This Is Vitruvius

The Da Vinci Code is finally out in paperback here and I'm finally reading it. I borrowed the large illustrated edition that I bought my mother for her birthday last year. (I play the long game.) It's not as large or illustrated as Helmut Newton's SUMO, which is so large it comes with its own four-legged stand. Apparently it was printed in The Vatican, the location of the only printworks in the world capable of handling the task with its history of over-sized Bible-making.

It's an odd read. I dig very much the mystery, the small cast of characters, the claustrophobic setting of the main narrative (I'm only 150 pages in, so that might change) and the educational aspect. The illustrations do tend to break the book equivalent of the fourth wall and give your imagination the afternoon off but, for the most part, a classic art philistine like myself gains more than he loses. The comparison of the two versions of Leonardo's Madonna On The Rocks was almost fascinating! Indeed, the art history lessons are the best thing about the book.



The downside to Brown's unwavering eye for detail is that he describes everything methodically, whether it's a salient plot point or not. He's either obsessive compulsive, showing off the depth of his research, intentionally obfuscating which elements of the story will turn out to be relevant or not, or - as I am beginning to suspect - meeting his publisher's word count. I've learned a good lesson for the short story I'm currently writing: there's a thin line between building a believable world using factual information and letting your drama become overshadowed by minutiae.

His choice of writing style - assuming it is a choice - reeks of consideration for beach reading. The chapters are an average of five pages long and seldom fail to recap previous events at their tops. The frequent four- to six-word paragraphs are no more than repeated iconic phrases, really and there are superfluous references to Robert Langdon's previous adventure that add nothing particular to this story. It's so ridiculously easy to read that it's starting to feel like an episode of Monk or Cracker in prose form.

"Messieurs! Ne nous deranger pas sous aucun pretexte." Langdon had hung enough NE PAS DERANGER signs on hotel room doors to catch the gist of the captain's orders. [They] were not to be disturbed under any circumstances.

There then follows a scene where the speaker in the above quote takes umbrage at being interrupted. Good lord! I don't speak French but I recognize "ne pas" as a negative and a quick search of the mental thesaurus throws up "disturbed" as a synonym for "deranged". Brown persists in immediately translating every single bloody French word spoken, even when they're phonetically identical to the English: "Prieuré de Sion" into "Priory of Sion", for example. I get it already! Stop making me feel dumb!

But it's certainly a page turner and I'm quite new to this kind of fiction so I'm willing to be spoon-fed in exchange for the thrill ride. Just like a T.V. whodunnit, there's no way I can quit before I get answers despite the predictable formulaity. Two characters so far have found themselves unintentionally imitating the stance of The Vitruvian Man (pictured above). Since Dan Brown "outed" Da Vinci as homosexual in an early chapter I anticipate a gratuitous sodomy scene before the book is done. You know... just to hammer the point home one more time. (No pun intended.)