"The Lost Symbol" -- a pre-review

by Dan Brown

Dan Brown’s latest book ‘The Lost Symbol’ was released on September 15th and currently resides on the top of the New York Times bestseller list as a hardcover fiction. His first three novels, including ‘Angels & Demons’ (which was the first book that Brown’s signature character Robert Langdon a.k.a. Tom Hanks appeared in) didn’t set the publishing world on fire (he had also published a handful of non-fiction books). When ‘The Da Vinci Code’ hit in 2003 it hit hard and became the type of phenomena that one can only describe as an event book. Even if you didn’t read the book you heard about it, and Leonardo Da Vinci had a pop culture renaissance becoming everyone’s favorite Renaissance man again. Eat it Michelangelo!

Of course the downside to success is that your work is looked at through a microscope, thus Brown in regards to ‘Da Vinci,’ has had two lawsuits filed against him for plagiarism as well as criticism directed at him for his research. One of the suits involved a nonfiction book called ‘The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail,’ which was published in 1982. This suit filed by the three authors was dismissed. The second lawsuit filed by Jack Dunn, author of ‘The Vatican Boys,’ was also dismissed. A few years ago ‘Vanity Fair’ ran an article involving Brown’s alleged plagiarism and, although I have forgotten the specifics of the article, I do remember it was convincing.

Beyond the allegations of plagiarism and faulty research, Dan Brown has also had to deal with the literary purists. Some people didn’t want to read ‘The Da Vinci Code’ simply because everywhere you turned there was Da Vinci this and Da Vinci that. Books were published (‘The Real History be the Da Vinci Code’ for example) because of the success of the ‘Code’ many warranted that the book itself didn’t deserve all of the attention it got. Various folks I know had a plethora of responses ranging from they loved it to it was poorly written.

I liked it.

It didn’t overpower me with images and philosophy I hadn’t known before; the whole thing about Mary Magdalene being the wife of Jesus I had heard before as well as that she wrote a book for the Bible that was edited out through the years. However, I was a bit surprised to learn that ‘The Last Supper’ seems to have always featured a woman in the painting.

I thought the story arch was fine and the only real complaint I had was that it felt too ‘John Grisham let’s have a massive chase scene’ at times. Also, I don’t particularly like it when an author feels that they have to tell me something is funny as if I as the readers don’t have the intellectual capability to decide on their own if something is humorous or not – but that is just nit picking. Overall, I thought that ‘The Da Vinci Code’ was a nice addition to the book-reading universe in that it prompted a lot of interesting discussions and had a lot of people doing research into religion, history, and culture, which I don’t think can ever be a bad thing.

No one was shocked to learn that the novel was going to be made into a movie. This of course prompted another kind of literary snob, the type that never feel as if the films based on books are as good as the original source. I’m someone who is much more relaxed about my assessments. Often people are comparing apples and oranges; things that work in a book might not work on film and vice versa. Seriously, when I hear folks grip that ‘Jurassic Park’ was a much better book than film I have to roll my eyes and wonder if the person actually read the book. Even though Christian Lander, in his blog ‘Stuff White People Like’ is writing about ‘Where the Wild Things Are’, his points are just as valid to ‘The Da Vinci Code,’ although more than white people are literary snobs (snobs come in all shapes, sizes, and ethnicity – a United Nations of snobbery).

The debut of ‘The Lost Symbol’ is a tricky one for Brown, because it is basically the novel that decides if ‘The Da Vinci Code’ was a fluke, and if he has the writing chops to live up to his fame or will he go down in flame. With a book such as this which I purchased in hardback, I want to take all of my literary opportunities to savor it which explains why I am putting off my full review until later. Also, my father is going to borrow, read, and also write a review which I will publish.

He is educated in the particular Stephen Hawking type of science that is described within the book, plus he seems to enjoy books written by men in their traditional forms of mystery, chase, and science fiction whereas I am different. He cringes at the thought of chick lit. He is of the Silent Generation, I am of Gen X; so the litmus test for Dan Brown is to see what the two of us think of his latest.

Review by Lisa Westerfield