book report

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posted by tom / May 12, 2004 /

Harry Potter
I’m pretty late to the party on this one. I guess simple elitism kept me away, but I should have been able to see the appeal. Rowling’s prose is economical and her inventions are imaginative, but I think the appeal of the books are more fundamental. Lead a mundane life of drudgery and simmering victimhood? Well, as it turns out, you’re better than your oblivious tormentors. You’ve suffered incredibly, but now it’s time to fulfill your amazing destiny and embrace your unique, mystical gift! It’s a serialized Messianic Complex that can be devoured at an appropriately manic pace thanks to its fifth grade reading level. Who wouldn’t like that?

The Da Vinci Code
Big thumbs down. The only interesting aspect of this book is the conspiracy-theory theology, for which the author can really only claim credit as an editor. I can’t say whether any of it is plausible or not – I’ll leave that to biblical scholars and that crazy guy at the farmer’s market from whom Catherine and I tried to buy goat cheese one time, who wouldn’t shut up about Mary Magdalene, the Holy Grail, and the Divine Right of Kings. His cheese was good, but not crazy good.

What I can tell you, though, is that Brown gets a bunch of other stuff wrong, which doesn’t bode well for the viability of the biblical mumbo-jumbo. For instance: calling “left brain” thought “irrational”?! Okay Dan, the left/right brain thing is a horrible oversimplification, but if you’re going to use it then at least realize that the left hemisphere is credited with language and LOGIC. Also, public key encryption is not the same thing as putting a secret message in a locked container. Sorry. Not even close. In fact, that’s not even encryption, dumbass! I can’t bear to talk about his magical solar powered hard disk voice recorders.

I’m too upset to continue. Judge for yourself. I’ve helpfully supplied a lengthy excerpt – implied spoilers ahead.

“Robert!” Sophie gasped. “I’ve found something!”

Robert Langdon strode across the old church floor. Resplendent in his tweed jacket, Langdon looked every bit the respected Ivy League academic that his plodding intellect and limited vocabulary belied. With his smolderingly generic white guy good looks, those who wrote about him were frequently prompted to shamelessly compare him to Harrison Ford, although if Mr. Ford’s schedule precluded his participation in such a comparison, Michael Douglas would probably also be okay.

“What is it, Sophie?”

“My… My grandfather… He’s left us another clue!”

He certainly had. There, on the floor below him, were ten carved letters, which no one through the centuries, except perhaps a few hack thriller writers, had ever noticed.

CKUF HET EPOP

“What does it mean?” breathed Sophie, breathlessly. Sophie’s demeanor was unusually flustered. Well, probably unusually. Actually, it wasn’t entirely clear what her demeanor was usually like. She was definitely a woman, though, and attractive. Oh yeah! Also she was a cryptologist. It has to do with codes or something.

“Isn’t it obvious?” smirked Langdon. His training was coming in handy now. Yes, he thought, symbology is a real academic discipline.

“It’s perfect, Sophie. Your grandfather was a genius. He’s perfectly summarized the beliefs of the secret society to which he belonged. All in this simple statement.

“You see,” he continued, “CKUF seems to be an archaicized variant of cuff – by the way, English is conveniently the de facto language for ancient materials relating to the Grail for some reason. Most likely your grandfather included double velar stop phonemes knowing that Hebrew possessed no C equivalent, and Latin no K. Genius!

“HET is more puzzling – until one considers that the Church has persecuted all ideas associated with the concept of left, or Sinister, due to its association with the sacred feminine! Your grandfather omitted the S as a poignant inside joke – echoing and decrying the Church’s shameful legacy! What genius!

“HET then becomes HEST – as in Hester Prynn, of The Scarlet Letter. CUFF HESTER. What better symbol of the Priory of Scion’s struggle against religious misogyny than this bold, bumper-sticker-ready summation of the ages-old persecution of the assertion of female sexuality? It’s genius!”

“And EPOP?” asked Sophie.

“Most likely a nonsense word, designed to throw off Grail seekers. Your grandfather was obsessed with duality, Sophie, and unlikely to be interested in phrases containing more than two words. He was a genius, Sophie.”

“Duality? I don’t understand.”

With that, Robert embarked on another lengthy discourse into the meaning of ancient symbols, frequently accidentally slipping out of dialogue and into tracts of wild theorizing from an unaccounted-for narrator. None of the words were too big, though, so nobody noticed.

“And that’s why,” Robert concluded, “Any story involving men and women, opposing forces, or objects that are more round than they are pointy, is a secret code for how Jesus hit that Magdalene shit.”

His words echoed through the impressive space of Westminster Abbey, its grand expanses dwarfing the scene below, although if using a location shoot to capture the scene was too expensive it could probably be simulated pretty well with bluescreens.

