“Dumbest Thing Ever”: Scribbling in the Margins of Dan Brown’s Inferno

Annals of Japery Notable Articles
January 13, 2014 | 1 book mentioned 65 2 min read

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coverI am on record, both in this magazine and in my local newspaper, as an enthusiastic defacer of books. Recently I had a new kind of marginal experience that I would like to share: the pleasure of joint, or (as they say in grad seminars) “dialogic” marginalia.

The book was Dan Brown’s Inferno. Like most writerers [sic], I am crazy about Dan Brown. Why does he write the way he does? Is he a sneaky genius? How is it possible that he was once in a writing seminar with David Foster Wallace? (One of my dreams is to write a hit Broadway musical about that seminar, in which Dan Brown strides around the stage wearing a tweed jacket with elbow patches singing bombastic anthems about the great masterpieces of Europe while DFW sings introverted atonal fugues with mumbling sotto voce footnotes.)

I purchased and read Inferno, which was inscrutable and interminable, and as I read I scribbled in its margins. When I finished, my friend David Rees, the artisanal pencil sharpener, asked if he could borrow it. He added his thoughts.

It was fun to see someone else’s words next to mine. I wrote in black pen, in cursive. David wrote in red pencil, in block letters. I was semi-serious. David swore and told a lot of jokes. Usually we agreed, but occasionally we disagreed. Here are some of the highlights.

WARNING: There are probably Dan Brown spoilers here, but come on, seriously.

Very early in Inferno, I realized that Dan Brown’s career-long fetish for ellipses had reached a whole new level. Basically, ellipses are the hero of the book. They make their first appearance on the dedication page.

After a while I started trying to circle all of them, which became a meditative exercise.

Sometimes I would miss one and David would catch it for me.

We spent most of our time in the margins making fun of Dan Brown.

We mocked his pacing,

his dialogue,

his dialect,

his artless exposition,

his anti-powers of description,

his careless repetitions,

his weak grasp of human behavior,

his lust for fame,

his characters’ gender stereotypes,

his implausible plot points,

and probably the worst “academic” lecture in the history of fiction.

Along the way, we managed to isolate the keywords of the Dan Brown lexicon.

Sometimes David added illustrations.

Usually, David and I agreed.

But sometimes we didn’t.

Recently I passed the book to another friend, who will add her marginal notes, and then I will pass it to someone else, and then someone else, and on and on until eventually we have written more words in Dan Brown’s book than Dan Brown himself. This seems like the only way to tame the monster at the heart of the Inferno.

is the New York Times Magazine's Critic at Large. He is writing a book about Oklahoma City.

Annals of Japery

The Robert Burton Diet

Annals of Japery
November 18, 2014 | 1 book mentioned 4 5 min read

Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) is an exhaustive dissection of the physical, mental, and behavioral causes of an epidemic disease, a massive project that also manages to anatomize the folly of the author who undertook it. In The Anatomy, Burton provides specific suggestions to mitigate melancholy through one’s diet, “the mother of diseases, let the father be what he will.”

This so-called “Robert Burton Diet” is as relevant today as it was in the 17th century, for who among us can claim to be entirely free of the melancholic affliction? Atkins, South Beach, Microbiome, Paleo: all these faddish regimens might slim you down, but can they regulate your humours? I think not.

Therefore, without further ado, I give you the Robert Burton Diet.

Meat:
Only those with strong constitutions should partake of beef, which engenders “gross melancholy blood.” If you must, find a cow from Portugal to eat, preferably one that is gelded or, alternatively, an old sad one that has “been tired out with labor.”

Pork is also off the menu, especially for those who “live at ease” or are otherwise “unsound of body or mind” — that is, most of us. But it’s so moist! Precisely the problem. Pork is too moist and “full of humours,” which upset sensitive stomachs and could bring on the dreaded “quartan ague,” which recurs every 72 hours.

Need we even mention goats? These “rammish,” bearded beasts clearly “breed rank and filthy substance.” For goat-lovers, a kid is best, the younger, cuter, more tender, and less rammish the better.

“All venison,” pleasant meat though it may be, “is melancholy, and begets bad blood.” Should you decide to treat yourself, break out those bows or rifles, because hunted deer is supposedly better than store-bought for those of melancholic disposition.

Anything is preferable to hare, a “black meat, melancholy, and hard of digestion” that breeds incubus and “causeth fearful dreams.” (Burton doesn’t say whether these nightmares will be worse if you kill the rabbit yourself.)

And what of heads, feet, bowels, brains, entrails, marrow, fat, blood, skins, inward parts (heart, liver, spleen, etc.)? Sure, if you want to keep moping around forever, dig in.

OK, so meat is pretty much verboten. Perhaps we should look elsewhere in the animal kingdom for sustenance?

Fowl:
Don’t even think about fowl, especially those morally suspect avian creatures flying in from Northern Europe and Russia: “Though these be fair in feathers, pleasant in taste, and have a good outside, like hypocrites, white in plumes, and soft, their flesh is hard, black, unwholesome, dangerous, melancholy meat.” If there’s one thing I can’t abide eating, it’s a dissembling bird.

The Burton Diet doesn’t sound great so far, but maybe fish will provide us with sumptuous delights…

Fish:
Easy on the seafood, which yields “little and humorous nutriment.” You don’t want to end up like the Carthusian monks, who are “subject to more melancholy than any other Order” because of their fish-eating and solitary living.

Though classical opinion varies widely, Burton is willing to roll the dice on lobster, crab, and lampreys, quoting Paulus Jovius’s opinion that none speak against the latter but inepti [fools] and scrupulosi [the scrupulous].” Far be it from me to gainsay Burton, but after Googling an image of a lamprey, I wouldn’t eat one.

