Jan 27, 2005 12:58 AM
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(Updated Jan 27, 2005 10:34 AM)
When the words The Da Vinci Code first began perambulating literary circles donning newer raves and accolades with each tabloid book-review, I parried it with the conviction that here was another Frankenstein's monster of my overhype-err-active generation, another turgid bloated Pop-Culture nuisance-to-be like Harry Potter.
Then one day, one of my greasy book-eating girlfriends told me it was something about Goddess Worship and the Evils of the Catholic Church, two of my favorite topics, and thus her seductive words lit up once again the fire of a cold and long smothered reading habit in me.. killed the last time by a fifth consecutive book about chocolate frogs, broomsticks and obnoxious cocky children, that a sad story like me comes out of only feeling magically inferior or dumber.
I sat with Dan Brown's book expecting no more, but sat through it an educated, elevated and happier person. It was a rollercoaster ride without puke-breaks, if there is indeed such a thing as a stomach friendly and educational rollercoaster ride.
The plot is not-so-simple, but if you can drift and enjoy the view with the smooth flow of well written prose without bitching and squirming about factual inaccuracies and religious blasphemies over the horizon, then you will not only find the threads fall into place, but also feel you played a part in them doing so.
It starts with a Havard symbologist Robert Langdon (described by Brown as 'harrison ford in a harrison tweed' though the move role is being played by the skinny un-harrisonford-likeTom Hanks) who is awakened in the middle of a rosy Parisian night by the inexorable French Police, investigating the gruesome murder of a renowned meuseum curator whom Langdon was scheduled to meet. The brawny obsessive Police Captain (who plays a major role in the story) is obviously suspecting Langdon for involvement, but for far more subtle reasons than are apparent, for the curator in his dying movements expressed a range of cryptic symbols with a give-away post-script
13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5
O, Draconian devil!
Oh, lame saint!
P.S. Find Robert Langdon
Geeked out already? Wait coz it turns out that Captain Fauche of the French Police had even deeper reasons and inclinations to suspect Robert Langdon, and just when you think his reasons and inclinations are laid bare towards the end of the book you get another unexpected stab to your wellformed notion of the character, just one of the many who turn out the be a cross of what they had seemed.
The jungle of feigned charachter ethos is further intertwined with a complex and intruiging plot, filled with turns and break-giraffe-neck suspense. The curator turns out to be the last surviving member of an ancient Brotherhood that holds the key to the paradoxical origins of Jesus H. Christ, murdered by a Catholic Bajrang Dal called Opus Dei.
The Brotherhood, a pan-Goddess worship cult called the Priory of Sion, has been locked in an ancient cat-and-mouse game with the Vatican Church for the ownership of the sangreal documents a collection of purist writings from Jesus Christ himself that would be used to expose the Vatican's fabrications and manipulations of the gnostic gospels and corruption of Christ's human message by projecting him as an expression of divinity, abstracted from humanity.
Along with these exposes come the complementary truths overwhelmed by today's neo-culture gamut of lies: Christ was married. Christ's wife was the saintly Mary Magdalene. Mary Magdalene was NOT a prostitute(as politely put by the fabricated gospels). Christ infact had children. The Holy Grail the search of whose true nature by Lobert Langdon and the curator's niece (his sexy sidekick) drives the plot, was not some Harry-Hogwarts magical cup of gold(so the Bible says) but a symbolic reference to the womb of Mary Magdalene that bore Christ's blessed offspring.
Robert Langdon and Sophei Neveu(dead curator's niece) are thence pitched in a race against time and the French Police before Opus Dei, the pet of the hairy eyed ''holier than thou pagans'' priests at the Vatican, seek and destroy the sangreal documents before their scheduled public release. Initiated by the dead curator's hints Robert Landon is led (and leads you!) on a neuron-intensive exhilarating code breaking treasure hunt with the infinite world of science and history you thought you had fathomed, falling upside down on its head and then unravelling itself without making you feel a tad bit dissapointed or indignant.
And as if to fuel further the book's sense of movement and adventure the grandly switching intellectual landscapes come coupled with the camera view of an outlaws' flight through France into England (in technicolor) - from Parisian monastries, lush Chateaus' to the rolling hillocks in Scotland, pulsed with all the tension of a pursuing police or the Opus Dei killer monks, the milieu seems all the more kinky and romantic, and with all the palatable science and history offered to the uninitiated layman - even educational. Comprende?
As a last note none of my reviews go without making those all important quazi-political jabs. Dan Brown's book has set a lot of menstruating catholic monks quivering in their pink panties. As a result the twice-born inteeleeectuaal right wing media has launched a campaign to declare Dan Brown's brilliant attempt at truth and rationality as some medieval heresy.
A good example are books like The Da Vinci Hoax which prove nothing but hypocritical and dogmatic the ''holier than thou'' preaching of the Catholic Church that religions such as Hinduism (read Pagan satan-worship if you are a Jharkhand or Bihar Tribal) are afraid to take criticism.
Perhaps all the gullible souls must be distributed copies of the Da Vinci Code in native languages, and learn about the five million women burnt in the name of witch-hunting by the ''only peaceful and soulful faith'' of the world whose acolytes are bombing kids in Iraq.
Perhaps they can differentiate best the Hoax from the Code for themselves.