“I see,” said Sophie, staring into Robert’s eyes. She was conflicted: in the face of the raw sexual potency of a Harvard academic any woman would have a hard time keeping her lust in check. Yet Sophie sensed that showing her attraction now might hurt her chances with Robert later. Men – and in particular men who were screenwriters – didn’t seem to like it when there was any romantic groundwork laid prior to women throwing themselves at bookish hero types upon the conclusion of their adventures. Still, those symbologist eyes…

“Tally Ho!” Their reverie was broken. Sir Leigh Teabing made his way across the church toward them. “As you may recall, I’m dreadfully eccentric and British,” Teabing continued, his voice echoing off the walls as if it had been recorded on a soundstage and the reverb added later.

“Leigh,” growled Langdon, upset at being interrupted. “Now is not the time. Need I remind you that we’re being hunted by an unknown evil mastermind who seems to know our every move? And that in the course of our adventure we have met only three or four characters, half of whom we already know to be bad guys?”

“Righto!” replied Teabing, hurrying off nervously. “Cheers!”

Suddenly, Sophie gasped. "Holy fucking shit, Robert!" she exclaimed. "I think this might be an anagram!"

"Another one?"

Shopgirl
A sweet little novella that I stole from Charles’ bookshelf at the last minute before leaving. It’s not consistently funny in the way you might expect a book by Steve Martin to be, but it’s certainly worth a read – especially considering you can get through it in a couple of hours, even if you’re a relatively slow reader like myself. I doubt Martin’s omniscient and wordy style of narration could work in a longer book without becoming grating, but it’s fine here.

The jokes are slight and witty, and aside from still thinking that ridiculous New Age-y names for children is a fresh and funny idea, Martin doesn’t stray into any of his really irritating sorts of comedy (see: “Wild and Crazy Guys” sketch, any of his goddamn songs).

Catherine hated this book. I suspect it’s because a book written and read by men as a thoughtful meditation on relationships is actually completely wrong and naïve when subjected to the superior emotional analysis of any woman older than 12. On the other hand, we can pee standing up, so nyah.

The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency
A cheery little book, and a fun read. It concerns a woman in Botswana setting up a detective agency. Her cases tend to involve things like finding missing husbands or collecting evidence to justify firing a lazy employee. It’s written by an old British guy, who, if my memory of the book jacket is right, grew up in Botswana.

While I’m sure he has more insight into the country’s people than I do, the things that make this book charming are also somewhat condescending toward its African characters. Earning enough money to retire and stare at your cattle; noting that white people seem crazy; finding a nice, fat wife. These are the thoughts – pretty much the only thoughts – that occupy the average African’s mind, according to the book’s tone. It’s not what you’d call a rich inner life.

Maybe this luxuriant calmness really is enjoyed by societies that have yet to invent the existential crisis (or import it from France). From a macro level, the observed behavior of any society is unlikely to reveal a significantly more complex mental landscape. I don’t know, so I’ll just go ahead and say what I’ve been dancing around: patronizing colonialist legacy.

On the other hand, it’s this simplistic, practical tone that makes the book so charming. These people don’t exist, and in real life the people of Botswana are free to develop their own mass media, political scandals and epidemics of body dysmorphic disorder. If you want something for the beach, I think you can get away with reading this without the voices of oppressed workers entombed in diamond mines haunting your sleep.

Underworld
I had already started this book when I brought it with me to Italy and proceeded to read zero pages while there. I’m trying, I really am. I’m 251 pages in, but I’m not optimistic about making it much further. I’d like to be able to read respectable fiction, really I would. But there are a number of things about this book that bother me.

I have very little patience for using baseball as a metaphor for anything more abstracted from it than, say, cricket. Also, I like a somewhat natural plot progression. So when, on page 172, a character spontaneously drives to meet a man he has just read about in an airline magazine and their conversation includes the sentence “when they make an atomic bomb… they make the radioactive core the same size as a baseball” it is a very, very bad sign.

I have other little objections. DeLillo’s metaphors can be interesting but are far too drawn out, like a tangle of climbing rose vines desperately spilling out across a neglected sidewalk, a single blossom remaining, half of its petals luxuriant and aromatic, the others perfectly desiccated from the touch of the hot concrete, the seamless dual halves of a Nagasaki postman and his shadow as he turns to perfect heat and light, the slurs from the crowd hitting Jackie Robinson’s proud, impassive back, like America facing what it can do while knowing what it is capable of. Yeah, it gets tiring.

Then there is the dialogue. The characters are introduced off-handedly. DeLillo likes to have two or more conceptual threads going simultaneously during dialogue. There isn’t much character development beyond names, jobs, and personal philosophical meanderings. He seems to think that having people talk about several things at once is naturalistic. And while perhaps the character development can kick in later, the lack of a discernible plot by page 250 is discouraging. Ultimately, this dueling narrative style of dialogue is just confusing, as you can hopefully see.

On the other hand, I’ve just seen the Kate Beckinsale/That Guy From Felicity vampire movie Underworld, and to be honest with you it’s a toss up as to which Underworld is more irritating. There are fewer shootouts with werewolves in the book, though, at least in the first third. Choose accordingly.