I just finished reading Dan Brown’s latest novel “The Lost Symbol”. As with the previous two with symbologist Robert Langdon as the main character I found the story telling great fun and the writing and “history” rather sketchy. Which means I enjoyed them all a great deal while not taking them too seriously. But I’m doing a review of the book here today. Rather I was astounded by some of the comments I found at several places on the web that did offer reviews.
The comments broke into three main types. There were the “Dan Brown is my favorite author and you’re just mean” comments, carefully balanced by the “Dan Brown is mouth breathing moron, why would anyone read this tripe” and the “Oh lighten up people, what’s the big deal if his grammar stinks and he uses words improperly” group. To be honest I found all three groups of comments rather astounding.
First, let’s be clear - criticism of movies or books or TV or whatever is rarely about being “mean”. Any critic has their own set of criteria (I talked about mine just last week) and make their judgements based on them. Some great writers were trashed (Dickens for one) and many popular writers are utterly forgotten. A review is an opinion. There’s an unfortunate idea out there that you should only say nice things. It may make people feel good but you won’t find out what is best by only listening to people who avoid being “mean”.
As for the mouth breathing moron category this is just arrogant. It’s the mirror image of the previous. I know what I like and you don’t measure up. I’d be willing to bet that Dan Brown knows he’s writing popular fiction. That he has no illusions of writing “Great Literature”, a category for which the definition changes from generation to generation. Do I wish that Brown spent a little more time polishing his prose? Certainly. Some of his writing just smacks of college freshman trying way too hard to sound intelligent.
Finally we have the Lighten Up crowd. The ones who claim that it doesn’t matter if his metaphors limp, his sentence structure is tangled or if he flat out gets things wrong. It’s all just fun and who really cares? Well I for one think we ought to care. Using language properly is important and popular novelists who teach people that bad language use is fine add to the decline of society. That may sound a little pretentious but a attitude of “Ah, that’s good enough” is intellectually lazy and damaging to society as a whole.
So read the book, have a good time, be aware that it has its flaws and maybe drop Dan Brown a note asking for a little more effort on the next one.
Call that the View From the Phlipside.
"The View From the Phlipside" airs on WRFA-LP Jamestown NY. You can listen to WRFA online HERE
Copyright - Jay Phillippi 2010
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