more on dan brown

I've finally got my copy of Inferno, and have already started reading it (the quicker to update my reading stats on Shelfari). I reiterate what I said in my previous entry on the subject, that Dan Brown's prose is not something unintelligible to the average intelligent reader, unlike David Baldacci's retarded foaming at the mouth. But it's also nowhere near the pinnacle of English literature. (In this, the forked-tongued John Lawler and I are as one.) Dan Brown's writing is like good-ish fan fiction - not something as horrendous as the Mary Sue fics on SD or, Heaven forfend, fifty shades of gray*, but rather something that you would read and might enjoy, but would be too embarrassed to leave a review for. His main characters are usually borderline Gary Stus/Mary Sues. Robert Langdon, in particular, is one of the most annoying characters I've come across in fiction. His awkward American doofiness is nearly always met with the censorious incomprehension of his stolid European interlocutors, usually attractive and intelligent women whose initial disdain for him turns into an uncontrollable admiration as the story goes on.

*(I've deliberately withheld from this curiosity the honor of capitalizing and italicizing its title. Can somebody please explain to me what on earth this is? Has something like this really been published within my lifetime, in this age that people are calling the best we have had so far in our inexorable upward journey as a race of noble earthlings through time? The only thing I know about this book (if it can be called that without insulting writers from everywhere and every age, fan fiction or professional) is that Gilbert Gottfried has given a memorable reading of it.)

Here's an example of a typical Dan Brown sentence: "I'm American," Langdon assured her, too exhausted to explain his preference for well-tailored clothing. Seriously? This guy is played by Tom Hanks? I can swear that I've used a construction similar to this in tone in one of my Mary Sue parodies. Let me look for it right now. This is from Ice Man and Rainbow Princess: “Hi, I’m Mary Sue,” said the girl. “I’m 178 cm tall, and I used to be on the basketball team in my old school. I’m half American, quarter Japanese, one-eighth French, and another eighth Italian. My eyes are actually rainbow colored because of my mixed heritage, but I wear tinted contacts so that I don’t stand out too much. I hope we can all be good friends!” You don't believe me, but it really sounds just like this - oblivious Gary Stu-ness. I could probably find better examples in actual Mary Sue stories (or in David Baldacci's stultified attempts to write words). Robert Langdon should put his hand up whenever some lesser mortal dares to talk to him, and say, "Puh-leez! Ain't nobody got time for that!" 

Dan Brown is also one of those writers who annoyingly over-describe things. I can't put this in coherent words at the moment. There's a difference between vivid writing that is actually good and something like this (I'm making this up): Max turned around, and spat out his chewing gum. The green ball of stickiness flew from his mouth in a straight parabola, collecting dust from the air around it, before coming to rest in the corner of the room where the body lay. Max chewed on the end of a pencil, coating it with his saliva. "Enhance it," he said to his partner, a buxom woman with pretty blond hair that was tied behind her head in a ponytail, who wore red-framed glasses that were half-rimless. Max thought Jennifer looked much prettier without her glasses, but that's what he thought of all women, especially the spring-break types from Florida. Then Max pulled out his AK-47, loaded it with special combat lead shots he had stolen from his bastard son's school physics lab, and began firing madly at the corpse. Boom, boom, boom, boom! Did Max love spewing the most tiring, jargon-loaded bilge about guns and weapons and shit! It made him feel like Robert Langdon or that oversized roll of toilet paper that stars in David Baldacci's Simple Genius. If he had had a wife, he would have shot her just for the arousal of describing the act later in his memoirs. I don't have anything against you if you enjoy this type of writing, though you will hear me clicking my tongue in the background constantly while you read.