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Why I don't like Dan Brown
May. 18th, 2009 05:02 pmOkay, I know this is the second post in a row about books I don't like, but bear with me...
Just started reading "Angels and Demons", mostly to see what all the yelling is about. Considering my current falling-out with the Catholic Church, some of my remarks about "The Da Vinci Code" are coming off as a bit... maybe not hypocritical, but probably a bit unbalanced and narrow-minded, particularly since I seem to be veering toward Gnosticism lately and TDVC does rely a bit on (one out-of-context passage from) the Gnostic Gospels. This does not mean, however, I'm jumping on the Dan Brown bandwagon.
The reason being, and it just dawned on me: He writes too much like a newspaper writer. Granted, newspaper writing is a good way to get into the field and make your bones, but it doesn't really help you get established as a novelist. Newspaper writing deals more in facts and getting them on the page quickly for the convenience of the reader. It doesn't really gel well with fiction, which is a more organic form of narration. A newspaper article presents the story right up front, while a novel unfolds the story, like one of those Meiji-era Japanese manga scrolls. Consequently, Dan Brown tends to info-dump a lot of details at once and some of them may not be relevant at the moment. Does he really have to identify the character who gets branded by out-of-camera-range mooks on the very first page, as a physicist, even before he gives us the character's name?! I could care less if the victim is a physicist or a flower-seller: identifying a character immediately by their profession, instead of as a human is, in the same league as the people who say "I'm a :: insert profession::", rather than something more personalizing, like "I work as a :: insert profession::" It's mistaking the job for the person, and thus it dehumanizes the character just a bit.
Also: the one scene per chapter format makes it a bit choppy. Either learn to bundle some scenes together or dispense with chapters entirely.
Thus, I'm taking the same tack I've taken with Twilight: I'm jotting little remarks in the margins to get through the damn thing. My favorite so far, for chapter two: "Who's this? The Fellowship of Faceless Creepy People Whispering in the Shadows??"
Just started reading "Angels and Demons", mostly to see what all the yelling is about. Considering my current falling-out with the Catholic Church, some of my remarks about "The Da Vinci Code" are coming off as a bit... maybe not hypocritical, but probably a bit unbalanced and narrow-minded, particularly since I seem to be veering toward Gnosticism lately and TDVC does rely a bit on (one out-of-context passage from) the Gnostic Gospels. This does not mean, however, I'm jumping on the Dan Brown bandwagon.
The reason being, and it just dawned on me: He writes too much like a newspaper writer. Granted, newspaper writing is a good way to get into the field and make your bones, but it doesn't really help you get established as a novelist. Newspaper writing deals more in facts and getting them on the page quickly for the convenience of the reader. It doesn't really gel well with fiction, which is a more organic form of narration. A newspaper article presents the story right up front, while a novel unfolds the story, like one of those Meiji-era Japanese manga scrolls. Consequently, Dan Brown tends to info-dump a lot of details at once and some of them may not be relevant at the moment. Does he really have to identify the character who gets branded by out-of-camera-range mooks on the very first page, as a physicist, even before he gives us the character's name?! I could care less if the victim is a physicist or a flower-seller: identifying a character immediately by their profession, instead of as a human is, in the same league as the people who say "I'm a :: insert profession::", rather than something more personalizing, like "I work as a :: insert profession::" It's mistaking the job for the person, and thus it dehumanizes the character just a bit.
Also: the one scene per chapter format makes it a bit choppy. Either learn to bundle some scenes together or dispense with chapters entirely.
Thus, I'm taking the same tack I've taken with Twilight: I'm jotting little remarks in the margins to get through the damn thing. My favorite so far, for chapter two: "Who's this? The Fellowship of Faceless Creepy People Whispering in the Shadows??"
