After reading Angels & Demons on a whim back in 2007 within the whirlwind (for me) span of a single week, i hadn’t given much thought to Dan Brown’s other works despite having enjoyed the book. I had seen The Da Vinci Code movie and have now seen Angels & Demons as well, but i didn’t actually anticipate wanting to read another Dan Brown book. However, several weeks ago as i was driving to Ankeny for class, i heard an interview with Dan Brown on NPR regarding his latest addition to the Robert Langdon series, The Lost Symbol. I learned that the man wakes up at FOUR every morning and writes seven days a week, 365 days a year (“even on Christmas”). Maybe it’s just the fact that i’m taking a break from nonfiction, i don’t know, but from that moment i felt compelled to actually purchase the new book, hardcover and all, and devour it as quickly as possible. Which is more or less what i did.
Two weeks after purchasing the book, i found myself unenthusiastically getting through the last forty pages of The Lost Symbol. Up until that point it was a regular Dan Brown page-turner; formulaic but entertaining with a nice little twist toward the end that i didn’t see coming. The one thing that really bothered me was the usual heroine scientist’s discussions of her research in the field of Noetic Science which would, once published, prove beyond a doubt that people are more than just flesh and blood. People have souls and can use their mind-power to alter matter outside of the body, and God most definitely exists. I asked myself why that pissed me off, and i decided that if such research was actually published, i would learn about it and grant it whatever it did in fact prove, but at this point i can’t conceive of any science that could do any such thing. The mere idea is a little aggravating.
The last forty pages of The Lost Symbol really drove the metaphysical point home, though. Apparently the thesis of this action-packed work of fiction is that God is within all of us, and our belief in him is what has always unified people and will bring peace to the world (never mind the fact that there are very peaceful people – and whole cultures, in fact – who don’t believe in any god).
My first thought was, okay, whatever, this little fiction book, like many other things, was not created with people like me in mind. Perhaps Dan Brown is trying to smooth the ruffled feathers of believers with this book by emphasizing the importance of religious belief in general and no particular church (especially not the Catholic church) in particular. But, then again, i know a lot of religious people who might be put off by the idea, maniacally pursued by several of the book’s main characters, that God is literally in us; that we people are all gods or can become gods. Not that i think anyone will ban the book from their libraries for that reason, nor that atheists, who are perhaps the latest victims of Brown’s feather-ruffling novels, ought to. I’ve come to realize that there’s nothing Dan Brown could have written about religion or God without rubbing somebody out there the wrong way. And after all, it’s only a novel.
As far as the book goes, i wasn’t as enamored with it as i was with Angels and Demons, partly because i’m not familiar with Washington, D.C., whereas i had enjoyed the memory-lane tour of Rome in the latter book. The Lost Symbol seemed to drag a little at first. Robert Langdon was tricked into solving the puzzles this time, and dragged his feet for half the plot line accordingly. Once things got cooking, it was fun to read. I’d say it’s definitely worth a week of your time, especially if you’re patriotic and have your own particular brand of faith.
Monday, October 5th, 2009 11:44 am • books, religion
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October 5th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
But wait for the paperback?