Bookishness

Alright, I'll play

William Shakespeare
Dorothy Sayers
James Schmitz
Terry Pratchett
E.R. Eddison
J.R.R. Tolkien
Michael Innes
Alfred Bester
Sarah Caudwell
Patrick O'Brian
George MacDonald Fraser

And muttering about things bookish, booklike, maybe somewhat book related, I gave the miniseries version of Earthsea a whirl Monday night but quit after 20 minutes.  It seemed incomprehensible.  I hadn't read Le Guin's books in a long time, and I wasn't able to follow the adaptation at all.  I was pleased to see the underutilized Sebastian Roche in his specialty as an evil ruler, but the thing just didn't make sense.  They weren't my favorite Le Guin works-I suppose those are Malafrena and City of Illusions.  Malafrena is an especially beautifully wrought work, many years in the making. 

On the other end of the spectrum, I finally looked at The Da Vinci Code.  It's not a good time in my house for serious reading, so Da Vinci sure fits the bill.

One secret to this work's longevity on the best seller list is that the bookstores are practically giving it away.  But oh, how tedious.  Almost every page has an offense against grammar or the craft of fiction-didn't Dan Brown ever go to one of those workshops where they say, "Don't tell, show?"  And vast sections of the book seem to be comprised of lectures to the female cryptologist, what's her name.  Brown seems completely unaware of the work of Irenaeus in forming the canon of the Gospels (Brown would no doubt say that he "suppressed" that fact), a couple of centuries before that big baddie Constantine the Great.  Gaack.  His main stuff is a load of codswallop-the quantity of factual errors, exaggerations, and outright mendacity astounds anyone who has a passing familiarity with the first three centuries A.D-but the book is extraordinarily poorly written.  Where were his editors? 

For much better works of a similar kind (not as argumentative, but with intellectual quests at their heart) see The Rule of Four, a very impressive work by young writers, far better crafted and with very few howlers (they do struggle a little with chronology), or A.S. Byatt's Possession .   Ome expects well crafted fiction from Byatt, but Possession is a masterwork.

Update:  <headbanging>Arggh.  In Da Vinci I've just barked the shins of my brain on this howler:

The roots of iambic pentameter were deeply pagan.

No, you twit, iambic pentameter is deeply English.  </headbanging>

The weirdo albino assassin likes to say, "Pain is good."  Then read this book.

Last Update: Brown's so-called theology is also curiously backward.  For all his prating about the sacred feminine, he really means the sacred feminine as enjoyed by a man.  He pushes the notion that men encounter the divine during intercourse, but he doesn't provide a like experience for women.  They seem to be doomed to the barefoot/pregnant role, since it's part of their "sacredness" that they can bring forth new life.  Brown seems wholly unaware of the spiritual path of negation, wholly ignornant of the first three centuries of Christianity, and rather phallocentrically blind to the notion that not all women may be happy being "chalices."  Has anyone tarred him with this?  I dust my hands of this truly grotesque book. 

Comments

[Will Duquette]

Interestingly, if I'd started with your list the only author's name I'd need to swap would be Michael Innes. So who's Michael Innes?

[Jack]

Ah, Michael Innes. Michael Innes was the pseudonym, sort of, of the British scholar J.I.M. Stewart. He wrote a long, long series of mysteries, most featuring Sir John Appleby, who rose from a detective inspector in Hamlet, Revenge! to Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police. Most are pretty good examples of the British Learned Mystery.

[Will Duquette]

I shall have to keep an eye out for Mr. Innes. I don't meet many people in such illustrious company. :-)

[Angie Schultz]

> James Schmitz

I knew you were a man of excellent taste.

[Dr Alice]

Haven't read "Da Vinci Code" and don't intend to. It sounds horrible. I do intend to read "Rule of Four" one of these days. And I love Michael Innes - I have a whole collection of paperbacks of his works. Who wouldn't love a writer who could come up with Drool and Snarl as the names of English towns?