Umberto Eco on Dan Brown

[fpb]

I wonder how many of the people who read my blog when I took a couple of hard swings at Dan Brown's loathsome THE DA VINCI CODE are with me still - most, I hope. Anyway, what I remember is that one person asked me about Umberto Eco's THE FOUCAULT PENDULUM, from which Brown was said to have swiped most of his plot. I did not answer, because I had not read Eco's book (and, to be truthful, I had not made it through all of Brown's, missing in particular the revelation of Teabing's villainy - but who can read hundreds of pages of a book whose style, content and ideology he finds uniformly detestable?). However, Eco, who to the best of my knowledge had not so far said anything about his brother novelist's successful effort, did finally oblige with a few pointed remarks, in the context of an interview about the general concept of conspiracy theories.

[My translation]: In my work on "Pendulum," I used conspiracy-theory literature, down the very worst dregs, to exorcise it. Instead of which, Dan Brown rolled into town with his "Da Vinci Code," taking those booklets as literally true, and immense numbers of readers in America actually ask me whether the whole corpus of work and doctrine of the Catholic Church is in fact a conspiracy. Eco, adds his interviewer, was hoping to chop down conspiracy theories with the Ockham's razor of reason, and they sprang back stronger than ever, insolent and universally present. I will add that Eco, one of a number of people who migrated from Catholic youth groups to the old Italian Communist Party in the early sixties, is not a believer and is regarded by Italian Catholics as an intellectual opponent. But he has way way way too much knowledge of the real intellectual and artistic achievement of the Church to take Dan Brown and his rubbish as anything but an insult to the intellect.

Comments

[goreism.livejournal.com]

Eco rules generally, and Foucault's Pendulum rules specifically. You should definitely read it when you have a chance.

On the other hand, Dear Lord in Heaven, it was hard to make it through Da Vinci Code—the poor man just can't write. Have you read Geoff Pullum's series of posts on Dan Brown on Language Log?

[fpb.livejournal.com]

No, but I don't have to. The man's style is a reflection of his mind, and his mind has an all but magnetic draw to everything that is spurious, irresponsible, and cheaply explained. I find it significant how he managed to trash every bit of real history - and there is a good deal of that - in his predecessors' THE HOLY BLOOD AND THE HOLY GRAIL. His ability to single out the bad and reject the good is almost a gift.

[goreism.livejournal.com]

They're worth reading for their own sake: http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html

[fpb.livejournal.com]

I will, and thanks for the link.

[ani-bester.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this.

I shared it with my father, who was delighted by it, not just because it further showed how stupid Dan Brown is, but also because of the small explanation about the purpose behind Eco's work, which it seems Dad had read, but had always felt as though he were missing something from it.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

You're welcome to spread it around. I only wish I knew how to get all the Catholic and like-minded blogs to publish this. The American public ought to know more of it.