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The Da Vinci Code has some of the same interests found in Umberto Eco’s novel Foucault’s Pendulum, but the two novels have some essential differences which arise from the way the texts handle the question of conspiracies and secret societies.

In both novels, conspiracy theories and secret societies are central to the development of plot. But Foucault’s Pendulum treats the question in an entirely different way than The Da Vinci Code. In Eco’s novel, the characters engage in a sort of game in which they develop an elaborate hoax involving the decoding of texts and implicating several secret societies (the Knights Templar being the main one). As the novel progresses, the hoax is taken seriously by some mysterious parties, and ultimately gets wildly out of hand. It is something of a wild and dark novel.

When I first read The Da Vinci Code, it brought Eco’s novel to mind immediately because of the similarity of interest in conspiracies and secret societies. But in Foucault’s Pendulum, these issues are treated from the beginning of the text and are essential to the plot’s unfolding. This is unlike The Da Vinci Code, where the real conspiracies are not revealed until much later in the book and serve as a resolution to the action. This creates an interesting effect in the two books. In Eco’s novel, each revelation of a bit of information sucks the reader further into the story (admittedly confusing him even more), creating a desire to read on and look for clarity in the ever muddier waters. In Brown’s story, the revelation of the details of secret societies and conspiracies seems to slow the story down. In the chapters where Teabing begins his long explanation of the Grail, we find the story suddenly a little slower and just a little less interesting. It becomes progressively so, right up to its disappointing ending.

To me, this weakness lies in The Da Vinci Code’s lack of clarity about exactly what sort of text it is. Is its purpose to entertain and weave a good story, or to reveal to us the Truth about Jesus, Mary, the Church, the Grail, and Whatever Else? The revelations get in the way of the story, rather than functioning to advance the action.

In Foucault’s Pendulum, it seems that the text has no agenda to reveal any sort of truth to the reader, at least not about conspiracy theories and secret societies. The irony of this is that it leaves the reader feeling that Eco has given us a very erudite treatment of exactly these things (which we never quite find in Brown’s story). While the text’s agenda seems to be to demonstrate through its action and characters just how confusing codes, signs, and semiotics can really be, it engages readers through its narrative without ever explicitly going through “narrated lectures�” about precisely this topic. This is a very different handling of the problem than what we get in The Da Vinci Code.

The Da Vinci Code is a very enjoyable and engaging read up until Teabing begins his lecture. At this point, the narrative takes a serious turn for the worst, and the ending leaves a feeling of “that’s it?�” Perhaps if the novel kept clear its agenda to entertain and not to educate, it would ultimately be a more effective text.

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I’m transferring some old blogs over to this site. This was originally posted here in January 2006.

In an earlier post, I made mention of the “poetics of the oppressed�” and its relation to The Da Vinci Code. I want to elaborate on this just a bit more.

It ties back, really, to the book’s self-representation. Throughout the story, we seem to be reading a championing of the oppressed, in this case the suppressed Sacred Feminine. Robert Langdon has apparently made a lifetime of study of the topic, and is a professor of symbology at Harvard, where he teaches the importance of the Sacred Feminine in archetypes and symbols which permeate human consciousness. According to the novel, it is in our greatest art where we find the Sacred Feminine alive and thriving, refusing to be suppressed by the powers that be — Peter’s legacy of dominion over Mary as it stands today in patriarchal structures (especially the Church).

So, here’s the question I ask. How much does The Da Vinci Code partake in a poetics of the oppressed? To what extent does it demonstrate for us the ways in which a text can speak for those whose voices have been suppressed throughout history?

To me, the novel doesn’t do much to partake in this endeavor it supposedly champions. While there is some subversion of the motif of the knight rescuing the damsel in distress (as demonstrated in Teabing failing in his role as knight), it is not significantly overturned. The book is still, largely a boy-saves-girl-from-danger story (i.e.,Langdon saves Sophie). It is just too formulaic — without any real poking at the boundaries of the formula — to have much to say for the suppressed and oppressed.

Perhaps it seems to much to ask of a popular novel, hoping it will play a more subversive role (as most more serious literature is almost expected to do). Surely we are not expecting Dan Brown to write a best seller that sounds like Sylvia Plath or Tony Harrison’s poems. And no, that really is not the point. But there are, here and there, “pop�” novels that do a pretty fair job of subverting the status quo. One of my favorites which does so is the series by Jasper Fforde beginning with The Eyre Affair. That is worth a read, if you like something that goes past standard formulas, and yet still remains light and entertaining reading.

By the way, have you ever wondered what a course in symbology might entail? Well, nothing, really, since there is no such thing. But here is a nice tongue-in-cheek look at what it might involve, if there were such a thing:

Symbology at Harvard

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I’m transferring some old blogs over to this site. This was originally posted here in January 2006.

One of the fun things about The Da Vinci Code is its play with ideas and people in history which seem to weave together a plausible theory (if not a plausible story). Brown’s choice of name for his character Jacques Sauniere is one of those fun little tidbits of information.

