Dogs and Demons with a pencil, on the page bearing the quote above. Jung would have been impressed by the synchronicity. I used the pencil to write the first digit of the amount. Realizing what I’d done, I carefully wrote over that 5 with the biro on the counter, and continued on to the 1, the 7, and the 0.
I’d heard about having to fill out forms again if you made a mistake and a correction. This is apparently a common thing in Japan, but it’s never happened to me before. I certainly never expected it to happen in a North American bank, with a mistake that was completely invisible. Completely invisible, except that the teller had seen me use a pencil on the 5.
She reached up to get a new deposit slip from a high shelf in the cupboard behind her, gave it to me, and asked: “Can you fill it out again?” No need for explanation, I knew what had just happened. Fortunately, this was just a deposit slip. I can imagine wasting hours rewriting multi-page forms for the sake of a single mistake. It reminds me of how, at 7 or 8, I used to cross out any word I’d written with a malformed letter, fearful that I’d inadvertently write a secret sign that would summon the devil to steal my soul. I kid you not. It’s obsessive behaviour.
“This is insane,” I raged at the teller. The wait for the counting hadn’t worked me up; no, it was 8 months in Japan that had done that.
“What is ‘insine’?” she asked sweetly.
“It’s crazy!” I explained. “Look at this…” And I showed her the carbon paper behind the form. “Fifty-one seventy, clear as day.”
“Yes, it’s clear, but you have to fill out a new form.”
“Why?”
“It’s the rule.”
“That’s crazy.”
“But still you have to do it.”
And so it continued. I told her, “I don’t have to do this in my country,” which surprised her, and—oh, the eloquence!—I told her: “this is the stupidest thing ever.”
And so it is. And so I filled out a new form.
Still not satisfied, the teller asked me: “Could you write the yen sign here, in front of the amount, please.” And I raged again.
“Why don’t you write it then, since I’m incapable of filling out a form correctly? Why don’t you get a machine to do it, or a robot?”
“I’m sorry, I can’t fill it in.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not allowed to.” More rules.
And so I wrote it, and I got my receipt, and I walked away.
I ought to have got some attitude from the teller, but sadly in Japan people won’t even tell you to go fuck yourself.
I hate this country with unholy passion.
Clubbing
Last night I went “clubbing” for the first time in my life. Sure, I’d been to bars that play loud music before, and places with a dancefloor, and places where you can’t hear your friends when you try to talk to them. But I’d always tried to avoid places that are those things so relentlessly as to be called a club.
3000¥ at Club Pure Osaka will get a guy a plastic cup that entitles you to all the mixed spirits you can drink. Girls get the same for 2000¥. The rule is that if you don’t have an empty plastic cup, you can’t get the drinks you paid for, so you have to carry it with you everwhere you go. Most people dance with a cup in their hand, and going to the bathroom means setting it down on a free surface. I actually saw a guy drinking out of his cup while taking a piss, which was a great image of the absurd, and the instigator of a bleakly humorous moment of existential dread.
So, I drank, and I danced, and I watched poledancing Japanese girls, exchanged a few brief words with my friend Erika and a few people I hadn’t met before. I didn’t try to pick anyone up, because Japanese girls don’t interest me, and moreover because I don’t know how to act in those situations. The loud music, drowning out conversation, seems calculated to reduce the crowd to as close to mere animality as it can. The courtship rituals, the display of bodies and movement, become like those of birds. And I don’t like it much. I like being a human. It’s where my advantages are, in my intellect, in my speech, in my knowledge and my accomplishments. Those, too, are the things in others that most easily give me pleasure in their company, and the things that solidify my attraction to a woman.
Dancing is fun. Drinking seems fun, but is tiresome to recover from (and I ought to steer clear of situations with unlimited amounts of alcohol). But the idea and the fact of a room that strips away the human in us displeases me, much as it may be, for many, a welcome temporary escape from the burdens of being sentient.
Get back to where you once belonged
Japan was a bust. The slap-the-country-in-the-face-post can wait until I return to Melbourne in 27 days.
I’m looking forward to clean air, trees, beautiful buildings, great food, jobs that don’t take 14 hours out of every day, and women who speak English.
I also have a new header image featuring the Melbourne skyline (courtesy of the Wikimedia Commons). Until I leave for Montréal, Melbourne is where I’ll be looking for home.
New Hampshire Numberplate – Live free or die!
While using Wikipedia to research Montréal and the surrounding area, I came across this image of a New Hampshire numberplate. I wouldn’t die for freedom, myself; under dire oppression, I’d rather bide my time looking for a way to put my life and liberty together. Yet I have always loved this American revolutionary slogan, and it shocked and pleased me to see it on something so mundane as a numberplate. I think I’m going to like North America…
The importance of using a creative commons license
Last night I changed my blog header image. Since I’m thinking of moving to Vancouver, I wanted an image of the skyline. I was planning on using Doug Morgan’s wonderful Twilight Over False Creek, which I’d recently seen on the Wikipedia article for Vancouver.
When I went to check on the license for it, though, I found the image had disappeared. A little googling found “Doug Morgan’s” page on Pbase, but it also found text like “All images property of Douglas Morgan”, and “Do not use without permission.”
I could have emailed Doug, but it was getting close to bedtime and I wanted a new image up to go with the day’s post, “In Search of Home”. So I went with a vastly inferior skyline image, still available at Wikipedia, and available for use under a Creative Commons license.
Now, Doug really might not want people using his images for blog headers, and that’s up to him. But, he might not mind, either; and if so, he just missed an opportunity for (a very small amount of) exposure. I don’t have my blog available for use under a Creative Commons license, so I can’t claim any moral high ground, but I have thought, in the past, about using the licences, and I will continue to in future. This is just a case that shows how choosing to use a Creative Commons license can result in your work getting publicity, and someone else’s losing out.