I doubt your committment to edginess
Once, long ago, an author released a book unto the world. And this book was considered to be awful by many many many critics, to the point where much parody was made of the author, the book, and the fans. This mockery ramped up when a movie was made, and even more people were introduced to the author. And, of course, all truly "hip" readers turned up their noses, refusing to call that... that... tripe... literature.

I am, of course, talking about Dan Brown.

Over at Literary Tattoos, Loosma writes:

I love Dan Brown, particularly his Robert Langdon series and I have huge respect for him and his research for his new book The Lost Symbol. I'm reading that now and I'm having a hard time putting it down but there are some great quotes in here. I keep wanting to highlight them and come back because sometimes I come across a sentence that hits me hard just because it relates to me in a way. As do everyone when they tattoo a quote or lyric or whatever on their body

Anyway, so really if any readers of those books have gotten a tattoo relating to the plot or through some quote in there? Especially puzzle lovers? lol

Marvel at the pretentiousness, when we're assured that people are basically sheep and only the amazing folks at Literary Tattoos are capable of sorting that a dancing dog isn't that big a deal.

Be assured that a book is no longer any good once it's popular.

Discuss how Brown does research wrong! Have other people insist that Dan Brown actually does lots of research and is very accurate! (I skipped that, because I am an historian who lives with a theologian, so LOL NO)

OMG! Everyone is so meeen! - not from the OP, although she agrees. More MEEEN!

The OP ultimate tacks on her flounce, in bold:

Ok ok! I got the message! Dan Brown sucks, I have horrible literary sense, the oprah book club thing is probably I something should check into, etc etc etc. Anyway, everyone is entitled to their opinion, regardless of how polite or bitchy it was presented but to each their own.

I just want you all to know that I hated Dan Brown before it was "in" to hate Dan Brown. I bet it's now ~edgy~ to be scholar who loves Dan Brown for the plot, and I totes want to be ~edgy~. Dan Brown Forever! Go Robert Langdon!

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melannen
2009-09-22 02:57 am UTC (link)

I hate Dan Brown because of the political ideology that underlies his books. (I mean, the general suckiness of everything about them and the privilege!fail helps, but I've enjoyed just-plain-bad books before; it's the ideology that kills it for me.)

I also frankly admit that I haven't gotten past chapter one of Da Vinci Code, but I did get through almost half of the "nonfiction" book he ~~stole~~ based his plot on, and besides also being full of logic!fail, the foundations it's based on are deeply, deeply anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic, among other things, with the central premise being that rich white Protestant Europeans have divine right to rule the whole world because they carry the blood of God, and all the deeply icky subtext that goes with that. Either he read Holy Blood, Holy Grail and *completely failed to notice* the underlying white suprematist argument, or he did notice and decided it was a good book anyway, and either way, I don't *want* to visit his stories.

I mean, seriously, far-right is not necessarily automatically bad, I can enjoy a good bit of OHJOHNRINGONO id-candy with the best of them, and I cut my milk teeth on libertarian SF, but the HBHG authors consider The Protocols of the Elders of Zion as a serious historical document of historicalness¹. And these are the people Dan Brown considered an authority. :/

From the little I know about Dan Brown's other books, they aren't any better on the icky-far-right-agenda scale. They could be masterpieces of literary craftsmanship, and they'd still make me go a bit pukey in my throat.

When I want to read out-there badly researched badly-plotted paranoid conspiracy theory thrillers, I prefer far-left conspiracy theory thrillers, thanks.

¹To be fair, they don't actually think the Protocols were written by the Jews; they think they were written by Freemasons. But frankly, if you allow the Protocols any sort of authenticity whatever, you're part of the problem, not the solution. And anti-freemasonry propaganda has always had a deeply political element of its own--associated in America with Nativist and anti-Democratic populist demagogues, which translate to the direct ancestors of today's Birthers.

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chikane
2009-09-22 10:41 am UTC (link)

I actually read the DaVinci Code (utterly generic, predictable thriller really, I'd rather read Preston/Child any day a week), and there really wasn't anything like the blood-of-God-making-white-protestants-superior in there.

I'd say that he *completely failed to notice* the white supremacy in his sources. The guy isn't exactly good with subtext. Or text. Or noticing what's fact and what's fiction.

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	tetradecimal 2009-09-23 01:09 pm UTC (link)
	Yanno, I wouldn't call Preston and Child high-quality reading under any sense of the phrase, but at least I could get through a few novels without rolling my eyes. Plus, they came up with Pendergast. They're on notice for the eeeevil psychic mandala thing, though. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	chikane 2009-09-23 01:43 pm UTC (link)
	Oh, I wouldn't call them high quality either. But at least the female characters don't make me scream. eeevil psychic mandala? That probably didn't get translated into german, yet. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	tetradecimal 2009-09-23 01:45 pm UTC (link)
	Really? I think it came out over a year ago, though. Wheel of Darkness? (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	chikane 2009-09-23 11:31 pm UTC (link)
	If only they'd keep the german names for the books even remotely similar to their english ones. Apparently, german translations for english books need english titles that are different from the original english title. Brimstone, for example, is called Burn Case in german. Why? Nobody knows. It sure makes talking about the books difficult on the net. (Reply to this)(Parent)(Thread)

	tetradecimal 2009-09-24 12:12 am UTC (link)
	Ha! Well, I guess it is about a case... about burning. Wheel was about Pendergast going to Tibet with Constance and then later I think they went on a cruise. It was very strange and the one right after the last Diogenes book, IIRC. (Reply to this)(Parent)

	sqbr 2009-09-22 03:14 pm UTC (link)
	Huh. Hmm. feels less uncritically fangirly of Gabriel Knight 3, which drew on similar (the same?) sources to much better effect I did sit there rolling my eyes at the extreme lengths people had clearly gone to to recenter the Jesus legend in Europe. (Reply to this)(Parent)

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