I know what you’re all dying to ask: Can I eat carp? Unfortunately, for once Burton doesn’t have the answer. Who would have thought that this lowly fish could stump one of the most learned minds in Europe? “Carp is a fish of which I know not what to determine,” Burton admits with an air of melancholy resignation.

Dairy:
Depressed yet? Well, nothing cheers one up quite like milk and cookies, but only if it’s asses’ milk washing down those chocolate chips. Every other milk increases melancholy.

And cheese-lovers beware, because the older, stronger, and harder cheeses are especially troublesome for the melancholic. If you’re hankering for a slice, make it Banbury, which Shakespeare lovers will instantly recognize from this memorable burn delivered to Slender in The Merry Wives of Windsor: “You Banbury cheese!”

Denied as we are most meats, fish, and dairy products, perhaps adherents of the Burton Diet can compensate with fruit?

Fruits:
Fruits “infect the blood, and putrefy it.” (Though apples, along with pearmains and sweetings, are “good against melancholy.”)

Are leafy greens and garnishes similarly infectious?

Herbs, Roots, Vegetables, and Spices:
Cucumbers, melons and gourds are “disallowed,” but cabbage is the worst, causing troublesome dreams and bringing “heaviness to the soul.” (I always knew there was a scientific reason I hated it.) Moreover, before eating what Horace calls “bloodless meals,” recall what the great Roman poet said of such demeaning feasts:
Their lives, that each such herbs, must needs be short,
And ’tis a fearful thing to report,
That men should feed on such a kind of meat
Which very juments [beasts of burden] would refuse to eat.
Oh, and no peas either, whether eaten properly with a fork or gauchely with a knife.

Parsnips and potatoes barely make the cut, but I hope you like your food bland, because garlic and onions send “gross fumes to the brain” and “make men mad.” Pepper, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, dates, oil, vinegar, mustard, and sugar are out, as are all sweet, “sharp and sour things.”

Surely Burton would allow us some salt? He’s not a monster after all.

Salt:
Alas, salt and salt-meats, being “great procurers of this disease [melancholy],” should be avoided. We need only look at those Egyptian priests who abstained from salt so “that their souls might be free from perturbations” to see the folly of our ways.

Those “perturbations” are starting to sound preferable to a life of deprivation. At any rate, give me unlimited bread and a cold one and I’ll make do.

Bread and Beer:
Hallelujah! On the controversial subject of bread, Burton proves less dogmatic than some gluten-free advocates. While warning of the “melancholy juice and wind” bread can produce, he nonetheless appears to endorse oaten loaves.

A pint isn’t great for the melancholy — a cup of cold wine is more salubrious — though imbibing black Bohemian beer, a “monstrous drink, like the River Styxx,” has an “especial virtue against melancholy” if the drinker is accustomed to such waters as plied by the ferryman Charon.

And what of all those treats not mentioned by Burton? Can we eat those?

Miscellaneous:
Watch the master puncture some more dreams:
To these noxious simples we may reduce an infinite number of compound, artificial, made dishes, of which our cooks afford us a great variety, as tailors do fashions in our apparel. Such are puddings stuffed with blood…baked meats, soused indurate meats, fired and boiled, buttered meats, condite, powdered, and over-dried; all cakes, simnels, buns cracknels made with butter, spice, etc. fritters, pancakes, pies, sausages, and those several sauces, sharp or over-sweet…[that] do generally engender gross humours, fill the stomach with crudities, and all those inward parts with obstructions.
I’ll see you in hell, Burton.

Exceptions:
The Burton Diet seems excessively restrictive, if not sadistic, but we should remember that Burton, despite his obsessive nature, is also a flexible thinker. “There is no rule so general as not to admit of some exception,” and as for diets, Burton allows that “custom doth alter nature itself.” After all, the Emperor Montezuma ate “man’s flesh raw and roasted” and Mithridates trained himself to drink poison, so how bad could some soused indurate meats be?

If we are used to certain foods, or if we particularly delight in them, then abstaining from them would mean we choose to live in “mere tyranny [to] the strict rules of physic.” And that, presumably, would only increase our melancholy.

So treat yourself to the incubus-breeding hare, to that hypocritical bird, and to that confounding carp. It would be infinitely sad, and a folly, not to.

Image Credit: Flickr/asbruff

Annals of Japery
| 1 book mentioned 4 5 min read
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Essays Notable Articles

On Getting Paid: Literary Magazines and Remuneration

Essays Notable Articles
February 15, 2012 | 1 book mentioned 42 9 min read

1.
David Lynn began his Editor’s Notes for the Autumn 2004 issue of The Kenyon Review with some necessary questions: “How much is a fine story worth? What monetary value does a superb poem possess? How much — and this is the inexorable point — should authors be paid for their long, solitary work?” The questions were particularly appropriate to his magazine: The Kenyon Review published writers such as Thomas Pynchon, Flannery O’Connor, Robert Penn Warren, and yet the magazine closed in 1969, and was not revived until a decade later. Lynn assumed the editorship in 1994, and the magazine “struggl[ed] toward financial stability,” only paying contributors “fifteen dollars per page for poetry and ten dollars per page for prose.”

Lynn’s introductory note served two purposes. The first was to announce an increase in payment rate for writers, which managing editor Tyler Meier attributes to the generosity of “a great Board of Trustees [at Kenyon College].” Lynn admitted that even an increased rate could not compete with the dwindling “commercial magazines” who still published fiction, but his qualification leads to the second purpose for his introduction: a philosophical consideration of the economy of literary magazines. Lynn wonders about the rewards of writing, quipping that “a fiction writer may serve an apprenticing of sorts by fashioning short stories (all the while harboring a fantasy of blockbusters and screenplays down the road)… [while] poets, even the best poets, daren’t delude themselves in this particular way.”

