Dan Expletive Brown

[SimonBrooke]

OK, Literotica is not exactly the home of fine writing. But even by Literotica's standards Dan Brown is at best poor. His characters are not so much cardboard as tissue paper - not merely two dimensional but thin. The plots - I'd like to make some comments about Mr Brown's plots, but I'm afraid I can't. He doesn't have any. He wouldn't know a plot if fell on him out of a tree.

In the Da Vinci Code, you have a group comprising a cryptanalyst, a professor of religious iconography, and a specialist historian who can't recognise plain English mirror writing, and who, when standing by the tomb of a man about whom exactly one story is known to every schoolchild in the western world (see paragraph above), and with a very explicit clue in hand, take half an hour to remember that story.

D'oh!

The book is full of detail, yes - but the detail is all wrong. All shoddy. In Dan Brown's world the Metropolitan Police carry guns, and Roslin Chapel is on a moor. And I simply do not need to know whether a Hawker 731 executive jet has twin Garrett TFE-731 engines. It does not help the story in any way at all.

This is literature for the illiterate, puzzles for the permanently puzzled, brain-candy for the brainless. And now this McGonagall of the narrative art - this Eddie the Eagle of exposition - writes another steaming pile of pulp-mill fodder, some buffoon publishes it, and they get nine yards of free publicity in every media outlet known to man.

Hey! Wake up! Smell the shit!

I am not going to say I flatter myself I'm better than him. I am better than him. It-s no flattery - that dead smoked fish on my breakfast plate is a better fucking novelist than him. So how come he gets published and I can't?

 

[Lauren Hynde]

Because you're wasting time reading Dan Brown and he's not.

 

[Epmd607]

'Better than Dan Brown' is nonsensical. What does it look like to be 'better than Dan Brown'? According to your unflattering argument Dan Brown is rubbish and you're at least a little better than rubbish, so why won't anyone publish you? If you could actually write you'd be self-publishing novels, selling and promoting them easily on this Internet thing. There are too many crybabies about art, not enough people doing art.

 

[furryfan]

Because you're wasting time reading Dan Brown and he's not.

* Coffee out the nose and all over keyboard *

Actually, that's correct. I don't understand how a whole lot of things get popular - the allure of what passes for entertainment on television these days totally escapes me - but there isn't a whole lot I can do about it. Best to work on improving ourselves instead of wasting time and energy tearing down others.

 

[ishtat]

???

Who is Dan Brown and does it matter that I don't mind not knowing?

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Writing is filled with great mysteries.

I mentioned William Styron before, but in his novel SOPHIE'S CHOICE the protagonist is a very junior editor at a prestigious NYC publishing house. In the story a manuscript comes to the publisher, the junior editor reads & rejects it, and it makes the rounds. But soon enough another editor buys it and it becomes a NYT best seller for almost a year. The first publisher is apoplectic and fires the junior editor.

Publishers and editors dont know quality. What they know is they rejected a book another made a fortune from, and then buy every copy-cat manuscript for the next 2 years until the warehouse is filled with remainders.

 

[ms.read]

JBJ I think you may have a point there.

 

[SimonBrooke]

Because you're wasting time reading Dan Brown and he's not.

<swoons>

Lauren has deigned to notice me. My life is complete.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

JBJ I think you may have a point there.

I'm told this is pretty much how it is these days. NYC is under the control of 20-something junior editors who network and buy copycats of whats hot. And none of them know shit about good writing or bad writing.

This is how it is with most things. I think it was Jack Welch who said, DONT BE FIRST, BE 2ND. Let the other guy run the risk.

 

[Boota]

It doesn't matter in the slightest who is better. Brown sells a shitload of books, which means critics aside, there are a lot of people who want to read his work and they enjoy it. To me, that is the be all, end all of the argument.

 

[vrosej10]

It doesn't matter in the slightest who is better. Brown sells a shitload of books, which means critics aside, there are a lot of people who want to read his work and they enjoy it. To me, that is the be all, end all of the argument.

Commercial, appealing to the lowest common demonenator (sic I think) is what sells unfortunately. I am not a fan. Even the movie sucked. But the man can shift a book and in writing, that's what you gotta do.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

It doesn't matter in the slightest who is better. Brown sells a shitload of books, which means critics aside, there are a lot of people who want to read his work and they enjoy it. To me, that is the be all, end all of the argument.

So says Rod McKuen.

 

[rgraham666]

It doesn't matter in the slightest who is better. Brown sells a shitload of books, which means critics aside, there are a lot of people who want to read his work and they enjoy it. To me, that is the be all, end all of the argument.

This.

 

[impressive]

I often use excerpts from Dan Brown's books when demonstrating how NOT to write.

 

[vrosej10]

I often use excerpts from Dan Brown's books when demonstrating how NOT to write.

My uni does too.

 

[Bianca_Sommerland]

What I found interesting was the article (might look it up later if I have the time) about the two classic novels that were used to test the submission prossess and were rejected umpteen times. Most famous writers are there, not because they won the luck of the draw, but because they worked their asses off until they made it. Some great authors self-published. The way I see it is if you want it, go for it, by whatever means necissary.

I could sit here and complain about Meyer, she makes Brown look elite IMO. There's no point. Good or not she's laughing her way to the bank no matter what the critics say. Resenting the lotery winner won't make you rich. I say find another way to the cash.

