A Primer
2006-05-17, 16:28

I've been reading The DaVinci Code, as I've said, and it's just starting to get juicy (I know it's a relatively short book, and I should be farther along, but I only have time to read during m lunch hour). Not that the book started slowly; I'm realizing that the novel isn't popular for it's intricate wording and dialogue. This was a book written for the screen, really, at least at its face. It's a thriller, after all, even if it's an intellectual one. It's Like National Treasure, only it wasn't written in crayon. I think the author wanted to convey as much information as he could without sounding snooty or overbearing, thus the minimum of characterization or dramatization. Robert Jordan could learn something from this.

But I'm already noticing some intricacies that Dan Brown included in his story structure, if not in the words themselves. For instance, he smartly decided to involve two main characters instead of one (and god, I hope the movie plays it that way), a man and a woman. This works nicely with (I feel) his overall intent of the book: balance. Even in social constructs, Nature finds a way. Yin and Yang, man and woman, Law and Chaos; eventually, the Balance will return, even if it takes toppling a male-dominated JudeoIslamoChristian religion. After all, what is time, to the Balance?

I'm kind of seeing this book as a primer, a preschool text to the world of intellectualism. It could, to the enterprising reader, be a launch pad for history, anthropology, religious study, art history, philosophy, cryptography, etc. But at the same time, it seems (so far) to be a popcorn-level entertaining thriller, so anyone could read it (and skip over those annoying, confusing parts where they explain stuff).

-- End Transmission --