Lynn engages a prescient point: are literary magazines an end, or a means toward an end, for writers? From an economic standpoint, he reaches a practical conclusion, shared by most writers involved in the submission process: while publication in literary magazines might be an aesthetic end, it is no means an economic one. Since “many authors today hold academic positions… promotion in the academy often depends on generating vitae with lists of publications that otherwise have earned them little beyond the price of a meal or two.” The obvious irony needs to be unpacked. Scan the contributor notes of any contemporary literary magazine, and you will find Lynn’s statement true: writers are often employed by university English departments, or are students in MFA programs affiliated with those departments. Other than a few and often notable distinctions, the economy of literary magazines appears to be a closed system: writers publish in literary magazines that are often read by writers. Money is tight, payment is low, and subscriptions and institutional support appear to be the final hope for sustenance. Does it have to be that way?

2.
The Kenyon Review paid me for a story they published in print and online. They, like Shenandoah, West Branch, and other magazines, mailed me a contract. The process felt official and professional; in fact, even if I did not receive monetary payment, the exchange felt necessary, a recognition of acceptance beyond an e-mail or phone call. Contemporary literary magazine contributors are often remunerated in three ways: a nominal to generous monetary payment, contributor copies, or simply the exposure, and sometimes status, of publishing in a particular journal.

Like most Americans concerned with mortgages, bills, and the prospects of frozen wages, I would not mind the first form of payment. Publishing in literary magazines does not constitute the majority, or even a significant minority, of my income, but it certainly feels a necessary one, in the professional sense. Writers sometimes lament the dearth of paying markets, but they should be reassured that often nobody wants to pay writers more than those same editors, who are increasingly subject to institutional budget reductions. When faculty jobs must be cut and tuitions raised, the “little magazines” become difficult to justify.

In May 2009, Middlebury College’s Budget Oversight Committee recommended that the college end its financial relationship with the New England Review, a magazine the Vermont school supported since 1987. College president Ron Liebowitz extended the magazine’s grace period for a few years, but was clear that a reevaluation of the university’s support of the magazine was necessary:
Given current financial circumstances… I find asking families who are paying $50,000/year in comprehensive fees to, in effect, subsidize a literary magazine that serves a very small slice of the general population and is known only to a handful of Middlebury students, a very hard sell.
Middlebury College has recently extended its support of the magazine through 2014, but Carolyn Kuebler, managing editor of the magazine, notes that “we continue to seek outside support.”

Of course, when a magazine struggles to simply remain publishing, paying writers becomes of secondary concern. But writers should take heed that the philosophical concerns are never ignored. Kuebler said that:
…we believe that most writers would probably publish with us without the monetary incentive. We also think it’s important to offer this payment, which is more of an honorarium. It matters to writers to get even a small check for their work, as it makes their writing something more than a hobby. And it helps, as the word implies, to “honor” their contributions.
Writers should remember that most editors — often writers themselves — understand the desire for monetary payment, but are sometimes forced to decide between remuneration and publication.

New England Review’s conundrum will likely be repeated elsewhere; in fact, other magazines, such as The Southern Review, based at Louisiana State University, have had to reassess elements of their operating budgets. For other magazines, paying contributors has not been a possibility, regardless of institutional support. Alaska Quarterly Review offers contributors a copy and a one-year subscription, but no monetary payment. Editor Ronald Spatz explains: “[we] would love to be able to pay authors for their work. But we simply do not have the funds to do so. We use all available funds for the production and related costs of the books, ensuring that each author’s work is elegantly showcased.” Several years ago The Idaho Review became a paying market; usually $100 a story. Editor Mitch Wieland thinks the moderate payment is complemented by the magazine’s strong track record with “prize anthologies,” which helps “attract good work.” Wieland also cites the goal “to make each issue as beautiful and elegant as we can — a book that would look good on the shelf in years to come.”

Some magazines, like The Missouri Review, have been able to weather the budget storm. For managing editor Michael Nye, the key to success is having:
…several revenue streams. We are based at the University of Missouri, which provides institutional support; we have a large subscriber base through print and digital subscriptions as well as through library services like Project MUSE; and we have a loyal and generous donor base that has supported us in the Columbia community for over thirty years.
The Missouri Review pays $40 a page for all genres and, though subscriptions certainly help, Nye admits The Missouri Review is “unique” in its consistent receipt of other support. But what of magazines that have already lost, or will soon lose, the support of a sponsoring institution? Or the many independent magazines whose print runs seem tenuous at best, with each issue nearly being the last?

3.
David Lynn’s earlier statement feels even more prescient, and perhaps troubling, as universities move toward part-time, adjunct employment, while also reassessing the financial realities of tenure and benefit structures. The world of literary magazines is at a complicated intersection: can, and should, literary magazines remain affiliated with the universities in an economic sense? Do the educational benefits of such an affiliation justify the parsing of funds?

