DAN BROWN'S INFERNO ; THE GOOD AND BAD OF A BEST SELLER

DAN BROWN'S INFERNO ; THE GOOD AND BAD OF A BEST SELLER

BOOK REVIEW by CHRISTINE TRZYNA

Since it's already on the best seller list and been reviewed countless times why am I bothering to add my voice?  OK, like Steven King has become, Brown is the multi-genre genius.  A spy thriller, a fast chase movie, futuristic novel, a love story kinda, set in foreign travel, art history, cutting edge biology and medicine, a who-done-it mystery, and did I mention literary?
 

Here's an example of the time old trick of letting literature refer to literature that is considered literary to make your book more literary.
 

Page 82 - Professor Langdon speaking

"As you are no doubt aware, Dante* is best known for his monumental literary masterpiece - The Divine Comedy - a brutally vivid account of the author's descent into hell, passage through purgatory, and eventually ascent into paradise to commune with God.  By modern standards, The Divine Comedy has nothing comedic about it.  It;'s called a comedy for another reason entirely.  In the fourteenth century, Italian literature was, by requirement, divided into two categories: tragedy, representing high literature, was written in formal Italian; comedy, representing low literature, was written in the vernacular and geared toward the general population."
 

And so we readers are in the classroom being lectured.

Or this, on age 215, Professor Langdon speaking again.

"In ancient mythology," Langdon offered, "a hero in denial is the ultimate manifestation of hubris and pride.  No man is more prideful that he who believes himself immune to the dangers of the world.  Dante clearly agreed, denouncing pride as the worst of the seven deadly sins... and punished the prideful in the deepest ring of the inferno."

This book is populated by characters, male and female, who are geniuses and have much to teach, and maybe that's what was bothering me.  All that genius, and the only dummy in the story is the reader.  All that lecturing, even during breaks in the chase, which, by the way tired me out.  I couldn't believe that the aging Langdon, a bookish fellow, could even run so fast or so long.  Even James Bond hopped into fast cars to get places pronto.  The endless detailed descriptions of architecture and landscape also had the effect of stalling the action.  Looking at the book as one in a series about Langdon, I'm frustrated because he keeps repressing his interest in females.  No, I don't want Brown to add erotica to his novels as yet another genre, but if  Langdon had a real romance once in a few books maybe he'd have more dimension to his character.

There's just no place for an everyman in his work.  No place with all the intellectualism for a deep feeling.  Inferno is a story to be witnessed but not participated in.  It's too high, too mighty, to allow the reader of a mystery one pleasure, the chance to figure  a few things out before the characters do!

*(Ct notes Dante Alighieri)

C 2013 Christine Trzyna  All Rights Reserved including Internet and International Rights

BEFORE THERE WAS DAN BROWN THERE WAS MALACHY MARTIN

I'm closely following the news about the resignation of Pope Benedict and the election of a new Pope as are millions of others in the world. Personally, having known people who could not come to terms with their limitations and proceeded to their incompetance in this life, I think his admission of weakness and inability to carry on, at an age when many people have been retired for 20 years, to be honorable.

The story is full of real world conflict.

Over the last several years I have met too many anti-Catholics who desperately wanted to believe that Dan Brown's fiction books were real. 

If you are presently in the mood to read fiction or non-fiction about the world of the Vatican, I strongly suggest that you read MALACHY MARTIN.

Here's the link to his official site which has been held on the net by a devout fan of Malachy's since his death, where you can read about a man who was a true Vatican insider, a holy man, once an exorcist, who retired into private life and became a writer of well-selling books.  Paging through WINDSWEPT HOUSE now.

Malachy Martin Official

CHRISTINE TRZYNA REVIEWS THE LOST SYMBOL by DAN BROWN

THE LOST SYMBOL is C 2009 DAN BROWN REVIEW BY CHRISTINE TRZYNA C 2009

So many reviews have already been made of this book, dare I add to the chaos?

Having seen ANGELS and DEMONS on the big screen, for my entire read I kept seeing the actor TOM HANKS in my mind's eye when I encountered the character Langdon.

Is it possible to read a Dan Brown book and not be completely fascinated by cutting edge technology and science clashing and meshing with ancient occult wisdom and spiritual controversy? It's his forte and the long wait for this book was worth it.

Would it be going too far to suggest that this book may be the ANTIDOTE for 9/11 because ultimately it is patriotic? Will the Masons have a resurgence of interest in their organization? If so, what about the Anti-Catholicism of the Masons?

What does it mean when you take notes because you want to look up Noetic Science? Like the aftermath of his other books, I fully expect that Dan Brown has created interest enough in his research for the book for others to go after him for accuracy.

For some reason I felt the story was a bit slow until it got really good. Life intruded and I had to put it down many times but about three forths of the way through I didn't want to.

