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Title

Struggling through the Lost Symbol

Description

It was the start of the long week between Christmas and New Year's Eve and it was time to start a new book. A quick scan of the book shelf revealed many interesting candidates, but most of those were a bit more challenging than a week of this kind warranted. But look who's hiding on one of the shelves: good ol' Dan Brown. This copy of <i>The Lost Symbol</i> had been obtained from the local Salvation Army secondhand shop for only a couple of bucks. I'd gotten Brown's two other books in the same way, but had to settle for translations in German. Those were pretty fun and I admit I kind of enjoyed the stories, even when they got kind of crazy. It's what escapist entertainment is for, no? Now it was time to try Mr. Brown "in his own words", as it were. So, let's crack the book and get started; it should be a quick read: readers with far less nimble minds than mine<fn> have torn through Brown books in a weekend, so it should be an exciting romp. <bq><i>The secret is how to die.</i> Since the beginning of time, the secret had always been how to die. The thirty-four-year-old inititate gazed down at the human skull cradled in his palms. The skull was hollow, like a bowl, filled with bloodred wine.</bq> Wait, <iq>like a bowl</iq>? That's it? You added three extra words and two commas to explicate with that scintillating simile? Of course it's like a bowl; you just said it was a hollow skull. And why does it matter <i>exactly</i> how old the initiate is? Maybe eventually it will matter, but do we really need to know that detail in one of the first sentences in the book? And <i>bloodred</i> is not a word. It looks stupid like that. Yeesh. That's only the first few sentences. This isn't nearly as relaxing as anticipated and now I'm beginning to see that a tendency to lexical analysis is going to prove to be an impediment when reading Mr. Brown. Let us, despite misgivings, press on. We don't feel like getting up for a return trip to the book shelf. <bq>Outside the main entrance, two <b>seventeen-ton</b> sphinxes guarded the bronze doors. (Emphasis added)</bq> I'm not going to be shipping them across the country, Dan, I don't need to know <i>exactly</i> how heavy they are. <bq>This room was a perfect square. And cavernous.</bq> That those two "sentences"<fn>---right at the beginning of the book---survived what had to have been a relatively rigorous editing process says quite a bit about the state of the publishing industry. Did anyone really edit this thing? Anyone beside Mr. Brown's children, who clearly helped with the plot and much of the dialogue? This feels like <i>The Phantom Menace</i> all over again. <bq>The ceiling soared an astonishing one hundred feet overhead [where else would a ceiling be? -ed.], supported by monolithic columns of green granite. A tiered gallery of dark Russian walnut seats [Are these "dark, Russian, walnut seats" or "dark, Russian-walnut seats" or what? -ed.] with hand-tooled pigskin encircled the room. A thirty-three-foot-tall throne dominated the western wall, with a concealed pipe organ opposite it. The walls were a kaleidoscope of ancient symbols...Egyptian, Hebraic, astronomical, alchemical, and others yet unknown.</bq> Oooh. A surfeit of nearly incomprehensible detail culminating in an "everything but the kitchen" sink approach to indicating just how <i>mysterious</i> and <i>ancient</i> and <i>in-fucking-effable</i> the symbols were. What are "alchemical" symbols? Or "astronomical" ones? Were there cosmological equations on the wall? Why not mention that the long-sought TOE or GUT was on the wall somewhere in a language nearly lost to the mists of time?<fn> Still, pretty impressive room, no? Thirty-three-foot-tall throne and all, with a pipe organ, symbols every-fucking-where and probably a to-scale orrery of the inner Solar System that went unmentioned due to its comparative mundanity. Mr. Brown throws in an <iq>expansive oculus [round window. -ed.] in the ceiling that [illuminates] the room's most startling feature</iq>. Whoa, there's more? Isn't the throne enough? Wouldn't that just blow you away? Nope, that's nothing compared to the <iq>enormous altar [what -- couldn't you find out its exact weight? -ed.] hewn from a solid block of Belgian black marble [Well, at least he managed to find out where it's <i>from</i>. -ed.]...</iq> Steady as she goes; perhaps one can get accustomed to the superlative, hyperbolic style laced with near-autistic levels of detail. <bq>The initiate let his gaze climb the distinguished white-robed figure standing before him. <i>The Supreme Worshipful Master.</i></bq> Aw, hell no. First off, do we have to subside into the passive voice so often and unflinchingly and seemingly without complaint? <i>Letting your gaze climb</i> someone is a form much more appropriate for bodice-rippers than novels about ancient mysteries. But maybe I'm assuming too little about the direction this encounter is going to take. So, does this master earn his name? You bet your ass he does: <bq>The man, in his late fifties, was an American icon, well loved [sic]<fn>, robust, and incalculably wealthy. His once-dark hair was turning silver, and his famous visage reflected a lifetime of power and vigorous intellect.</bq> We get it. We got it just from the name. He's better in every way than you and I could ever hope to be. If you've ever gone S.C.U.B.A diving, he's a solo cave-diver; if you wrote an article, he's written dozens of books; his mastery of the arts of love are legendary and puts yours in the shade. He's the bestest in every way, like James Bond, squared. And WTF is a vigorous intellect? Is it the kind you better damned well not possess in order to get more than four pages into a Dan Brown novel without poking yourself in the eye in self-defense? Stop being such an ass and just read the book. Fine. It's only the prologue, so finish up the remaining paragraphs---which are chock-full of foreshadowing designed to "hook" you for the remaining 500 pages<fn>---and get to chapter one. <bq>The Otis elevator climbing the south pillar of the Eiffel Tower [...]</bq> Why do I care <i>which company</i> made the elevator? Oh, to hell with it. <hr> <ft>Don't care. It's true.</ft> <ft>The first is a sentence, albeit a very simple one. The second is two words followed by a full stop masquerading as a sentence to unenlightened readers.</ft> <ft>Save for the last two members of identical septuplet sisters who speak this ancient language, but who have never met due to the fastidious machinations of a cabal who are <i>like</i> the Illuminati, but way more mysterious and in-fucking-effable. Oh, and the sisters are totally hot and have had white hair from birth and wicked gray eyes, so you might think that they kind of look like the two zombie guys from the second Matrix flick, which they kind of do, I guess, but they're way, way, way hotter. Trust me. Smokin'.</ft> <ft>The attitude toward hyphens is pretty scattershot throughout.</ft> <ft>Which are, by the way, divided into 133 chapters. Really? Is that to help you feel like you're making your way through the book more quickly? Are the chapters little rewards for faithful readers?</ft>