A change in system seems to be in order, and both new and established magazines are offering possibilities. Electric Literature is one such publication: the paperback copy uses the print-on-demand model, and they also publish “ebook, Kindle, iPhone, and audio versions.” The magazine pays $1,000 per story. Six issues into the magazine’s run, co-editor Andy Hunter reflected on their experience: “We have been able to pay writers and our rent, and sometimes make a small profit which went to our staff, but Scott [Lindenbaum] and I have never been able to pay ourselves.” In order to maintain such a generous payment, the magazines needs “to get more than 1000 paying readers” for each issue, which is “a lot of work,” but it is “the minimum level to make a model like ours function.” Paperback copies of Electric Literature can be purchased for $10; digital versions are half that price. Hunter elaborates: “we want writing to be a sustainable career choice. It doesn’t take much money to pay for literary content that makes our lives infinitely richer. Everyday, I see people pay for lattes, beers, and cupcakes.” Certainly Electric Literature’s record of publishing established writers has helped — Jim Shepard, Joy Williams, Rick Moody, and Lydia Davis have appeared in their pages — but Hunter qualifies this:
We also championed new writers, for example Patrick deWitt, who was just short-listed for the Booker prize. This is why we didn’t choose to publish single stories for $.99 each, which is one model we were considering – we didn’t want everyone to buy the Michael Cunningham and let the unknowns languish.
Do the editors of Electric Literature think such a successful model should be tested by other publications? Hunter thinks “university-supported magazines should take this approach, especially if they have the money to pay their staff. But they are very slow to evolve, and few are publishing digitally even now.” Independent literary magazines “likely don’t have the money” to sustain such a model. Hunter “admire[s] anyone who puts out a
 literary magazine, especially the independents; it’s always a labor of love” and “hope[s] that most publications will eventually emulate at least parts of our model, like accessibility across platforms and compensating writers.”

Even if they do not directly appropriate Electric Literature’s model, established print magazines are being forced to reconsider their modes of publication. Shenandoah and Triquarterly shifted from print to online-only issues. The Kenyon Review introduced KR Online, which has become a place for writing that is “more timely, and a little more experimental.” Print magazines have made the shift toward electronic submissions, with some using the model developed by the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses, and others selecting a sleek alternative, Submittable. Both services cost the participating magazines. Some magazines using these electronic systems, such as Sonora Review and Hunger Mountain, have begun charging a “nominal” fee for electronic submissions. There is no industry standard definition of nominal: when New England Review and Brevity use such language, they mean 2 or 3 dollars; Narrative means 15 or 20 dollars. The latter example might sound steep, but Narrative has a generous payment structure: “$150 to $350 for 500 to 2,000 word manuscripts, $350 to $1000 for 2,000 to 15,000 word manuscripts, $50 minimum for each accepted poem and audio piece,” and additional payment for stories and poems of the week. The magazine’s Content Supervisor, Joshua Clark, explains their approach: “submission fees help fund administrative costs and writer payments, and also fund our annual $5,000 Narrative Prize.” When asked if advertisements that populate Narrative’s site help defray costs, Clark notes “sources of income such as advertisements and donations allow us to expand our features and reach out to larger audience, but they won’t necessarily replace submission fees in the future.” Two of Narrative’s articulated goals include “giving our content to our readers for free, and paying our writers well in the process.” Despite the high payment rate, in such a system the onus for revenue is placed on writers rather than readers. Is that good for the economy of literary magazines, or will it continue to perpetuate the idea that literary magazines are an insular, provincial artistic world?

Narrative has gained a reputation for being one of the best paying online publications. Most online journals must rely on the third potential payment for writers: exposure. Pebble Lake Review, edited by Amanda Auchter, made the switch to online in 2009. Contributors to the previous print edition received complimentary copies. Although the online version is not able to provide monetary payment, potential contributors do not pay a fee to submit. Save for “a grant or a big fat check from an anonymous donor,” Auchter doesn’t see the rate changing, noting that “Indie journals and presses [publish] out of love and stewardship. I think that the writers who submit to such places understand that and don’t do it for the cash.” Such a perspective is shared by Matt Bell, editor of The Collagist, an online monthly from Dzanc Books. Bell says “the money’s just not there” to compensate contributors. He adds “I think of what we’re doing together [the magazine and contributors] as being engaged in the making of art and community, rather than an exchange of goods or the manufacture of a product.” Bell’s point is worth considering, and extends the economic conversation. The Collagist has done well to cultivate a particular literary community, “thousands [of readers] per issue” who are “interested in unconventional and innovative literature.” Bell applies such a philosophy to his own writing, saying he’s “much more interested in the writing a magazine puts in its issues than the dollar amount it puts in its guidelines.”

Brevity, edited by Dinty Moore since its inception, switched to fee-based submissions after 12 years of publication. Moore said that the online journal’s move “took a lot of soul-searching, but we send all of that money back to the writers.” Brevity now pays 45 dollars an essay, and Moore says “it feels very good to pay our writers. It has buoyed our faith in what we do.” The magazine has applied for non-profit status, and has a volunteer staff.

Recent years have also seen an increase in fee-based, magazine-affiliated contests. While the purses are higher than the usual payment rate — the Iowa Review pays $1500 to the winner of its fiction contest, nearly ten times its regular remuneration — the monetary pool is still built by writers: all of whom, save for the winners, leave empty-pocketed. Writers who view their entry fees as donations to the magazines are taking the more optimistic opinion. The opportunity always exists, unfortunately, for such contests to descend into exercises in nepotism.

Where does this all leave writers? It would be selfish to merely balk at editors, to complain that magazines are uncaring when they expect writers to be satiated with publication. Jeff Crook, editor of Southern Gothic, an online journal from 2003 to 2007, speaks to the problem: “Writing is work, and people should be rewarded for their work.” Crook’s magazine closed, and though he paid writers, he did so on his own, not under the auspices of the magazine. It’s a curiously fine line, but it speaks to a concrete philosophical distinction. Some editors and writers view the literary magazine world a necessary one for the ends of aestheticism and intellectual conversation: for, simply put, a piece of writing to live, and to be read. Yet those who hope for monetary payment are not automatically writing for that sole purpose; often times they are part of the mechanism that allows the system of literary magazines to survive. It is possible to write for the passion of the art, the possibility of discovery and revelation, and still want to get paid.