 

[ishtat]

Publishers and editors dont know quality. What they know is they rejected a book another made a fortune from, and then buy every copy-cat manuscript for the next 2 years until the warehouse is filled with remainders.

TS Eliot at Fabers rejected George Orwell's "Animal Farm" but he made huge efforts to publish Robert Graves "The White Goddess" a remarkable though much less popular book despite the fact that Graves had rubbished his(Eliot's) poetry for 20 years.

Eliot has generally been reckoned an exceptional critic as well as a poet but this comparasion showed he couldn't pick the winner.

 

[Liar]

OK, Literotica is not exactly the home of fine writing.

Hey now.

 

[3113]

So how come he gets published and I can't?

What have you tried to get published? And in answer to your question: blockbuster movies have tissue paper characters, lots of action and nonsense plots. Why shouldn't Dan Brown novels be popular? In the end, however, you're inferring that the publishing world's purpose is to uphold good storytelling. Even in the days when there was no internet, television and movies to give readers bad ideas of storytelling, publishing didn't do that, or haven't you ever heard of Mrs. Radcliffe? Author of cheap gothic horror novels who was the Melanie Meyers of her day--hugely popular and dreadful. A contemporary of Jane Austen who makes fun of her in Northhanger Abbey.

Yet then as now, she was a best selling author. That didn't exclude Jane Austen from popularity or Charles Dickens for that matter. There are good authors who get popular too, sometimes.

The point is, very few readers have good reading comprehension. What they get from what they read is very different than what is on the page. Reading is not easy for most people, nor are complicated stories that that require thinking. The big portion of the bell curve wants junk food spoon fed to them, because anything else is too hard to swallow. They want cut out characters that they can paste themselves into, not complex characters that are 3-demensional and move around on their own. Such books give them this. And have always been best sellers, and have always, therefore, been cash cows that allow publishing to make money, so they can put out good books that don't sell as well.

So before you disrespect them, remember that if you do get published, it's possible that Dan Brown made that happen because the publisher would be out of business without him.

Finally, in regards to Dan Brown himself, the question of why any book hits the zeitgeist is often a mystery. As much as why any one fashion becomes hugely popular over another. Secret codes and adventures were big sellers when Dan Brown appeared, then Harry Potter and kid magicians were big business, now they've all been replaced with Vampires (don't be so sure that this Dan Brown new novel will do as well as Da Vinci did--he might be passé). If you examine it, sometimes you can figure it out why something is popular when it's popular or at all. Dan Brown's popularity is actually fairly easy. You pointed it out yourself. The puzzles are simple, yet the experts in the book find them hard. This means that the readers, no matter how stupid, figure them out before the supposedly smart people in the book ("It's mirror writing!" thinks the reader). This makes the stupid readers feel that they are smarter than the smart people. Which makes them keep reading the book, because it makes them feel smart.

Why would they read a book that makes them feel stupider and stupider with every page?

 

[voluptuary_manque]

Fiction is entertainment, that's all. It can be high grade entertainment or it can be rubbish because there is a market for each. More money was made in the lower East Side musical theaters than ever crossed the boards at the Old Globe. Ninety per cent of life is marketing, an old cartoon once said. I believe it. Hie thee to a marketynge consultante, sirrah!

 

[R. Richard]

Is it just possible that the tissue paper thin, two dimensional characters allow a reader to create his/her/its own three dimensional, personalized, fleshed out characters, while the rich, deep characterizations, that are so often cited, bind the reader into the author's concept of life?

I prefer to live my own life, not a life that someone else wants me to live. I know not what course others may choose, but as for me, give me liberty or give me head! Better yet, give me liberty AND give me head

 

[Jenny_Jackson]

Okay, so everyone seems to agree that Dan Brown can't write worth a shit. But I pose the question - Who here also has two million plus sellers with one made into a movie?

Do you really think he cares how badly he writes as long as the $$$ is rolling in?

 

[Epmd607]

Dan Brown must care what people think of his credibility as an artist, he fought like hell trying to prove Da Vinci Code was based on fact. Which is incredibly embarrassing. If you remember when the book first got super popular people really believed it was based on truth, like they were gonna read some book and find out new factual information about the life of Jesus and the Church.

I read that book just because it was so popular, every other chapter anyway. If you haven't read the book and you're slagging it off you're a ridiculous person. I read it and I can say it's garbage, but I doubt most people that call it trash have even read it. That's just the sort of world the amateur artist lives in -- everything that's successful/popular/makes money has little or no artistic merit. The same people who would die on the cross for Chuck Palahniuk and thomas pynchon ten years ago.

How easy is it starting a thread about Dan Brown Or J Grisham or any of those supermarket guys, start one about William Gibson's popularity in the face of his inability to tell a coherent story.

 

[R. Richard]

Do you really think he cares how badly he writes as long as the $$$ is rolling in?

Now Jenny, I bet that he cries all the way to the bank.

 

[Stella_Omega]

I think a big part of his popularity is because he doesn't hurt his readers' feelings by making his characters any better-learned than they are.

Most of the people who raved to me about DVC were SO excited to learn about Da Vinci's mirror writing, for instance. They had never heard about it, and it doesn't occur to them that Langdon should have known about it.
I have not read the books, so I can't say much about the quality of the writing

But the worst thing is that he presented completely fictional things as historic fact.

start one about William Gibson's popularity in the face of his inability to tell a coherent story.

But I looove Gibson! It's all in the details with him, the stories are just a framework for this collage of impressions..