DaVinci code

[brigdh]

...Terry Pratchett's new novel makes fun of The DaVinci Code. This is the greatest thing ever. I'm so sick of that book; I can't figure out why thousands of people who do not normally read have chosen it to embrace as the greatest new work of fiction slash astoundingly revealing expose of the Vatican.

Let me tell you a story about me and The DaVinci Code.

In Nevada this summer, we often hung out at a little general store/bar, since it was the nearest place and didn't take forty-five minutes to get to. Since it was often on our way back to our camp, we'd stop there for a few minutes before heading up to make dinner, in order to buy a drink, buy an ice cream bar, use toilets that actually flushed and had sinks with running water, or to see a human face other than the ten we lived with twenty-four hours a day. The place was technically part of a town, but to give you an idea of how small a town it was, I did not realize that it existed until I'd been there for four weeks.

Obviously, in a place that small, everyone knew who we were, and often came up to us with stories about some artifact they'd found, or a story about their grandparents and the local Indians. We got chased home early one day by a thunderstorm (carrying metal shovels and screens on top of a ridge while monsoons sweep in? Not the best idea! Also, we'd parked the van in a gully that was just waiting for a flash flood to come along and strand us in the middle of nowhere), and we ended up at the bar, along with several locals. An older man came and joined us at our table and asked a few questions about we did.

And then proceeded to regal us with a tale of the "DaVinci caches located around here". I do not remember exactly how an Italian man from the Renaissance managed to hide treasure in Eastern Nevada, but it involved pirates. Supposedly, if you knew the right people to ask in town, you could discover untold heaps of gold with special, perhaps magical properties. I think the main reason no one laughed was that we were too surprised to even speak.

Still, the most exciting night was when a guy told me about how he used to rob drug dealers in Las Vegas by threatening to slit their throats.

Comments

[shes-unreal.livejournal.com]

Was he Mormon? Some of them get kooky ideas like that.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hmmm, I don't know. He didn't say anything about religion one way or the other.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

. . . wow. That beats any DaVinci Code story I've ever heard.

I hate that book with the fiery passion of a thousand exploding suns, because it gives scholarship a bad name and is unreadably awful to boot; and because its unaccountable popularity leads to random people thinking that since you're a geek who knows facts about the Renaissance and Catholic history and stuff, you must have loved the book and furthermore it's something they can talk to you about. Which in turn leads to too many otherwise-innocuous social events at which you suddenly turn into a monster, in the manner of Terazuma when touched by a woman, and begin ranting venomously about people who read Holy Blood, Holy Grail and were stupid enough to swallow it.

But it sounds like your guy was possibly engaged in something more fundamental and innocuous. I have a long-held hypothesis that human beings need to have some sort of romance in their lives, and will go to extreme lengths to invent one if none is provided. The idea of "DaVinci caches" fits the bill very neatly: it implies a whole world of shadowy meaning and wonder, lying just below the surface of the dry day-to-day world this guy lives in. If the caches are real, all the adventure in the world is out there waiting, and any day you could stumble into it, like the Pevensies stumbling through the wardrobe into Narnia. If you never do, it's still a good and important thing to know it's there, that your quotidien life is not in fact all there is.

-- Or at least, that would be my interpretation of the evening. And it may just be a sign that I need to get more sleep.

[threewalls]

Which in turn leads to too many otherwise-innocuous social events at which you suddenly turn into a monster, in the manner of Terazuma when touched by a woman, and begin ranting venomously about people who read Holy Blood, Holy Grail and were stupid enough to swallow it.

Word.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

You know, it shouldn't be comforting that others are suffering too, in the same way -- only worse, now that I think about it, because at least I'm not a specialist in medieval Christian theology. And yet, somehow it is.

[threewalls]

I'm not a theology specialist by any means -- my area is more what the heretics were doing to get in trouble than what they believed, and at a point where Christ's family wasn't so much of interest. (I'm also too early for Cathars, though many people want to talk about them, too.)