Image: Self caricature as poor artist, Edith Mahier, via Wikimedia Commons

Essays Notable Articles
| 1 book mentioned 42 9 min read
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Essays Notable Articles

This Chart Is a Lonely Hunter: The Narrative Eros of the Infographic

Essays Notable Articles
February 7, 2012 | 1 book mentioned 24 14 min read
We’ve given today’s visual storytellers considerable power: for better or worse, they are the new meaning-makers, the priests of shorthand synthesis. We’re dependent on these priests to scrutinize, bundle, and produce beautiful information for us so that we can have our little infogasm and then retweet the information to our friends.
Essays Notable Articles
| 1 book mentioned 24 14 min read
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65 comments:

  1. For the last few years, I’ve been telling people that “Angels and Demons” is the trashiest book I’ve ever read (no small achievement). It’s nice to know that Brown has persisted with his style of banality, incredulity and ponderous literary/historical scavenging – without actually having to read his books!

  3. So instead of spending your time, money, and energy on, say, a terrific yet under-the-radar writer, you purchased Dan Brown’s latest book, read it, made “amusing” comments in the margins, and then wrote an article with the revolutionary premise that Dan Brown is a shitty writer. (If I had been able to write a snarky comment in this essay’s margins, it would have been: Thanks for this invaluable and thought-provoking cultural contribution!)

    There is something terribly depressing in this image of the literary intelligentsia sitting on their thrones and ironically reading bad books. Come on, Sam and Dave, don’t give up on literature just yet!

  5. While we’re on the subject of poor writing, please let me edit out the word “basically” from this margin note: “I basically haven’t been able to picture anything he’s described.” Thank you.

  6. My friends and I did this in high school with some kind of series aimed at teen girls that revolved around cheerleaders. If you were fourth or fifth in line to read you would cry with laughter all the way through.

  7. Every time I read the banal comments about my own writing, I look at reviews for Dan Brown. And I rage, “How did this man get published and all I get are rejections and criticism about my cliches and grammar errors. Of course, having a sane and dependable proof reader and an editor would help those things… but they also stop my books from being professionally published. How does Brown do It? And how can I convince his readers my stories are at least moderately better?

  8. This article, while not revolutionary, serves a similar purpose as Brown’s novels. I was much more entertained by this than I was ‘Angels and Demons’ and ‘The DaVinci Code,’ particularly David’s “EAT SHIT” annotation.

  9. For 20 years I worked at a publishing house that makes recorded books, and I learned more from about good writing from hearing books read out loud than I did getting a BA in English. And O! Does this piece remind me of those days! We had no choice but to read these things and margin-comments were our way of relieving the agony. What we figured out is that anybody could get anything published if they are persistent enough (and this was in the days before self-publishing on a massive scale.)

    I think most people just scan and miss the silliness of so much writing and therefore don’t understand what we’re making a big deal about. I often feel like I’m speaking a different language when I discuss actual quality of writing, even with people who love reading, so I get comfort from stories like these!

    And Shannon, it also comforts me to know that there are high school kids care too.

  10. Our favorite person to pick on, btw, was Piers Anthony. There are some people in my city that very seriously wish he’d die so he won’t write more books.

  11. @Zach. No you can’t. Just go and pick up Infinite Jest next time you’re in a book store and think about what you wrote.

  12. First off, great read, I love this kind of MST3K approach to glossing works, hope to see more of it in the future.

    Secondly, I thought I’d repost my comment from a reddit discussion going on about this very article. It took me much longer than I planned on investing in it, and I would hate to see all that effort potentially buried under what I can only expect to be a torrent of downvotes.

    My response:
    People have problems with Dan Brown’s writing because he so consistently and persistently ‘gets it wrong’. And people who do care about things like characterization, plausibility, and intelligent prose are going to have problems with his writing. Most just shrug and look the other way, but others are genuinely concerned that something with so many issues can achieve such unparalleled success.

    I don’t personally think it’s a problem to read Dan Brown, and I take issue to people who say “Don’t read this book because it’s bad”, but the problem is when people start throwing all these nonsensical adjectives praising Dan Brown. I have a BA and an MA in English Lit, so I guess it’s fair to say I can easily be chucked in with the book snobs of this world, and though I will admit I’ve read all of Brown’s works for fun, I cannot concede that either his writing style or his books have any value beyond being an in-flight read. At very least his prose is terribly sloppy, to say nothing of his blatant disregard for coherent characterization. A sentence like “Atop a control tower in the distance, the Turkish flag fluttered proudly–a field of red emblazoned with the ancient symbols of the crescent and star–vestiges of the Ottoman Empire, still flying proudly in the modern world” shouldn’t have made it past the first draft stage, much less made it past the editor. As the article above points out, it’s a repetition for starters (we get that the flag is fluttering), but the big problem for a grammarian like me is this:

    The antecedents of “vestiges” are “the ancient symbols of the crescent and star”, but since these two terms appear in the parenthetical phrase “a field of red…”, this means they don’t function as part of the grammar of the sentence. So what we really have written here is “Atop a control tower in the distance, the Turkish flag fluttered proudly, vestiges of the Ottoman Empire…” HUH? The ‘flag is vestiges’? Grammatically that’s nonsense. Ok, so the control tower with the flag are vestiges of the Ottoman Empire? That doesn’t make any logical sense, a control tower is not a vestige of the Ottoman Empire. So clearly he meant the ancient symbols are vestiges, but his awkward and broken syntax has rendered the statement illogical and grammatically incorrect.

