"And now that THE LOST SYMBOL is out, I'd like to make a personal plea that literary bookish types abstain from the whole "I'm so above his writing but okay the books are kind of fun to read" attitude. People! They're entertainment. It's okay to like them without apologizing. Or don't like them. Whatever. Just don't be too cool for school. It's not like I watch The Bachelor in the hopes of finding deep meaning and spiritual enlightenment!! That's just a bonus."
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Dan Brown: deep meaning and spiritual enlightenment
From literary agent Nathan Bransford's blog:
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3 comments:
Ha Ha Ha!
At the risk of being Too Serious, there may be something to taking a particular position of intellectual snobbery re: Dan Brown , as opposed to taking a similar position on, say, Harry Potter or the pulpy spy novels I used to read or whatever one's pop-reading thing may be ('cause that would just be douchey).
I say so because I (and many people in the field who have more letters after their name than I do) have met too many people who confuse Brown's books with real history--as opposed to what they (I imagine, never having read him) meant to be: exciting thriller novels with a "what if?" twist. There's NOTHING wrong with reading them for that reason, but if you--like sooo many people I've met/listened to/read, think you're getting at some Hidden Truth (TM) because of these things, there's something to be said for getting a bit of distance from that....
I agree a lot of people take the books too seriously, but then I think those are the same people who see conspiracy theories everywhere, and if they're not believing Dan Brown, they're believing someone else.
I haven't read the books, but the criticism I usually hear is just how awful his writing is. But there are so many elements that go into making something entertaining, like plotting, pace, characters, imaginative ideas, good twists, etc. So I think it's silly when people harp too much on the writing itself. You don't have to like something yourself, but let other people have their fun, for heaven's sake. It's a small enough % of the population that's even reading books in the first place!
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