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Macleans, Canada
Dec 14 2004
God and those details
The Da Vinci Code is badly written and error-filled -- but we learn
things from it
ANTHONY WILSON-SMITH
The most intensely religious experience I've ever had took place more
than a decade ago on an Easter weekend spent on assignment in
Armenia. From my window of the plane, as we prepared to land in
Yerevan, Mount Ararat loomed in the distance -- the mystical place
across the border in Turkey which some people believe contains the
remains of Noah's ark. Outside the city, other than a few cars
bumping along dirt roads, not much appeared to have changed for
hundreds of years. On Easter Sunday, I visited a church that was
built in the seventh century. It was a clear, still day outside, and
inside, several people from a nearby village chanted prayers in an
atmosphere of almost palpable serenity: it was nearly, but not quite,
enough to let you forget that so much of Armenia's often bloody
history has been shaped by conflict with neighbours in Turkey and
Azerbaijan rooted in religious differences.
The American comic Lenny Bruce once observed that "every day people
are straying away from the church -- and going back to God." There
you have at least one explanation for the extraordinary and enduring
appeal of the novel The Da Vinci Code, the subject of this week's
cover package (page 34). It has now sold 17 million copies, including
500,000 in Canada, and after 75 weeks on the Maclean's bestseller
list, the original version is doing battle with a new illustrated
edition near the top of our chart.
At base level, The Da Vinci Code is a badly written but compelling
novel filled with wooden writing and stilted dialogue. Its
compensations are fresh plot hooks every couple of pages, the
requisite love story, and some dramatic international settings as
backdrop to the unfolding intrigue. Not, in short, unlike the trashy
spy novels that many of us have depended upon to get through long
flights or days at the beach. But as Brian Bethune writes, the Code
is also an "excursion through what's become known as 'alternative'
history and well-worn anti-Catholic motifs." There's much to delight
everyone from church-bashers to conspiracy theorists to,
paradoxically, some Christians, because the book does acknowledge the
existence of Jesus Christ.
That would be fine if author Dan Brown, an English teacher by
training, were content to present the book as sheer fiction -- an
inventive use of verifiable history mixed with the licence afforded
novelists to muck with the truth when it gets in the way of the plot
line. But Brown asserts that "all descriptions of artwork,
architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are
accurate." That's a breathtaking claim, and an equally ambitious
stretching of the truth. Bethune (who has a Ph.D. in medieval history
from the University of Toronto) writes that Brown's grasp of facts is
"not quite rock-solid" and "some of Brown's errors are actually
deliberate distortions, necessary to his story."
The real story behind Brown's success lies in our wish to believe --
if not in God, then in something, even if nothing more than a
super-size conspiracy theory. December is a time that provides a
particular reminder of the chasm between those who want a religious
celebration -- in the form of Christmas or Hanukkah -- and those who
want something generic. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays. . . . God,
as they say, is in the details.
http://www.macleans.ca/switchboard/editorsletter/article.jsp?content041220_95244_95244
Dec 14 2004
God and those details
The Da Vinci Code is badly written and error-filled -- but we learn
things from it
ANTHONY WILSON-SMITH
The most intensely religious experience I've ever had took place more
than a decade ago on an Easter weekend spent on assignment in
Armenia. From my window of the plane, as we prepared to land in
Yerevan, Mount Ararat loomed in the distance -- the mystical place
across the border in Turkey which some people believe contains the
remains of Noah's ark. Outside the city, other than a few cars
bumping along dirt roads, not much appeared to have changed for
hundreds of years. On Easter Sunday, I visited a church that was
built in the seventh century. It was a clear, still day outside, and
inside, several people from a nearby village chanted prayers in an
atmosphere of almost palpable serenity: it was nearly, but not quite,
enough to let you forget that so much of Armenia's often bloody
history has been shaped by conflict with neighbours in Turkey and
Azerbaijan rooted in religious differences.
The American comic Lenny Bruce once observed that "every day people
are straying away from the church -- and going back to God." There
you have at least one explanation for the extraordinary and enduring
appeal of the novel The Da Vinci Code, the subject of this week's
cover package (page 34). It has now sold 17 million copies, including
500,000 in Canada, and after 75 weeks on the Maclean's bestseller
list, the original version is doing battle with a new illustrated
edition near the top of our chart.
At base level, The Da Vinci Code is a badly written but compelling
novel filled with wooden writing and stilted dialogue. Its
compensations are fresh plot hooks every couple of pages, the
requisite love story, and some dramatic international settings as
backdrop to the unfolding intrigue. Not, in short, unlike the trashy
spy novels that many of us have depended upon to get through long
flights or days at the beach. But as Brian Bethune writes, the Code
is also an "excursion through what's become known as 'alternative'
history and well-worn anti-Catholic motifs." There's much to delight
everyone from church-bashers to conspiracy theorists to,
paradoxically, some Christians, because the book does acknowledge the
existence of Jesus Christ.
That would be fine if author Dan Brown, an English teacher by
training, were content to present the book as sheer fiction -- an
inventive use of verifiable history mixed with the licence afforded
novelists to muck with the truth when it gets in the way of the plot
line. But Brown asserts that "all descriptions of artwork,
architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are
accurate." That's a breathtaking claim, and an equally ambitious
stretching of the truth. Bethune (who has a Ph.D. in medieval history
from the University of Toronto) writes that Brown's grasp of facts is
"not quite rock-solid" and "some of Brown's errors are actually
deliberate distortions, necessary to his story."
The real story behind Brown's success lies in our wish to believe --
if not in God, then in something, even if nothing more than a
super-size conspiracy theory. December is a time that provides a
particular reminder of the chasm between those who want a religious
celebration -- in the form of Christmas or Hanukkah -- and those who
want something generic. Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays. . . . God,
as they say, is in the details.
http://www.macleans.ca/switchboard/editorsletter/article.jsp?content041220_95244_95244