And the hype was about ... what, exactly?
I read Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code" last weekend. I was hoping for a lot, lot more. The central premise, which I won't spoil for you (even though it seems everybody but me had read this already), was one of many threads explored and interweaved 15 or so years ago in Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum."You've got to be a patient, curious reader to deal with Eco. One reviewer notes that "Readers who need a plot may fall by the wayside, but on page 375 a plot actually begins." Eco throws the most obscure crap at you as if he expects you to know about it already, which you don't, so you go look it up, and you learn far more about the world and the fools who live in it than you ever thought possible. And along the way you end up on the most amazing ride of your life.
I suppose a synopsis of "Foucault's Pendulum" would read something like: "A trio of editors, sick to death of reading manuscripts on the occult and secret societies, attempt to tie all of the rantings in the manuscripts into a single, all-encompassing conspiracy theory. And it's all a great game until, suddenly, it's not a game at all." But it's so much more than that.
The difference, I suppose, between Brown and Eco is that Eco is friggin' brilliant, and really knows how to write (or his translator, William Weaver, knows how to make him look really good). Brown, on the other hand, writes page-turners in the tradition of Clive Cussler -- more intelligent than Cussler, true, but still a mere weekend's read.
If you liked "The Da Vinci Code," you might like Foucault's Pendulum. But if you loved "The Da Vinci Code," I think you should probably avoid Eco entirely.
In the tradition of Klund, I suppose a numerical rating is in order. So "The Da Vinci Code" gets a 65.
posted by MeanMrMustard @ 6:04 AM
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