Berenger Sauniere lived in the late Nineteenth Century, and he plays an interesting role in the quest for the Grail, at least if you believe the Grail to be a collection of documents offering proof for Jesus and Mary’s subsequent generations.

In 1883, Sauniere was assigned at age 33 to the parish at Rennes-le-Chateau, where he promptly began efforts to restore the church there. In about 1886 or 1887, it appears that during his restoration works, he stumbled across a set of documents (contents of these documents remains a sort of vague mystery). His interest in the documents led him to spend a great deal of time investigating the church’s graveyard, where he eventually decoded something found on one of the tombstones (again, the details here are vague and mysterious). The breaking of this code led him to travel to Carcasonne, from which journey he returned and experienced a remarkable turnaround in his fortunes. Generally, it is thought that his finds and fortunes had some relation to a discovery of the Grail.

The linking of one of his characters to this historical figure through the use of naming is one of the things in The Da Vinci Code that makes the book fun. A good fiction writer is often conscious of such techniques for teasing his readers, and allowing those “in the know�” to feel they have shared a sort of inside joke with the novel. Besides the Sauniere connection, the book’s references to things like the Gnostic Gospels (as mentioned in earlier posts) and brief mentions of word etymologies give the reader a feeling that s/he is involved with a sort of clever game with the author — something, perhaps, very similar to the decoding game in which Sophie and Langdon engage.

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The Da Vinci Code is a book that has ruffled plenty of feathers. Not surprisingly, the majority of feathers needing smoothing right now are found in groups whose interest is anything but literary.

But the book does offer up a point of reference for discussing literary concerns too. I don’t want to consider the question here of how various topics (religious, etc.) are treated by Dan Brown, the man, and what his opinions on those issues might be. Instead, I want to think about how the text represents the issues it raises.

For example, the first thing we come across in reading the text is a “Fact Sheet.” In it, there are claims made for the veracity of certain representations the book contains. Most notably, we see that its representation of Opus Dei is supposed to be considered accurate. This is a point that needs some examination and discussion.

In the text, we find Silas and the bishop represented as villains whose only real agenda seems to be money (the bishop) or a sort of out-of-control religious fervor. However, even a quick Google search will demonstrate just how wide the experience of Opus Dei can be. Many who lead perfectly normal lives are mixed in with the few who seek help from an abusive cult-like control.

The novel mentions the website for the Opus Dei Awareness Network for more information on the sort of “harm�” done by Opus Dei. I suggest a visit to that site, accompanied by a Google search for more information on the group. A visit to the Opus Dei website itself is also quite useful.

This fact sheet and the pointer to a “real-life�” website serve a function in the novel. They seem to give a level of accuracy to the text’s representations of what we see in “our world.�” Indeed, it sets up the novels self-representation too. The book seems to poke at the boundary between an investigative report and a novel. The subversion of this boundary, to me, seems to be the real source of the controversy surrounding the book. Why worry about what a novel says about Opus Dei, or Jesus’ sex life, or anything else? Isn’t it meant to weave a good story and entertain us?

The text itself, though, raises this question when it chooses to represent itself as offering some sort of “facts�” to readers.

Continuing on the idea of REpresentations in The Da Vinci Code, the novel’s treatment of history is an interesting topic to look at. It, of course, plays with the notion that history is always written by those in power, the winners. In this case, the winners are the patriarchal, the male, the Church, etc. The Other is the Sacred Feminine.

The novel spends a great deal of time on the notion of the poetics of the oppressed, if in a very watered down “pop�” form. The idea most presented in the book seems to be that in all of humanity’s archetypes and symbols, the Sacred Feminine lives on, quietly subverting the “winner�” of the Battle Between Peter and Mary.

And Dan Brown, in The Da Vinci Code, has given a nice illusion of a concern for historical accuracy, representing itself as aligned with those poetic voices speaking in opposition to the powers that be. It seems to me to fail to actually hit both those goals, but it does keep the illusion going fairly well for much of the story.

As far as historical accuracy, the text represents Teabing and Langdon as guys “in the know,�” men who have spent their lives researching the Grail stories and all. And of course in Teabing we have the knight on his Grail quest. In his recitation of all the Grail information and the story of Mary and Jesus, he cites from the Gnostic Gospels in an attempt to lend validity to his opinions. A read through those documents will remind that what The Da Vinci Code offers is a representation of their content rather than any sort of summary or exposition.

That’s the thing about fiction (or history, or any other text) — it is a representation of a thing, not to be mistaken for any sort of objective picture of Truth, Reality, whatever. This is what particularly puzzles me about the reception The Da Vinci Code has received. It is not a container of Truth (a Grail of sorts?); it is a novel. It purports to be fiction. And yet we find it in the middle of all the hoopla over what it might mean for Christianity’s future.

Puzzling, that.