    Doing this once would be fine, but Dan Brown does this a lot, and then makes a lot of money for this kind of writing. But this is his profession. It’s his job (if not to get this right, then at least to try. It’s not like it’s his shtick to flaunt the flaunt the rules of grammar and syntax, if it was I would shut up). If a factory worker messed up like this, and did so consistently, we might not fire them, sure, but we certainly wouldn’t be giving them a massive raise and calling them one of the best workers in the field. Or, if we did, a lot of his fellow workers (and perhaps even a few laymen) might start to wonder just what the hell some people were thinking, and they might take to a forum (like the internet) to express those valid concerns. But again, that doesn’t mean Dan Brown shouldn’t be read, or even enjoyed; people can do whatever they want. But the problems with his prose are alone the reasons why his works will never be compared favorably to Moby Dick.

    TL;DR English major tries to explain a potential reason why people take issue with Dan Brown’s writings.

  13. Frankly, the writer sounds like a little bitch, but maybe that’s just me. Like Brown’s writing or not, there has to be better things to do with one’s time.

  15. @Sly

    Infinite Jest is unimpeachable in its totality (and one of the few books I love with no reservation), but Broom of the System has room in the margins for no little snark. It’s the kind of freshman work that should have stayed in a drawer–not because it’s so bad, but because it’s the clearly underdeveloped work of someone whose later talent renders it disappointing in retrospect. Plus there is some real boring shit in it.

    Anyway. Writing about Dan Brown on the Millions is like showing a latter-day Adam Sandler vacation home movie at Cannes. Yes, he is a writer of books, and this is a website about books, and there ends the common ground.

  16. What if I wanted to read Dan Brown’s book to learn about history in a fun setting? All the facts in his books are verifiable (especially in the day and age of all mighty Google) so what’s wrong with that?

  18. DB’s writing is dumb and boring and he doesn’t develop any interesting ideas that are clearly his own. The only thing that makes him of interest to me is that he raises the question of what publishers are looking for and why. Once in a while no-talent hacks rise to fame and fortune for no good reason, they just happened to know somebody and show up on the right day.

  19. @Rastaman426

    Reading Dan Brown to learn about history is like those people who read sparknotes on classics so they appear to be well-read. Besides, that’s what Dan Brown does. He skims the surface of history looking for little anecdotes he can adapt into a story or simply boring filler to boost his word count. There are some entertaining history and autobiographical texts by real historians or influential people. You’re better off learning and being entertained by first-handers and people who actually know what they’re talking about. Perfect example: Guns, Germs, and Steel.

  20. And yet, Dan Brown has made way more $ than the author of this article. Oh, and people have heard of Dan Brown’s name whereas nobody knows who ‘Sam Anderson’ is. Lol.

  21. We have three dogs named (from left to right) Nancy Drew, Encyclopedia Brown, and The Hardy Boys. Thanks for giving them a shout out on the DEATH MASK page. They’re great dogs and they are not fans of Dan Brown either.

  22. some seriously dickish comments here. i liked brown as a child, but recently listened to Inferno on a long road trip. rolled my eyes so much it was a driving hazard.

  25. Thank you for so humorously capturing the ridiculousness of this book! Will you please do The Lost Symbol, too? There are so many great moments in that one, from the breathless students in his Harvard lectures to the female character that he uses every synonym for “fat” to describe any time she appears.

  26. I feel so validated. For my community college Creative Writing final, I used to make my freshmen and sophomores read the first chapter of the DaVinci Code and tell me why it was crap. Now I do it with Stefani Meyer’s Twilight. Thank you for writing this.

  27. “And yet, Dan Brown has made way more $ than the author of this article. Oh, and people have heard of Dan Brown’s name whereas nobody knows who ‘Sam Anderson’ is. Lol.”

    Well, that settles it then. Brown’s books have made him very rich. He must be right and Anderson must be wrong, because we all know that money is the final determination of literary quality.

    Move along people.

    Nothing else to see here.

  29. Both hilarious and sad. The latter, because there are so many writers out there who can write much better than this but do not get to make even a small percent of Brown’s millions. It makes you sad for what this means for our culture, our humanity….. (ellipsis intended).

  31. @weasel soup:

    I haven’t read 50 Shades, but, in 2012, I did come across this hilarious blog where the blogger did a close reading of them, chapter by chapter, and blogged her thoughts. I found her posts very entertaining and wonder if they might sell more if made into a book. But, that’s not likely to happen, sadly.

    http://somethingshortandsnappy.blogspot.com/2012/05/announcing-bad-idea.html

    You’ll have to browse through using her labels / categories as it’s not easy to find the posts chronologically.

    Apparently, there have been similar deconstructions of the Twilight books online too, though I haven’ read those.

  32. @Ryan Ries

    So instead of spending your time, money, and energy on, say, a terrific yet under-the-radar writer, you purchased Dan Brown’s latest book, read it, made “amusing” comments in the margins, and then wrote an article with the revolutionary premise that Dan Brown is a shitty writer. (If I had been able to write a snarky comment in this essay’s margins, it would have been: Thanks for this invaluable and thought-provoking cultural contribution!)

    There is something terribly depressing in this image of the literary intelligentsia sitting on their thrones and ironically reading bad books. Come on, Sam and Dave, don’t give up on literature just yet!

    LITERATURE!!! ;__;

  33. Yeah, you guys! Why do you have to be so negative? Can’t you be more positive? Okay, so you don’t enjoy Mr. Brown’s writing. Well, lots and lots of people DO enjoy it! They can’t all be wrong, can they? So why don’t you guys write about a book that you DO love instead of one that you DON’T love. Then SHARE that love with all of US, so that we can all enjoy that love, TOGETHER!

    If you did that, it would be a really beautiful thing.

  34. Chemondelay

    Yes, don’t give up on literature, as in, don’t waste your time on lazy, lowest-hanging-fruit essays like this and instead challenge yourself to find and celebrate a real piece of art.

