The Dan Brown Sequel Generator!

[LMNO]

One of the most head-slappingly ridiculous parts was near the end... The Nemesis is defeated, the Government has been protected, and the victims have been freed and reunited.

So, one of the victims takes Langdon to show him the secret the entire novel revolves around, and they chat pleasantly about history, symbology, mysticism... but this guy had gotten his hand chopped off 24 hours earlier, with no medical attention or pain killers anywhere in sight.  That's right, "Stumpy the Freemason" is actually the Black Knight from Monty Python's Holy Grail.

[Payne]

I'm going to read this latest Dan Brown, but more in the same spirit as Rasputin ate a little poison with his breakfast everyday.

[LMNO]

If you want a copy, pm me your email.

[Cain]

Awesomeness:

Oh, so apparently some guy named Dan Brown has written some new book? The extract soon gets to the point:

The thirty-four-year-old initiate gazed down at the human skull cradled in his palms.

Mmm, beautiful. "Cradled in his palms". One can feel the reverence with which the initiate is delicately holding this human skull. But tell us more about the skull, Mr Brown!

The skull was hollow,

That is useful information, for now I am no longer visualizing one of those solid skulls?

like a bowl,

Even better — hollow like a bowl, not hollow like, I don't know, a syringe, or an asteroid hollowed out by aliens. The image is now irresistibly vivid! A human skull, hollow like a bowl!

But wait, Mr Brown, why are you telling us that this particular skull is "hollow, like a bowl"? Are you subtly setting up the idea that the skull contains some liquid?

filled with bloodred wine.

Ah — now this is why Dan Brown is Dan Brown. A lesser author would have been satisfied with a lesser liquid — having the human skull (hollow like a bowl) contain, I don't know, some gazpacho soup or Ready Brek. No one but Dan Brown could have thought of filling the human skull (hollow like a bowl) with "bloodred wine".1 It is an image of menacing ingenuity, through which Mr Brown is really beginning to establish a kind of superior Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom atmosphere.

The author then types on with some description of a big room, but it is no shame for us to admit that his best work is already accomplished: the concept of an initiate holding a human skull (hollow like a bowl) filled with bloodred wine and cradled in his palms is a kind of chorus that insists on being heard again, and it is not long before the reader is thus pleasured:

The initiate had been told every room in this building held a secret, and yet he knew no room held deeper secrets than the gigantic chamber in which he was currently kneeling with a skull cradled in his palms.

A skull cradled in his palms. Imagine! Almost as though it were a human infant. I must admit my eyes glazed over again after this at the further description of the big room and whatever, but only because I was aching to see what the author would do with his inevitable third treatment of the concept "skull cradled in his palms". I was not disappointed:

Steeling himself for the last step of his journey, the initiate shifted his muscular frame and turned his attention back to the skull cradled in his palms.

Only a second-rate writer would vary such a winning formula. The first-rate writer knows the true value of incessant repetition. Indeed, I suspect this stunning symbol-sequence, "skull cradled in his palms", must owe its majestic power to some actual black sorcery, because when I had finished reading the entire extract, I found myself cradling my own skull in my palms?

1.  Later on we are told that "The crimson wine looked almost black in the dim candlelight", but that's the lighting director's problem, so fuck you.

http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/Unspeak/~3/NM__ci0WCnI/

[LMNO]

My guess is that the galleys never made it to the Editor's desk, they just sent it through spellcheck once, and said "skip all" when it got to "Ma'lak".

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

One of the most head-slappingly ridiculous parts was near the end... The Nemesis is defeated, the Government has been protected, and the victims have been freed and reunited.

So, one of the victims takes Langdon to show him the secret the entire novel revolves around, and they chat pleasantly about history, symbology, mysticism... but this guy had gotten his hand chopped off 24 hours earlier, with no medical attention or pain killers anywhere in sight.  That's right, "Stumpy the Freemason" is actually the Black Knight from Monty Python's Holy Grail.