THE MAN BEHIND THE DA VINCI CODE by Lisa Rogak (2nd Posting)

THE MAN BEHIND THE DA VINCI CODE
An Unauthorized Biography of Dan Brownby Lisa Rogak Andrews McMeel Publishing - Kansas City

See my previous post on this book by using the Google search feature above...

Page 55

"After learning the craft of constructing and writing a novel - one that was actually sold to a major New York publisher - Brown felt he had developed a good sense of what worked and what didn't when it came to commercial fiction. Setting for one, was crucial.... for his novels, he believed that location was perhaps the most important factor, since it would dictate the degree to which secrets could be revealed and present a unique opportunity to educate the reader about a topic they may know little about.
"If you're writing a love story, don't set it in the middle of a parking lot," he said, suggesting that the story be based in a location that is interesting all by itself. Once that is confirmed, he added, it's imperative to show the environment from a fly-on-the-wall perspective. "If you set a story in a private school and don't reveal any inside information about what it's like to work or study at a private school, then you've got a boring setting," he said.

Page 8

9"Beginning in the 1990's, international corporations saw money and prestige in book publishing companies - especially if they could tie them into other media outlets they owned to facilitate cross-promotion - and so they began snapping up privately owned publishers buy the carload....
"And they needed to make a profit. While publishers of old were primarily interested in producing good literature, the first concern of the conglomerates was financial. Whether a successful book had a literary bent or was more commercial in flavor didn't matter....
Book Expo is the largest trade show for the publishing industry there is.

CHRISTINE TRZYNA QUICK REVIEW : THE MAN BEHIND THE DA VINCE CODE By LISA ROGAK

THE MAN BEHIND THE DA VINCI CODE
An Unauthorized Biography of Dan Brown
by Lisa Rogak
Andrews McMeel Publishing Kansas City

This book was interesting for two reasons. It explains how Dan Brown's exposure to Prep Schools and Secret Societies as a student moved him towards that subject matter for his world-wide best seller, The Da Vinci Code, and it explains his writerly life, researching first, heavily plotted schemes before writing, his use of a voice command computer rather than typing, and what went on with his agent and publisher that made the book a very marketable effort, but one that has interfered with his ability to get another book done. Dan Browns wife, Blythe, (a woman behind her man) who was responsible for the strategy of promotion for Dan's music CD's and his earlier books is given ample credit for her contributions to his success.

Page 23

He discovered he possessed a fortitude that was extremely rare among other aspiring young artists. Essentially, Brown couldn't understand how others just like him could fall into a deep depression and give up after only a few months of receiving countless rejection letters. he thought he was missing something because he viewed each rejection as instruction in how he could try harder. With that realization, he knew that Phillips Exeter was responsible. .... "Exeter vaccinated me against the fear of failure," he said.


Page 47

"Besides writing first thing in the morning, Brown also got into the habit of meticulously planning every plot point and twist, each character's relationship with the others, and the forward movement of the story before he wrote even one word of the novel. He realized that the more he knew about the story and its direction in advance, the better. Specifically detailing the tension from one chapter to the next was a great help when the time came for him to actually start writing." .... He knew some novelists wrote blindly, by starting with an idea or image and then writing to see where it would take them. In literary works where the pace moves slowly and tension isn't integral to the plot, Brown could understand this. But the kind of story he wanted to write depended on building lots of suspense, keeping the reader guessing what would happen next, and throwing in lots of surprises - in other words, a page-turning novel....

Page 49-50
"I know I am supposed to name all the great writers who have inspired me, but I'm ashamed to say that I am so buys writing I have almost no time to read anything other than non-fiction and research books," he said. "On vacations I grab some mainstream thriller off the best-seller rack. Not glamorous, I know, but the truth... But there's another reason he shies away from reading current popular fiction. "I read almost exclusively nonfiction, because I am always researching the next novel, but I don't like to read fiction when I'm writing because it tends to color what I am doing," he said.


Page 61 (On marketing his first book, Digital Fortress)
"Brown pulled out all the stops. He had learned from promoting his music that you never knew how someone could help you, so he prepared postcards with an image of the cover of the book on one side and reviews, comments, and a toll-free ordering number of the other. He also devised a succinct motto for the novel: "The government's greatest secret is that they know all of yours." He sent the cards to everyone he had ever known in the music business, as well as to his fellow classmates at Amherst College and Phillips Exeter.

Page 71
"Seasoned authors - and even those with only one book under their belt like Brown - quickly come to realize that once the manuscript has been handed in, their responsibilities to the production phase of publishing are over. Of course, he'd have to answer copy editing questions and check the galleys for typos, but typically only the art department and the sales force have the final say over the content and design of the cover.