  36. Seriously, this hit Broadway musical idea of yours sounds amazingly spectacular and I highly encourage you to do it.

  37. LOL Good work The Millions! Spoiler Alert: Dan Brown’s next book is a “Choose Your Own Ending” (remember those) published by Scholastic and sold to unsuspecting middle schoolers….

  39. Having gotten over my initial mirth, I am now wondering, rather glumly, about the publishers and editors who allowed so many glaring issues to see the light of day. I mean, really, didn’t someone at Doubleday say, sure, it’s bestselling Dan Brown, but, you know, let’s have someone read the thing before it goes to print. Or, did they just decide that there would be plenty of readers who wouldn’t care for decent writing, so, why bother? Either way, shouldn’t these careless publishers and editors be held just as responsible as the writer for inflicting this stuff on the reading public?

    Someone should get a Doubleday rep on the phone/email/Twitter, present them with this marginalia and at least pose the question.

  40. @haints

    “They can’t all be wrong, can they?”

    YES. They can. They are. They will be. Just because one knows how to read, doesn’t mean one need be thoughtful or even smart. Reading well, however, reading with even a smidgen of critical input, reading with the responsibility to complete the circle of the story that the writer has started—doing this takes more than scanning words with the same attention one gives to a Sharper Image catalog or a copy of Varmint Hunter.

    This is the funniest thing I’ve read in a long while. And reading humorous takedowns of prose we know is bad often does more good for me as a writer than reading a good story. I know, it shouldn’t be this way, but by the end of the piece I was thinking that a great craft book could be entitled ‘Just Don’t(…)” – then it could be filled with DB excerpts (and zillions of other authors) and the red and black marginalia from this wonderful duo. Over many years of reading accepted good writing, arguably passable writing, and certain bad writing, I often revisit my own work most effectively and with more confidence (less vitriolic self-criticism?) after reading first-draft-unedited-but-shockingly-published stinky garbage like Dan Brown.

    To know you might have a chance of penning a better than average story, a story that might have some legs, a story that proves you have more talent than Dan Brown or your other favorite ham-handed typer, you only have to read his line, ‘Apparently a background in drama could be a versatile weapon.’ If you read that with your mouth full and you don’t choke on your food with a gut laugh and think ‘Holy shitballs, my cat writes better than that when she runs across the keyboard,’ then you haven’t a chance on earth.

    Thanks, guys. This was a gas.

    PS – @Ryan Ries – I’m pretty darn sure Sam and David didn’t make “amusing” comments. They made amusing comments.

  41. But, there is such a thing as paroxysmal positional vertigo. I have no idea what the book is about…..is it still dumb even though this is a real condition? Not defending the book in any way.

  43. Would have enjoyed The Da Vinci Code SO much more if I’d taken this approach. Instead I just cursed all the way through.

  44. What an indulgent prat Dan Brown has proved to be – I just finished reading – no sorry, skimming, this ridiculous book and I wanted to post a reflection of my anger and sheer frustration that this nonsense could actually be published – shame on the publishers, shame on the editors – you have sold your souls for a few unworthy shekels. Shame on you.

  46. Ah, Mark, my comment was intended as a satire. I liked this piece and was making fun of the “why can’t you just say something positive?” people.

  47. However we have been able to create a fantastic tour of Florence based on the Dan Brown’s novel :-)

  48. Pingback: Webtacular World Issue # 7 January 19, 2014 | Webtacular World

  49. I don’t find it ironic that the majority of those who trash Dan Browns novels online are the same people who spend most of their time facebooking, blogging and twittering strangers online also.
    They spend so much time twittering about themselves, they cringe at the prospect of celebrating someone else.
    Celebrating someone who’s genuinely successful.

    To enjoy Dan Brown, you need to have a reasonable attention span and at least an above average grip of the English written word.

  50. In medical school we had a saying “those who can, do, those who can’t, teach”. I guess in this case it should be “those who can, write books that sell, those who can’t, make fun of those who can”

  51. “In medical school we had a saying “those who can, do, those who can’t, teach”. I guess in this case it should be “those who can, write books that sell, those who can’t, make fun of those who can””

    Right, because the only way to truly judge the quality of a work is by how much it sells. That’s is why Van Gogh sucked while he was alive, and then suddenly got really great after he died …

    Yet another example that a medical degree is no guarantee of intelligence …

  52. Sir!

    Per my recent Tweetage, https://twitter.com/MamurphyMaureen/status/498867059980525569 I am Outraged and full of Umbrage that the great name of Mr. Dan Brown has been so sorely maligned by you and that Malignant Sharpener of Pencils.

    What next, an attack on the Modern Prophetess of Human Improvement, Amy Chua? My Faithful Biographer Moe Murph will be regularly reporting back to me on the Outrageous Stream of Verbiage and the Attendant Most Impertinent Comments.

    Sir, were I but yet Corporeal and not a being afloat on the Etheric Twitter Cloud, I would thrash you both soundly.

    Harrrrumphhh!

    Senator Kefuaver F. Tutwiller, IV (1823-1913)
    Etheric Twitter Cloud

  53. Book? Inferno isn’t a book, it’s an infomercial cobbled together by the makers of tweed jackets and gin.

  54. I just finished reading the book and I found the story enjoyable. I guess I read for an enjoyable story rather than a literary orgasm. I also don’t have a B.A. in English so I don’t pick apart his writing. After seeing your margin notes though I can completely understand where you are coming from. Especially the bit about how you had trouble imagining whatever he was trying to explain. At times I’d just Google the damn thing. Other than that, the flaws went right over my head.

    I figure it is a lot like painting. When I see a painting it is either ugly or beautiful, but to an artist they see every brush stroke, colour, technique, etc. and then make their judgement.

    A lot of his success did come from how “controversial” his second book was. Since then everyone will pick up whatever he writes now and he doesn’t even have to try.

