Disclaimer: if you enjoyed any of Dan Brown’s books, you will likely be offended and/or have your feelings hurt by the content of this post. Please don’t read it. Click this link –> link <– and post a comment in defense of DB. Thanks.
I’ve never read Dan Brown’s writing. My wife and I listened to The Da Vinci Code in the car driving from Tulsa to Houston, and we saw the movie, which we liked. So, outside of some excerpts I’ve run across, I’ve not read anything he’s written. I don’t plan to, either, mainly because I didn’t really find the Da Vinci Code stimulating.
This evening I caught this article on the Telegraph website (h/t Christ and Pop Culture) which is a list of 20 really bad sentences in Brown’s books. I thought the list was entertaining, and for a few of them it’s hard to believe they’re really in published books. They are simple and blatant literary mistakes, not the kind of rules that “masters” break. These are sentences that I would be embarrassed to find in my own writing.
Judging from this selection, it’s tough to call Dan Brown a “writer”, unless we’re willing to reduce that to anyone who has successfully published a book. I sincerely hope we can be more selective than that. Right now it looks like he’s just a guy who sold a bunch of books by passing a series of lies off as the truth, kind of like James Frey. Except Frey is that and a writer. Anyway, it shouldn’t matter to him or his fans…they have the books (and there will be more), and he has their money. Everyone should be happy.
As usual, the comments were more interesting than the article itself. And as usual, I’m left to wonder if many of them actually read what they’re commenting on. There are only a few rebuttals, made in various forms, here’s what I could find:
- “You’re just jealous because you couldn’t get your book published.” This one was by far the most common. Some of them were angry, some were feigning pity.
- “You’re just being picky. He can’t be that bad, he’s sold so many books.”
- “He writes what people want. Your snobbery is blocking you from seeing the good in regular things.”
- “You ignored the ‘important’ parts of his writing, because you just want to criticize.”
- “Maybe a poor writer, but at least his books are enjoyable.. better than being a great writer with nothing interesting to say like Dostoyevsky.” I couldn’t not post that one. Though, having not read Dostoyevsky, my understanding of whether or not he’s “interesting” could be way off.
There might be others, but these few are repeated so often that they are pretty representative. To be fair, there are quite a few that understand where the article is coming from, and understand the difference between Dan Brown and an actual writer. But they are few and far between, and the board is dominated by people who a) clearly didn’t understand that the article was not about the quality of the plot, energy, or pace (keywords that a commenter used to defend Brown), but about the quality of the writing, and b) are the kind of people who take pride in being common.
Dan Brown writes books that are exciting if you get into them. And he writes books that display a common (which is to say average) command of English. The majority of his readers have a similar command of language, and so don’t notice. Not only that, but, as another commenter mentioned, he writes books that make regular people feel smart (without actually teaching them anything). He’s succeeding in tapping into the wallets of American mediocrity.
Based on reviews, he doesn’t seem to care much about the craft, or even the language. It seems like he churns out whatever thought is in his head, in whatever form it comes to him. That’s usually a bad idea, but it doesn’t bother Brown. And it doesn’t bother the people who have made him a bestselling author. Unlike most readers, they care little for the syntactical quality of the words they consume, or for the literary quality. Those things just aren’t important, as long as you have a good chase scene and some sexual tension. It seems like a win-win.
So, I’ve decided to call Brown an “author”, rather than a writer. That should make everybody happy.
My literary snobbery is hanging thick in the air right now, isn’t it?
Mr. Poet
I checked out that article about the 20 things, but I did not comment. I chalked it up to editing error, on the part of the author and the editor. However, it could be the case that Brown writes so poorly, the editor(s) simply could not revise the manuscript enough to catch all of Brown’s errors.
More from authorCharles
I came to your latter conclusion.
Ken
Where do you weigh in on Stephen King? The same arguments were made of King, many opining that he could publish his grocery list and it would still get read.
I do think that Stephen King matured as a writer and achieved a colloquial style that made him very readable. I liken Stephen King to Mark Twain, hoping that King will be remembered fondly by future English classes as an example of late 20th Century American literature.
I can’t say the same of Dan Brown. Having read all three of his Robert Langdon series and attempted reading “Digital Fortress”, I truly hope he goes quietly into literatures’ annals as yet another author popular with the masses for no discernible reason.
More from authorCharles
I haven’t read King, either, though I may in the future. One of the keys that you hit on is that King became a better writer over time. It’s a sad commentary on the author and his readers if “good enough” is good enough. What I mean by that is that if his first novel was a good story but poor writing, he should aim to become a better writer while writing the second, and even better for the third. But Brown is aiming for something good enough to sell books. There’s no interest in writing well for its own sake.
I aspire to be a writer, and I don’t intend to stop working on the craft when I’m first published, just as I didn’t stop working on the design craft when I was first hired as designer.
When you do something poorly, learn to do it well. When you do something well, learn to do it better.
Alison
My observation is that quality is going by the wayside in most areas of civilization. And conspiracy theorists are the worst. The body has lost all connection to the head!
SLKeeth
I was teaching my class about cultural myths (those underlying archetypes in books & movies) and Dan Brown came up. The problem is, Brown doesn’t leave any room for archetypes, because everything in his books is overt. It’s all spelled out for you, the non-careful, non-critical reader, just in case you don’t understand the concept of subtext.
King writes some purple prose, to be sure, but he is a mythmaker of… well, mythic proportions. He’s not Faulkner, but he’s a darn sight better than Brown. That’s my two cents.
[Added the link because I had no idea what "purple prose" is. -- Charles]
More from authorAnna
The books are enjoyable and exciting to me. I have taken notice of his simplistic, sometimes way way too spelled out, writing. In the end though, they’re just fun to read. If I want to read something thought provoking, or amazingly written, or something that makes me smarter, then I’ll go find someone else for that. I don’t believe everything I read has to meet these criteria. Sometimes after reading enough of that junk, I just want to read something easy and fun with a page turning plot. I think he’s good at what he does. He’s good at telling stories, and that’s worth something. I’ve read plenty of stuff from people who were good at writing, but just plain bad at telling a story in an interesting way.
I do think it’s pretty snobby though to act like only mediocre readers buy or enjoy his books. Maybe only medicore american readers are the ones to proclaim it’s the “BEST BOOK EVER!!!!!”. Actually scratch that. I would be thrilled to know the mediocre americans are reading anything at all at this point.
Charles
The approach you describe to reading is the approach I take to movies. I enjoyed Transformers 2, even though it was by most accounts a flaming, shape-shifting, load of prepubescent hormones exploding for 150 minutes. It was fun, though.
That being said, while I find movies with telegraphed plots and simplistic “twists” entertaining when the points of humor are unexpected and effective, I don’t have the same criteria for books. If I’m going to read something, even a comic book, I expect it to be well-written and thought out. Writing doesn’t have to be simplistic to be easy and fun. The Hobbit, The Bourne Identity, Pride and Prejudice … all fall into the “easy and fun” category, yet none are simplistic.
I, too, would be thrilled to know that the “mediocre” Americans are reading at all, and any achievement to that end is a success. But I would hope that after they read one thing, both they and the author would aim a little higher next time.