Re: some spoilers: language and THE DAVINCI CODE

This is irresistable:

"He laid down on the bed."  Then sat and waited for it to hatch. ;)

It's not every day that that happpens. ;)

Wesley Parish

On Wed, 04 Jun 2003 09:49, you wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>
>
> > SC> To take an example from the literary world: what makes a good novel,
>
> or a
>
> > SC> good narrative style, seems to differ vastly depending on readership
>
> and
>
> > SC> genre.
> >
> > No kidding. :)
> >
> > SC> I'm reading The DaVinci Code.  I was told that this was an
> > SC> intellectual novel, beautifully written, so of course I had
>
> expectations for
>
> > SC> it that put it in a league with Eco's The Name of the Rose,  a novel
>
> that
>
> > SC> conbines elegance of writing with elegance of story and pacing and
>
> suspense.
>
> > High expectations indeed . . .
> >
> > SC> Clearly, Brown has had to violate the nature of her character and her
> > SC> upbringing in order to make her the "straight man," the person to
> > whom
>
> the
>
> > SC> expert explains things for the benefit of the uneducated readership.
> >
> > So she becomes the reader's proxy for expository purposes.
> > A cryptographer saying "like anagrams" . . . that just boggles my
> > mind.  Might as well have an aerospace engineer saying like "Flying.
> > That's like what birds do, right?"
>
> Ha ha ha!!
>
> > Admittedly, exposition is darn tricky,
>
> It is.
>
> > especially if the entire setting
> > of a story (be it historical, other-contemporary-cultural, science
> > fiction, fantasy, whatever) is unfamiliar to the reader but is not
> > the main point of the novel.  One of the reasons Buck Rogers (here
> > I'm thinking of the old comics, not Gil Gerard) worked so well was
> > because we as readers were first exposed to this unfamiliar future
> > world through the eyes of a 20th-century man who was also unfamiliar
> > with it, and who was surrounded by people who knew he was unfamiliar
> > with it.  So when they took the time to explain something to him,
> > it felt natural.  So the reader's-proxy technique can work,
> > but not when you have to violate a character and present her as
> > woefully ignorant of her supposed speciality.  (Imagine Dr. Huer
> > taking the time to explain to Wilma Deering how environmental
> > controls worked . . .)
> > Another tack is to introduce a character who feels a psychotic
> > necessity to explain things constantly to everyone around them
> > even when such explanation is logically unnecessary; I call such
> > characters "exposition fairies".  As much as I enjoy Heinlein,
> > for instance, it seems as though every one of his characters suffers
> > from this illness. :)
>
> You really should read The Turkey City Lexicon.  It's on-line; you can
> google it.
>
> > SC> there is the abhominable, and unforgiveable lie/lay mistake committed
>
> in the
>
> > SC> first eighth of the book.  "He laid down on the bed."  "It had lay in
>
> the
>
> > SC> street."
> >
> > Prescriptivity!!  Shame on you! :)
>
> Where the text is supposed to deal with intelligent, well-spoken people, I
> expect the writer to follow certain prescriptive rules, and his editor to
> know enough to help him out!!  The lie/lay mistake really steams me,
> because it sounds, IMHO, so sophomoric and "common."  If you're going to be
> employing educated articulate people as your protagonists, at least master
> this old rule.    In a few years, "lie" and "lay" will have collapsed into
> one another, but we Knights Templar can try to stave off that inevitability
> as long as we humanly can!!!
>
> > But "it had lay" is not a case of "the lie/lay mistake" (using "to
> > lay" for "to lie"), since "lay" is not the past particple of either
> > verb.  For "it had lain", I would not be surprised to see either "it
> > had lied" or "it had laid", but I've never seen "it had lay" before.
>
> I was shocked.  I'll try to find the page number.  I didn't mark the book.
>
> > SC> My scientist friend can't tell the difference between the quality
> > SC> in writing between this book and Eco's.  I teach creative writing,
> > SC> and yet I can't explain to him over dinner what feels like literary
> > SC> writing and what feels like genre writing,
> >
> > What is "genre writing"?  Can writing not be both literary and within
> > a more specific genre simultaneously?
>
> Well exactly.  Actually I don't like using the term "genre" writing,
> because it has a pejorative connotation.  What critics and teachers of
> "literary" fiction don't understand is that literary fiction can be divided
> up in to "genres" as well.  And yet they continually use the word "genre"
> to mean "science fiction," "thrillers," "mysteries," "horror," or what have
