It was the mid '90s. I was watching the news. And some local anchor talked about how a man had attempted to board an airplane with a semiotic weapon and I just about fell out of my chair laughing, and then decided that was maybe the best band name I'd ever heard. Now, of course, it's a Tumblr, a Wordpress and a Twitter handle and near as I can tell, none of the above understands semiotics. I'll bet that's why Dan Brown writes about Professor Langdon, the "symbologist", rather than Professor Langdon, the semioticist. If I say "symbologist" you're likely to figure it's somebody who studies symbols and their meanings, right? But if I say "semioticist" you're likely to figure it's some egghead so far up his own ass that he turns the act of opening a can of cat food into performance art. Near as I can tell, that's an occupational hazard when your field of study is literally the meaning of meaning - when there's a tautology in the title you're kinda fucked from the get-go. FULL DISCLOSURE: I went into this book having enjoyed the movie and having no real handle on what I was getting myself into. I was expecting "literary murder mystery" - a sort of Cadfael with philosophy. And it's that, kind of the way Godel Escher Bach is about a turtle racing Achilles. I've burned through three or four histories of the renaissance, actually had heard of Waldensians and Cathars prior to reading this, and had seen the movie three times. And it got really dry for me. As I listened (did the audiobook), I started to get a nagging feeling that narrative was being sacrificed for capital-M Meaning. This reached a fever pitch in the last quarter of the book, wherein we solve the mystery by applying three or four layers of Meaning to casual things people said while also demonstrating how things would have been solved much sooner if three or four layers of Meaning hadn't been applied to other casual things people said. You know that scene in Fiddler on the Roof where Tevye says "there IS no other hand!" and acts all decisive and shit? After spending the whole movie arguing with himself? In The Name of the Rose, Tevye never says "there is no other hand." He just argues with himself and then says "Tradition!" Lemme put it this way: if you enjoyed the movie, as I did, imagine the novel as if the movie were intercut amongst a 46-hour-long reenactment of the Nicene Council. Your enjoyment of the new movie is heavily dependent on your interest in early Christian canon and how it got to be that way. Does that make sense?
I'd just like to add that I went back and re-read The Da Vinci Code and oh mah gawd it's like Brown has never been in a University lecture hall in his life. Everyone is just gaping and oohing and awwing and asking questions and being so engaged - not even the most dedicated of majors does that shit.
that's your criticism of The Da Vinci Code? For me, it starts with the dude who stopped talking to his last-bloodline-of-Jesus granddaughter for 20 years over a misunderstanding but then spends his last 20 minutes stumbling from room to room writing secret messages in his own blood and entrails that only she can interpret. But again, it's basically a framing reference for Holy Blood, Holy Grail, thereby tricking a whole new generation of the gullible to read illuminati conspiracy theories and profiting off the process. I mean, Brown went as far as naming the antagonist, Leigh Teabing, after an anagram of Holy Blood, Holy Grail authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. "It is typical of my unregenerable soul that I can only see this as a marvellous theme for a novel" - Anthony Fucking Burgess, setting up Da Vinci Code in 1982
Hey now, not my only criticism, but the first one I noticed re-reading, especially being in school right now. I don't think I can knock Dan Brown, though. He knew what was gonna get him some bank, that's fo'sho. I hate "secret messages in blood." Fucking Dead Space has "Cut off their limbs" written in blood on a wall. Tutorial messages in blood? "Hang on a sec, I know I'm bleeding out, but I better write this message for the player first. It's creeepy and atmospheric...and I'm on a tangent now.
Well you didn't go to my English classes, then, did you jerk. (Other students probably found me annoying. There was very little ooohing and aahhhing but the second two, I hang my head as guilty. That's when I was there of course. We can assume about a 50% chance of me having attended a given class session, though.)
Never seen it Sort of, I don't really give a toss about symbolism in literature, as long as it is ignorable in favor of the story. Word from another friend is that the book included more political commentary than the movie, which I am okay with. From the above, I'll probably make a hesitant foray into the book, but only because audible will let me return it unfinished for free.You know that scene in Fiddler on the Roof...
Does that make sense?
Before you read Name of the Rose, watch Fiddler on the Roof. I generally dislike musicals but I consider Fiddler to be one of the finest examples of staged entertainment there is. I enjoy it so much that I actually broke my streak of never doing anything with the drama club in high school because it was rumored they were doing Fiddler (I ended up playing Prospero instead which is a whole 'nuther story). I was talking to a bunch of actors up in Vancouver and the subject of musicals came up. The unchallenged consensus was that Fiddler was the best musical ever made.