    Since Dan Brown is forever ruined for me and I am amongst literary scholars, enlighten me to a well written thriller with a good story. :) I’d appreciate it!

  55. I just love the pompous BS you hear form the “intellectual” elite. If you were so perfect and incredible a writer, I would assume it would be you and your friend who were making millions of dollars “entertaining” the masses.

    You are entitled to your opinions of course, as such perfect writers you both are in your own minds. However, I don’t think many people really care what your opinion is at all. I know I certainly do not (chuckle, chuckle “…”).

  56. Well, well. look at my typo in my previous response. Guess I’ll get ton of crap about that. Oh well.

  58. TO WES – RE: “Since Dan Brown is forever ruined for me and I am amongst literary scholars, enlighten me to a well written thriller with a good story. :) I’d appreciate it!”

    Hi Wes, just noticed this. Sir, you have a wry and funny natural writing voice and I would vouchsafe that many of the “literary scholars” are not as sly and witty as you, so please do not undersell yourself! Given the damage that has been done by our silly comments, may I offer some suggestions below:

    a.) The Manchurian Candidate – Richard Condon

    b.) The Spy Who Came In From The Cold – John le Carre (accent missing)

    c.) The World At Night – Alan Furst (Note: Mid-90’s — I am not that familiar with author but many good words from other readers)

    d.) The Third Man and other Stories – Graham Green (The Master — God, what a writer)

    e.) Gorky Park – Martin Cruz Smith (Wonderful, best of the “Renko” series)

    f.) Lee Child – “The Killing Floor” (Lee Child, Lee Child, unstoppable force, who has addicted every member of the Murphy family. I am ashamed to say I haven’t read him yet and at Thanksgiving, the entire family shook their heads and sighed)

    Hope you enjoy!

    Moe Murph

  59. Only really, really stupid people–and by that I mean people like you Thomas–equate popularity with quality.

  60. This article made me chuckle. I have never tried to read Brown’s more famous works – I’ve only read ~1/3 the way through Deception Point, at which time my incredulity at the “science” he proposed (I am a professional researcher in the geosciences and get to work a lot with aerospace engineers) in his book, and prefaced it with something to the effect of “all of the technology in this book is possible and real”, caused me to put the damn thing down and never pick it up again. Zero desire. It was just so goddamn bogus. It remains one of three fiction books I have never finished reading, nor do I plan to.
    It just wasn’t enjoyable, because it wasn’t believable. This coming from a guy who loves fantasy and sci-fi; for whom suspension of disbelief comes easily. I think maybe you can have a shitty plot, but good writing, or a good plot, and shitty writing, but not both. Maybe the success of bad literature lies in the combination of mediocre plot + shitty writing (+/- controversy?). Perhaps that’s the sweet spot.

  61. Pingback: Länksamling 2014:01 |

  62. I have read all but the latest of Dan Brown’s books and must admit that I enjoyed most of them. Like it or not, he writes books that people read. Recently, I stopped reading a “well-written” book less than half-way through because it bored the hell out of me. I just finished Brown’s first book, Digital Fortress–a complete mess. The mystery here is how this one got published at all. Bad books by established authors are nothing new, but this was his first novel. Who did he have to blow to get it on the market? I want his name and number, because I have a book that’s nearly as bad and going nowhere.

  65. the obvious seems to have escaped everyone including the publisher of the book and the producer of the movie, maybe even Dan Brown himself, that in the end there really is no book or movie here at all other than the usual travelogue of historical places in Italy. Because if the villain wanted to release this on the world he simply would have done it and THEN announced it if he needed his hubris satisfied. It’s not like he’s Blofeld holding the world for ransom. The book is maybe a bit less pitiful, because it turns out the villain released it a week before he said it would, and it was “only” to sterilize a third of the world’s population. Either way it strains credulity to anyone who even thinks once (much less twice) about the plot.

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Essays Notable Articles

I’ve decided to reinvent The Millions

Essays Notable Articles
May 12, 2003 | 1 book mentioned 2 min read

I’ve decided to reinvent The Millions. The blog world is crowded. I cannot possibly add to or improve upon the innumerable blogs out there that are about music or politics. So many of the things that I have a casual interest in are covered so obsessively in the blog world that it is hard to find something to write about in any sort of compelling way. Nor do I have much interest in cataloging my daily life. I know from experience that my life is capable of producing, tops, a paragraph or two of mildly amusing reading every few weeks, which does not a blog make. Plus, I would like to try to lure some people into reading what I write, and writing about what I ate for lunch today will likely not do the trick. As for the two of you (you know who you are) who read this blog regularly, I hope you will not be disappointed by my change away from that format. And finally, after some thinking, I have figured out what these changes will be. The Millions will be about books. For a book lover without a whole lot of free time (not to mention money) it can be very hard to consistantly find new and interesting books. To do so, in my experience, requires reading dozens of book reviews weekly and trolling book stores looking for the new and interesting (or the old and interesting). The internet improves this process slightly, mainly by cutting out some of the time required, but it offers little help in locating a book that you might like to take a look at. I have yet to find anyone that has had much luck with Amazon’s recommendations. I recently realized, though, that I am singularly qualified to write a blog about books. I work in a great little book store and therefore, in pursuit of my paycheck, I see with my own eyes the hundreds of books that come out weekly and I read reviews in dozens of newspapers and magazines. Finally, I have always loved books and I have always loved telling people about books, and now I have myself a little blog that can serve both of these loves. I hope to update several times a week, if not daily, and hopefully this thing will be chock full of interesting books at all times. So there it is… it feels good to get started on this thing, and if anyone has any comments, questions or suggestions let me know.

Essays Notable Articles
| 1 book mentioned 2 min read
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