On to Dan Brown then, the famous author of the Da Vinci Code. I did read the Code earlier. And I also happened to read one of his earlier works (if you could call it that) called Digital Fortress much more recently (I still wonder why!). The story is basically run-of-the-mill Brown I guess: cryptologists searching for secret codes in the backdrop of a standard text-book race-against-time thriller format of paperback fiction. One really sad part about the book is just the sheer number of inaccuracies and misrepresentations of computational theories. The story itself is badly written with the cheapest, totally unoriginal and completely predictable gimmicks you've seen before and you just can't believe people still use them. All the while I also felt the ghost of another book I'd read many years ago while reading parts of the more interesting story arc of Fortress. The entire part about a man tracking down all those people between who an all important ring changed hands (No. No. Not Frodo's ring.) reminded me vaguely of The Doomsday Conspiracy by Sidney Sheldon.
Dan Brown should probably be excused for writing a sorry book such as The Digital Fortress, since it was early into his fiction writing days; much before he became famous for the Da Vinci Code. We all know however that the Code itself was haunted by complaints of plagiarism. Suffice to say that the only thing Dan Brown can do is incorporate symbols and codes and ciphers into his stories. I don't even know if he does a good job at that either. And that's his calling card. Just like Grisham generally incorporates courtroom dramas and the finer points of the law into his stories. But unlike Grisham, a lawyer himself and Crichton, a scientist himself, there's little that Brown brings to his books (so far from the two that I have read) that makes someone meaningfully smarter about the complex world around us.
And as a final note on Brown and ...Code, here's Dave Barry's absolutely hilarious analysis of the Da Vinci Code techique. The original article was published in the Miami Herald, but it requires registration. Barry's piece is in the first post of the forum I linked to above. I read it a couple of years back. And it's still funny as hell. Enjoy!
1 comment:
Air india sucks. It is the worst ever airline in the world. I bought a ticket for my aunt and cousin from new york to bombay. On the return flight (back to JFK) when I bought the ticket it had an arrival into new york at 5:45 am. The connecting flight out of JFK for Miami was at 8:10 am. This was sufficient connection time. About 1 month after I bought the tickets, stupid air india changed its arrival time into new york from 5:45 to 6:45. This connection time was significantly shortened and is now not enough. The stupid air india forgot to correct for daylight savings. My aunt and cousin had to take the 8:10 am flight out of jfk for Miami, otherwise they would miss their connecting flight out of miami. So they have to stay overnight in new york so that they could take the 8:10 am flight on the following day. That stupid air india refused to make changes. I will never encourage or fly or buy a ticket for anyone on air india. It sucks.
Sunil (ashamed of India's airlines)
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