As Dan Brown’s book remains a bestseller well over the two-year mark, I’ve been watching with a morbid curiosity all the crazy stuff that pops up from this work of fiction.
I read this article (link via bookslut) by Christopher Hitchens, who hated the book, generally echoing the consensus among, ahem, learned individuals that the writing is terrible (I got part-way through and then tossed the book into the corner screaming).
This woman created a cute comic, riffing on the book. Someone’s now writing a biography on Dan Brown (link via Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind). And some other fellow is really peeved that the publisher isn’t going to publish the book in paperback and time soon.
Let’s not forget the numerous television specials or useless amount of ink spilled on whether or not the theories found in the novel are true. Ahem, it’s a novel people, A NOVEL!
On the one hand, I’m thrilled that one book has spawned this much attention. It’s making people read, which I’m always thrilled about—maybe someone who hasn’t read a book in a long while will read this book and then be encouraged to read something else, something perhaps not written by Dan Brown. But on the other hand, there’s something in me that wishes the world would just wake up and realize the book is a terribly written product of someone’s imagination, and not take it so seriously—that is until Tom Hanks stars in the movie in the summer of 2006. Sigh.
Yeah, it’s crap commercial fiction. But it’s fun. And part of you wants it to be real, because people are always looking for something to believe in. Like Mr. Right. Hence chicklit. Dumb, but fun. Plus if it gets Joe Public to read and learn about some geography and art history too… well, it’s not so bad is it?