> you. The word "commercial fiction" has also been pejorated, and yet people
> teach Dickens and Shakespeare as "high art."  Margaret Atwood is a fine
> writer. Is she vitiated because she's also a commercial writer?  And then
> the word "mainstream" is too often misused.  People think that mainstream
> is without genre, or that mainstream is not commercial, or that mainstream
> is the opposite of horror/sf/fantasy/thriller/mystery... i.e., "reality"
> fiction. Wrong.  Every genre has its mainstream, including "literary".  In
> a nutshell, there are no terms that are effective.
>
> > Genre admittedly tends to override quality, in many media.  As you
> > might have guessed, I'm something of a science fiction fan, and
> > one of the things that annoys me is that even the best dramatic SF
> > on television pales in comparision to the non-SF dramas, but SF
> > fans can't seem to tell.  I mean, the writing and acting and
> > general believability on "Babylon 5" were so much worse than their
> > contemporary analogues over on, say, "ER", but because B5 was
> > nevertheless so much better than anything else within the genre at that
> > time, everyone hailed it as a masterpiece.  The blinders were locked
> > firmly in place.
>
> I'm an SF fiction and fantasy fan myself, and the written fiction for the
> most part far exceeds television and film SF in quality.  For one thing,
> there's so much more of it--and its various genres can expand to include a
> lot that's avant garde and experimental.  Film seems more conservative.
>
> > Similarly, to this day I don't understand all the fuss over "The
> > Matrix".  Great visual effects, impressive action sequences,
> > laughably silly premise, passable acting and writing - enjoyable,
> > but hardly "the thinking person's science fiction movie", as I
> > heard it touted repeatedly.
>
> Hmmm.  I think this is going to raise some debate!  There is a mystical
> quality to the Matrix, with its clues, its codes, its allegories, its race
> to find secrets, that remind me a bit of The DaVinci Code.  But I was
> disappointed with the second part of the Matrix trilogy.  Cool orgy,
> though!
>
> > SC> and what the cues are that make for "hack" writing.
> >
> > "It was a dark and stormy night" comes to mind . . . :)
>
> "As you know, Bob, a cryptographer is sort of like one who can solve the
> Jumble in the Newspaper."
>
> Really, it's the sacrifice of character depiction that got me the most, but
> also the "convenient" stupidity of people who shouldn't be stupid as the
> plot turns.  If say too much more, I'll destroy the suspense for other
> people who may be reading this book or about to read it.  So, some very
> minor SPOILERS (gloss over):
> V
> V
> V
> V
> V
> V
> V
> V
> V
> V
> V
> V
>
> Early on in the book, though, and this may be well known to some people,
> it's stated that Leonard da Vinci commonly wrote things backwards.  At a
> crucial point in the plot, our Harvard expert in "symbology" and
> code-breaking, and the one who divulged this well-known secret of Da
> Vinci's to the "straightman," is completely flummoxed by something that is
> clearly backwards writing in English.  It looks "semitic," he says,
> incredibly.  Has he never seen Arabic or Hebrew writing before, such that
> he would confuse that with these?  A Harvard professor, presumably versed
> in language and writing systems!  This is where verisimilitude breaks down.
>  The delay is meant to create suspense in the reader, but at the EXpense of
> the
> characters' believability.  The characters are alternately and conveniently
> intelligent and stupid in ways that don't convince.
> V
> V
> More spoilers:
> V
> V
> V
> V
> V
> V
> Ultimately, I found The DaVinci Code to be a novelization of Holy Blood,
> Holy Grail, a book I read with boisterous enthusiasm back in the early
> eighties.  DVC a fast-paced read, and it definitely gets better as it goes
> along, but it banks on your not knowing anything about the gnostic gospels,
> the Merovingians, the Knights Templar, and so forth, for its major impact.
> And it has to make one of the characters who should know the MOST about
> these things given her upbringing woefully ignorant, such that a dashing
> American protagonist can explain it all to her.  Well, maybe that's taken
> care of by certain aspects of the plot.  Read it and tell me what you
> think... off-line.
>
> Sally Caves
> scaves@frontiernet.net
> Eskkoat ol ai sendran, rohsan nuehra celyil takrem bomai nakuo.
> "My shadow follows me, putting strange, new roses into the world."
--
Mau e ki, "He aha te mea nui?"
You ask, "What is the most important thing?"
Maku e ki, "He tangata, he tangata, he tangata."
I reply, "It is people, it is people, it is people."