A book club meeting during which you aren't allowed to talk, so I discuss the Da Vinci Code all by myself, which is really just a ploy to talk about myself some more.
Wednesday, Nov. 10, 2004 - 18:20

So I finally read the Da Vinci Code and, given its popularity and my penchant for being contrary, it's not surprising that it took me until now to finally read it. It's not surprising to me but might be to you, that is, because I never like to do things that other people are doing, for the simple reason that everyone else is doing it, but you probably don't know that about me. Even if I want to do something, even if I think I'd like it, if it's too popular I won't. It's not any sort of originality or anything, it's just obstinateness. Like in high school, going to the bathroom. Other girls would be like, "Does anyone have to go to the bathroom?" and then a herd of them would tromp to the bathroom together, but me, when I had to go, I'd get up and go alone.

(I had a conversation about this with someone who said he thought girls all went to the bathroom together so they could gossip, and I said I didn't think that was the real reason. I think it's more insecurity, afraid of walking past other groups of people by yourself. At least that's how it was with me and my friends.)

(Oh high school, you were so fun.)

So, just to be obstinate and ornery, I don't like to do things that lots of other people are doing. Plus, the copy of this book at the library was always checked out. Consequently, I never read it. But I'd heard good things about it, that it was intellectually stimulating, so I was kind of interested. Then when I went to Seattle, my friend loaned me her copy. And so now I've read it.

First, I'll say that I liked it. It's interesting, and if it gets people interested in the history of Christianity, or feminism, or Europe, or anything at all, that can only be a good thing. Also, it incorporates a lot of things from different fields - religion, symbology, history, code-breaking, linguistics - and everything's interrelated and this book is a good example of that. Although actually I thought the little bit of linguistics in it was annoying, like we're supposed to think this guy's a damn genius because he knows the etymologies of a few words, but whatever, it's okay.

But I thought the book sort of deteriorated at the end. Of course there's the cheesy romantic things, like he catches a whiff of her perfume, and he looks at her and sees how beautiful she is. What to even write about that. That's lame but sort of predictable. But the most annoying deterioration of this book is when they're running around London trying to figure out that one clue, and they can't figure out who the person is, and then once they finally figure that out, they can't figure out the word they're looking for, and I knew who it was and the word they wanted THE FIRST TIME I READ THE STUPID POEM and I don't even know anything, and these people are supposed to be big smarty pants. And I can't really figure this out. Maybe Dan Brown's editor was like, "You gotta give the reader a boon here, dude, let them figure it out before the characters do," and Dan Brown was like, "Ha ha, yeah, good idea, that'll add a couple more chapters to my already chapterfluous book."

('Chapterfluous', of course, is stressed on the second syllable, and I just made it up, and I think it's brilliant.)

But anyway, the plot was pretty good, and I read the whole dumb book in three days.

But the beginning of the book was almost too much to bear:

Captain Bezu Fache carried himself like an angry ox, with his wide shoulders thrown back and his chin tucked hard into his chest. His dark hair was slicked back with oil, accentuating an arrow-like widow's peak that divided his jutting brow and preceded him like the prow of a battleship. As he advanced, his dark eyes seemed to scorch the earth before him, radiating a fiery clarity that forecast his reputation for unblinking severity in all matters.

Why would anyone ever write something like that? What is a jutting brow? I'm not saying it isn't good writing, and I'm sure a lot of people loved that paragraph, and while he was writing it Dan Brown was probably thinking, "Yes! Brilliant! Ox! Wonderful! Battleship! Scorching eyes! The imagery! Hooray for me!" and his editor, when he read it, was probably thinking, "Oh, the words just jump off the page like waves pushed aside by the prow of a battleship! Excellent! Movie script, here we come!" and most readers probably think, "This is delicious! This guy is such a good writer! I want to write like this too! I'm going to go start my novel right this second. I will dive into my novel like the prow of a battleship dives into the water when it's first put into the ocean, or something."

And here I am, and I sometimes pretend that I'm a writer, and I can't imagine writing like that. I could never write like that. I hate that. I hate the fluffery, the metaphors, the imagery and crap. But then why do I write, and what is it that I think I write?

There are two different parts of writing. Probably more, but at least two. There's the idea, and there's the words. The Da Vinci Code obviously has the idea. It's an interesting story. And then there are the words that are used to tell the story. And the Da Vinci code has good words, don't think I don't think that. I read the whole dumb thing in three days and could've read it faster if I'd wanted to. It reads well, it's fascinating, it's good. Most people probably think the words are great. So there you have it, the idea and the words, they're all there. Good idea + good words = good book = the Da Vinci Code.

What do I have? It's not like I'm a good storyteller or anything, and that's not why I write. I don't write to tell stories. So then do I write because of the words? No, I don't do that either. I don't delight in the words. I don't carefully pick them out. I don't work at them. I read something that some author said, about how she carefully chooses each word, carefully crafts each sentence. And if I had to do that I wouldn't write. When I write, what I write, it flows, and I hardly even think about it. If I have to think about it, if I have to work at it, the flow has obviously stopped and something's wrong.

If I work at it, if I try to write something, it's invariably complete crap, so there's really no point in trying.

So I don't have the ideas, and I don't have the words. And so consequently I've never finished anything.

Maybe it's just that I'm lazy. Or maybe you'll believe me and you'll believe that there's this flow and I don't really have anything to do with it. It comes, it stops, and one of these days it's going to produce something complete, and until that day I'll just have lots of neat little beginnings, or endings, as the case may be.

And maybe that's happening now, because I have quite a little bit written in my "novel" for National Novel Writing Month so far, and so far things are working themselves out and there are so many more ideas and things that I had no idea about at first, that I hadn't even thought of, and they're coming out now and it's becoming much more interesting than I thought it would be, and it's actually really almost fun to work on, and I might not finish it this month but I'm sure I'll finish it at some point because I kind of want to, or rather I kind of feel like it wants to finish itself.

Anyway, the Da Vinci Code got me thinking about writing and my approach to writing. And obviously I need to work on it because Whisper didn't know I meant 'button', and I could have quite easily made that clearer. Yeah, I knew it wasn't really clear, but I could have easily made it clearer and I didn't because I wanted to enforce my claim to contrariness.

Once in a short story I read some guy had "eyes like broken glass". Why? How?