I will not read Dan Brown’s latest 17 Sep 2009 He’s a pap writer. Nicely chewed and digested screenplays for filming. Nothing deep, nothing that might stretch a reader. Obvious plot turns. So the reviewer at First Post UK suggests some other reading. I add this: I am surprised that the reviewer did not suggest some Umberto Eco novels. I have long thought of Brown as Eco Lite. In particular Foucault’s Pendulum, and of course, Name of the Rose, but even Baudolino shines next to the entire Brown corpus of pap. Philosophy Pop culture
Biology A not terribly good post on the species problem 18 Jul 2019 As a biological phenomenon the species problem is worthy of serious study as an end in itself, and not as a mere corollary to work in some other field. It is, to be sure, a problem so fundamentally important that it touches many such fields. Workers in any one of… Read More
General Science Lucretius and the papal secretary 25 Feb 201927 Feb 2019 In 1417, during the Council of Constance that reunited the Catholic Church in the west, a papal secretary took advantage of the location in Germany to visit some libraries, while the papacy was vacant. He was hunting manuscripts, but not the newly written ones. Instead Gian Francesco Poggio was seeking… Read More
Biology Notes on novelty 3: The meaning of evolutionary novelty 26 Dec 201115 Jan 2012 Notes on Novelty series: 1. Introduction 2. Historical considerations – before and after evolution 3: The meaning of evolutionary novelty 4: Examples – the beetle’s horns and the turtle’s shell 5: Evolutionary radiations and individuation 6: Levels of description 7: Surprise! 8: Conclusion – Post evo-devo Given that novelty plays such a big role in the… Read More
Eco, asked to comment on The Da Vinci Code‘s relationship to Foucault’s Pendulum, replied that Dan Brown was a character from FP, which is perfectly true. I just finished re-reading Neal Stephenson’s Anathem, which is very very Eco. Though the things he does with Platonic metaphysics make me wince.
I love and hate Stephenson in roughly equal measure. On the one hand, he writes about the things I find interesting (and I have all his novels), but then he screws the pooch with his Pythagoreanism and occasional supernaturalism. I wish he wouldn’t. But I’ll read his next novel too…
Heh. I thought that the society in Anathem is what you would get if Pythagoras’ sect of mystic geometers had prospered and become the dominant world religion (except they seem to have dropped the dietary taboo against beans). But the supernaturalism, yeah: the immortal Enoch Root, the mysterious Solomonic gold, and all the reality-bending weirdness at the crisis of Anathem — the stories gallop along so well, a wonderful carnival ride of action and ideas all rooted in a universe we recognize as ours and then Boom! Something completely off-the-wall happens.
I like the inclusion of Rushdie in those slagging off the book, given the turgid prose he is oft praised for. Though he does occasionally write interesting stories.
Foucault’s Pendulum is a bit turgid. I did enjoy it (and the punchline, coming from an academic, is hilarious), but it takes a long time to set the whole thing up.
Dan Brown is crap, at least on the basis of the only novel of his that I’ve ever read The Da Vinci Code. Also on that basis I never want to read another one of his novels. I don’t think that Foucault’s Pendulum is turgid and although I will agree that it is probably not so well written as Name of the Rose I actually prefer it. If you like this sort of thing you will probably like the novels of Lawrence Norfolk, Lemprière’s Dictionary, In the Shape of a Boar and The Pope’s Rhinoceros.
I thought that The Da Vinci Code was readable and even mildly enjoyable, if predictable. Then I read ‘Angels and Demons’, at the recommendation of my brother, which was horrifyingly and offensively terrible.