alrick888
11-09-2009, 08:14 PM
Better brace yourselves my Mason friends.....you'll have a lot of explaining to do!
(it's a pity reading Brown's books is a bit like chewing on gristle or
swimming in tar....)
http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/washington-about-to-be-...
Washingtonians, brace yourselves.
In just six days, residents will awaken to find themselves in a
changed city. One invaded by Founding Fathers scandal, by fictitious
Harvard symbologists, by very short chapters ending in cliffhangers
and exclamation points! One to which the tourists will flock,
brandishing conspiracy theories. We want the real story, they’ll say
to helpless docents at the Smithsonian, perhaps, or the Scottish Rite
Masonic temple. This is the real story, docents will reply. No, the
reeeeal story. Wink wink.
Washington is about to be Dan Browned.
The inciting incident is the release of “The Lost Symbol,” the third
installment of Brown’s mondo-selling adventure zeitgeist, sequel to
“Angels & Demons” and “The Da Vinci Code.” In “Angels,” professor
Robert Langdon races through Rome, saving the city from an explosion
and uncovering religious secrets that rock Christianity to the core.
In “Da Vinci,” he races through Paris and London, solving a mysterious
death and uncovering religious secrets that rock Christianity to the
core.
In “The Lost Symbol,” Langdon will be back again, this time racing
through Washington. What exactly he’ll be doing here is unclear. In
the five-plus years Brown has been researching and writing this novel,
nary an important plot point has leaked.
This much is known: The initial print run of “The Lost Symbol” is 5
million copies, the largest in Random House history, the publisher
claims. Clues found on the novel’s recently released cover, combined
with decoded messages from the “Da Vinci” jacket and elsewhere (”Is
there no help for the widow’s son?”), suggest that Freemason history
will play a central role.
People. Are. Freaking. Out.
(....)
rown might be one of the best-sellingest authors of recent times (81
million copies for “Da Vinci”), but almost everyone agrees that,
literarily, he stinks. The linguist Geoffrey Pullum once described his
writing as “not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly,
almost ingeniously bad,” which might explain why in some circles
people brag about not having read “The Da Vinci Code.”
Still, there is something exuberant about that preposterous prose.
Brown’s books contain everything the human brain thrives on: breakneck
pacing, bite-size didja-knows, looming conspiracies, Scooby-Doo plot
twists. His books are literary crack, or, in PG terms, they are Harry
Potter for grown-ups. His notorious reclusiveness only adds to his
mystique; for every interview he declines and cryptic clue his team
tweets, his persona increasingly resembles the enigmatic characters of
his novels. Like Robert Langdon, the man wears tweed.
But his greatest achievement, arguably, is the outsize impact his
fictitious novels have had on the cities in which they’re set.
When Dan Brown comes to town, things get a little bit nutty.
Just ask Colin Glynne-Percy, director of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, the
rural Scottish church featured in “The Da Vinci Code,” which Langdon
believed to be the location of the Holy Grail.
“Before the book came out, we had about 40,000 visitors a year,”
Glynne-Percy says. “It went to 80,000. Then to 120,000. Then to
175,000. We had very small facilities. We had only two restrooms. We
could survive on that for 40,000 but . . .” They’ve put in temporary
bathrooms and added several new staff members.
(it's a pity reading Brown's books is a bit like chewing on gristle or
swimming in tar....)
http://aftermathnews.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/washington-about-to-be-...
Washingtonians, brace yourselves.
In just six days, residents will awaken to find themselves in a
changed city. One invaded by Founding Fathers scandal, by fictitious
Harvard symbologists, by very short chapters ending in cliffhangers
and exclamation points! One to which the tourists will flock,
brandishing conspiracy theories. We want the real story, they’ll say
to helpless docents at the Smithsonian, perhaps, or the Scottish Rite
Masonic temple. This is the real story, docents will reply. No, the
reeeeal story. Wink wink.
Washington is about to be Dan Browned.
The inciting incident is the release of “The Lost Symbol,” the third
installment of Brown’s mondo-selling adventure zeitgeist, sequel to
“Angels & Demons” and “The Da Vinci Code.” In “Angels,” professor
Robert Langdon races through Rome, saving the city from an explosion
and uncovering religious secrets that rock Christianity to the core.
In “Da Vinci,” he races through Paris and London, solving a mysterious
death and uncovering religious secrets that rock Christianity to the
core.
In “The Lost Symbol,” Langdon will be back again, this time racing
through Washington. What exactly he’ll be doing here is unclear. In
the five-plus years Brown has been researching and writing this novel,
nary an important plot point has leaked.
This much is known: The initial print run of “The Lost Symbol” is 5
million copies, the largest in Random House history, the publisher
claims. Clues found on the novel’s recently released cover, combined
with decoded messages from the “Da Vinci” jacket and elsewhere (”Is
there no help for the widow’s son?”), suggest that Freemason history
will play a central role.
People. Are. Freaking. Out.
(....)
rown might be one of the best-sellingest authors of recent times (81
million copies for “Da Vinci”), but almost everyone agrees that,
literarily, he stinks. The linguist Geoffrey Pullum once described his
writing as “not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily, thoughtlessly,
almost ingeniously bad,” which might explain why in some circles
people brag about not having read “The Da Vinci Code.”
Still, there is something exuberant about that preposterous prose.
Brown’s books contain everything the human brain thrives on: breakneck
pacing, bite-size didja-knows, looming conspiracies, Scooby-Doo plot
twists. His books are literary crack, or, in PG terms, they are Harry
Potter for grown-ups. His notorious reclusiveness only adds to his
mystique; for every interview he declines and cryptic clue his team
tweets, his persona increasingly resembles the enigmatic characters of
his novels. Like Robert Langdon, the man wears tweed.
But his greatest achievement, arguably, is the outsize impact his
fictitious novels have had on the cities in which they’re set.
When Dan Brown comes to town, things get a little bit nutty.
Just ask Colin Glynne-Percy, director of the Rosslyn Chapel Trust, the
rural Scottish church featured in “The Da Vinci Code,” which Langdon
believed to be the location of the Holy Grail.
“Before the book came out, we had about 40,000 visitors a year,”
Glynne-Percy says. “It went to 80,000. Then to 120,000. Then to
175,000. We had very small facilities. We had only two restrooms. We
could survive on that for 40,000 but . . .” They’ve put in temporary
bathrooms and added several new staff members.