Of course, it is worth noting that Monty Python and The Holy Grail contains significantly more legitimate information about the Holy Grail than The DaVinci Code did  

Speaking of The DaVinci Code, the one thing that bothered me most of all about The DaVinci Code was that "San Gréal"/"Sang Réal"^* bullshit, and let me tell you why:

Even if we assume that this etymoogy is legitimate and correct, the change between one phrase and the other doesn't have any meaningful effect on the meaning of the term, as both versions of the term are derived from the same biblical phrase, which appears (in slightly modified forms) in three of the standard canonical gospels as well as at least two apocryphal gospels which are not recognized by the Catholic Church anyway. To wit,

Mark 14:23-24
"23. And he took the cup, and when he had given thanks, he gave it to them: and they all drank of it. 24. And he said unto them, 'This is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many." "

Matthew 26:27-28
"27. Then he took the cup, gave thanks and offered it to them, saying, "Drink from it, all of you. 28. This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins." "

Luke 22:20
"22. In the same way, after the supper he took the cup, saying, "This cup is the new covenant in my blood, which is poured out for you." "

and in the apocrypha...

Bartholomew
"They saw the blood of Jesus pouring out as living blood down into the cup. Peter said: "God hath loved us more than all, in letting us see these great honours: and our Lord Jesus Christ hath allowed us to behold and hath revealed to us the glory of his body and his divine blood." "

Philip
"The Cup of Prayer contains wine and water, since it is appointed as the type of the blood for which thanks is given. And it is full of the Holy Spirit, and it belongs to the wholly perfect man. When we drink this, we shall receive for ourselves the perfect man. "


Its telling that the scripture which uses a phrase most closely approximating the word "Holy Grail" or "San Gréal" is an apocryphal gospel not recognized by the Catholic Church^**


P.S. I know that this thread is more about The Lost Symbol than The DaVinci Code, but I just had to get this off my chest.


^*  (meaning "Holy Grail" and "Royal Blood", respectively)

^** As opposed to the story given in the book, wherein the Catholic Churh creates the term "San Gréal" as a deliberate corruption of the phrase "Sang Réal". it would seem that in real life, if they tried t supress anything, then "San Gréal" meaning "Holy Grail" (and not "Sang Réal" meaning "Royal Blood"^***) was the term that they tried to supress

^*** On a related note, I have actually been to Roman Catholic services where the topic of the sermon has been that Jesus was a successor to King David

[rygD]

I have not read anything by Dan Brown.  I have read fiction as well as nonfiction dealing with some of the same ideas and I became a little pissed that an author I very much enjoyed and respected, that wrote such books was largely unknown, however this asshole, who I frequently claim stole the ideas of others without giving credit, is regarded very highly.  On top of that when I see a small segments of his writings they lack all of what makes such books appealing to me.

I guess his books are written for the masses, and it seems, from what I have read here, that he has problems checking out his information.  Also, he can't keep little details consistent.  Oh, and he writes like someone who is not a writer by trade writing books for children.  Is this correct?

[Cain]

And all his plots are essentially the same.

[Triple Zero]

I watched the movie Angels & Demons a few days ago, and I gotta say, apart from that the LHC was never in the business of creating antimatter, and even if they would, it wouldn't be contained in a handheld glowing tube powered by a battery, and while the idea of switching of the power in several parts of the city to determine the location of a wireless camera to see when the light goes out if a pretty nifty idea, tracking the wireless signal itself is a lot easier and more accurate.

apart from that (and more), it was a pretty entertaining movie with a nice twist at the end.

[Cain]

The film was quite different to the book, in several ways.  Including the idiot "if the antimatter container's batteries are below five minutes it cannot be safely replaced, so the villain places the antimatter container where it can only be found five minutes before it is due to explode, he can then play the hero and save the Vatican from the evil Illuminati" plot finale.

Because, of course, its real easy to plan something like that.

[LMNO]

Do they still include the BASE-jumping fail at the end?

[Prelate Diogenes Shandor]

I watched the movie Angels & Demons a few days ago, and I gotta say, apart from that the LHC was never in the business of creating antimatter, and even if they would, it wouldn't be contained in a handheld glowing tube powered by a battery

Also, don't forget the fact that just about any other particle accelertor could be used to create antimatter just as proficiently. Particle aceleators are routinely used to generate antimatter particles, but they only generate a hndful of particles at a time and use prodigious amounts of energy to do it.

(Similarly, particle accelerators could also theoretically be used to transmute lead into gold by bombarding a neutron poor isotope of lead with high energy electrons (some of which could combine with the protons in the lead atom's nucleus to form neutrons, ad thus lower the atom's atomic number), but the energy required and the painfully slow rate of the processwould cancel out any revenue several times over)