QUICK REVIEW: THE JESUS PAPERS by MICHAEL BAIGENT

QUICK REVIEW by Christine Trzyna
THE JESUS PAPERS BY MICHAEL BAIGENT

c 2006 by author

Harper San Francisco

I'm reading this book because the famous "Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown based some of his fiction book research on what Baigent and others of the same intention published as non-fiction, the search for the truth about Jesus. Some say that Dan Brown and his ilk have wanted to dismantle Christianity or the Church (Catholic, but all other Christian faiths that believe in the divinity of Jesus, that he died on the cross for our sins, and through him we have eternal salvation of our souls) through revealing what supposedly the Knights Templer and the Masons have long known; that Jesus survived through a carefully conspired plot, he and his wife Mary Magdalena fled to France, where they had children, and their heirs became known as the Merovingian Kings.


Baigent is one of several authors who are akin to the gentleman travelers of the turn of the 20th century, wealthy men of inheritance mostly who were the unwitting founders of the social science of anthropology. And I am with them on their mountain climbs, sea voyages, and travels across the world, investigating, digging up, and experiencing...and coming up with theories and proofs that perhaps the contemporary establishment of anthropology would debunk. So I'm a sucker for a book that has so many color photos of important temples and underground spiritual centers that he has explored.

He is also on the quest of the Historical Jesus, rather than one of faith, or the one invented to be divine after the fact of life.


Page 39

On page 39 Baigent explains, "According to the gospels, through his father (Joseph), Jesus was of the Line of David, through his mother, he was of the line of Aaron the high Priest (Mathew 1:1 16 Luke 1:5,36;2:4). We suddenly get an understanding of his importance to the Zealot cause when we realize that because of his lineage he was heir to both lines. He was a "double" messiah; having inherited both the royal and priestly lines, he was a "Messiah of Aaron and Israel," a figure, as we have seen, who was clearly noted in the Dead Sea Scrolls. And we take as an expression of this fact Pilate's supposedly ironic sign placed at the foot of the cross: This is Jesus The King of the Jews (Matthew 27,37.)

Page 118-119
"Imagine the problem the Zealots, whose entire focus was the removal or destruction of Rome's hold over Judea, had organized a dynastic marriage between Joseph, a man of the royal line of David, and Mary, of the priestly line of Aaron, in order to have a child, Jesus - the "Savior" of Israel - who was both rightful king and high priest."

Egyptology is of interest to me. Baigent goes on about the religious beliefs of the Egyptians. Page 169,

"Dr. Jeremy Naydler, who has made a study of the deeper mysteries expressed in the Egyptian texts, stresses that we must never allow ourselves to forget the experiential (my emphasis) nature of these ancient religious writings."

Speaking of Egyptian temple rituals using the terminology appropriate, Baigent mentions some notions that I believe are equivalent to Hindu spiritual belief and practice, notions that move across cultural lines.

Page 169
"Under usual circumstances, this state would translate as "sleep," but in this specific ritual context, it indicates something more akin to a state of trance or meditation. Its main use, scholars think, was during the animation rite for sacred statues called "the Opening of the Mouth" when divine power was called down to reside in the statue, which was thereby rendered sacred. This same rite also formed part of the funerary practices. it is evident, in the latter case at least, that while in this ritual state the priest somehow moved into the world of the dead, the Far-World, and that on his return he was able to describe what he had experienced as a dead person.... seems to have happened regularly during these rituals.

Page 170
"We can be confident, I would suggest, that this ritual journey was not just an intellectual invention or some kind of priestly drama, a "pious fraud" that provided smoke and noise enough to impress but little true fire.

Around the late third to early fourth centuries A.D. the philosopher Iamblichus of Apamea, one of the most prominent Platonic scholars of his era, was teaching in what is now Lebanon. His teaching was centered upon what he called THEURGY,... that is, "working with" the gods. He contrasted this with THEOLOGY - "Talking about" the gods. He was interested in practical effects rather than intellectual argument; he wanted his students to know, not just to believe.

(THEURY IS A NEW WORD for me!)

C 2008 Christine Trzyna

I'm reading THE JESUS PAPERS by MICHAEL BAIGENT

Reading THE JESUS PAPERS by Michael Baigent, "Exposing the Greatest Cover-Up in History" which is, if you don't know the secret, supposedly held by the Nights Templer and the Masons, that Jesus did not die on the cross, but lived after being taken down from the cross and fleeing to France, had married Mary Magdalene, had children, and through them and then the Merovigian Kings, his DNA is evident in contemporary personages such as, say, the future King of England, Wills.

No, it doesn't say all that in this one book exactly, but Baigent and some authors like him working on the same premises, have had their research used by Dan Brown, the author of the fictive DaVinci Code. I've been in one literary -spiritual argument after another recently with my friend I call Rev John who believes the Catholic Church is a Satanic Power, that the worship of The Blessed Virgin Mary is heretical, and that the only penance Catholics get in the confessional is Hail Marys... Yes, and we are still friends. Rev John thinks the DaVinci Code is fact, not fiction. I owe it to my heritage religion to straighten him out, don't ya think?

Tell you this... I love all the archaeological and historical sites Baigent visited and photographed and presents in this book.