Is it bad that I think Holy Blood, Holy Grail was at least better written than the Da Vinci Code, even if it's equally fictious?

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Is it bad that I think Holy Blood, Holy Grail was at least better written than the Da Vinci Code, even if it's equally fictitious?

How can it be bad? It is better written. Also, at least one generation more original.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

I haven't read it myself, so I can't say anything about its quality. It's just not the type of book I usually read- I'm not fond of thrillers, or even mysteries, really- and the theories from it I've overheard are uncomfortably reminscent of the sort of stuff I used to make up in high school to annoy my religion teachers. I'm just tired of hearing about it over and over again.

But aw, that's such a nice way of looking at it. I suppose that explains why such stories become so popular, and why people feel so strongly about them.

[threewalls]

I hate the Da Vinci Code. It's the first thing anyone asks me about when I start describing what I study.

Oh, religious heresy in the middle ages. So. The Da Vinci Code, is it all true?

*MC's head bangs desk*

I think it's part of not normally reading that helps them take it on board. If they read more, surely they'd be aware that's it's a piece of badly written crap. It's not even airport novel quality.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ooo, poor you. I sympathize. At least I only get "so, the pyramids were built by aliens, right?" people now and then; as popular as the Da Vinci Code is, you must run into it all the time.

[alkairis.livejournal.com]

I know pretty much nothing about Catholic history etc, so my feelings towards The Da Vinci Code were pretty much, "Ooh, cool idea... did he forget to add a plot to it?" Because there was the idea and no freakin' plot. I don't read fiction in the hopes of finding a cracked out lecture, nope.

But the fact that people believe it is true? Boggles the mind.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ah, I see. I attended Catholic school for fifteen years, so a lot of the theories I've heard from the book remind me of the things I said to piss off my religion teachers when I was an emo teen. And even then, I didn't actually think any of it was true, I just wanted to me annoying.

And I mean, I'm sure it's not bad for a typical thriller novel, I'm just tired of seeing so many people treat it as the next great classic of literature.

[tasuseme.livejournal.com]

Hello there! This is off-topic, but I wanted to let you know that I was moving my account from tasuseme over to conch_fritter. I'd be very excited if you'd add me to the flist over there. You can take this one down if you'd like - it'll probably get deleted in the near future. Thanks bunches!!

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Done! As you probably already noticed, heh.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

It is that bad for a typical thriller novel. It is astonishingly, stop-and-gape-at-the-traffic-accident bad. You wouldn't believe.

I had it pushed on me by my mother, who in classic fashion had decided I would love it because it was full of scholarship about a period I was interested in. Little did she know, poor woman. If it had been anyone else, I'd have given it up within a chapter, but as it was, I had little choice but to read the whole horrid thing. Which is how I know: as you can see, I'm embarrassed to know at all.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Poor you! For years, from the end of grade school and all through high school, one of my older neighbors kept trying to convince me to read the 'Left Behind' series. I read, I didn't I? My family is Catholic, isn't it? Obviously there could not be a better source of entertainment.

But I managed to put her off by continually promising to get around to it sometime soon, so at least I never had to read the things.

Also: hee! Your icon.

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

And a good thing, too. Way to make your head explode.

I actually tried to read the first one ages ago -- I have this notion that I should pay attention to the major cultural artifacts of scary American subcultures with political agendas, and on top of that, I thought I could probably enjoy a sleazy romp through a post-Rapture dystopia. After all, I like bizarre theological thrillers, under the right circumstances.

But it was unreadable. The problem wasn't the politics and the theological howlers; it was the astonishing awfulness of the writing. It was worse even than The DaVinci Code -- and trust me, that's hard to do.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I've heard stories of the horror. There was an article going around about a year ago about that very fact- the quality of the writing- which quoted enough from the books to let me get an idea of it.

I was amazed. I mean, you'd think if the things were that popular, they had to have some redeeming quality. But apparently not.