Or, rather, a very convincing simulation of death, after which Langdon, even though he is little more than a spectator at the climax, manages to redeem himself sufficiently for Peter Solomon to reveal the final truth about the Lost Word with “the power to transform humankind by unlocking the Ancient Mysteries.”
So, the narrative of The Lost Symbol is built upon a structural framework resembling Freemason initiation rites, down to the symbolic death and rebirth of the initiate. (Brown gives us a purposefully lurid version of the “death ritual” of the third Masonic degree in chapter 117.) Symbolic death permeates the novel from its very first line—“The secret is how to die”—and even Langdon’s own near-death experience is foreshadowed as far back as his escape from the Library of Congress in chapter 59: “Robert Langdon felt like a corpse.”
At the very least, then, I would feel comfortable asserting that The Lost Symbol is intended as a Masonic allegory much like Mozart’s The Magic Flute. (Dan Brown confirms his familiarity with Mozart’s connection to the Freemasons through a veiled reference in an interview reprinted in Secrets of the Code.) An allegorical novel, however, is not necessarily the same thing as a hypersigil; Langdon’s initiation may simply be an elaborate literary device rather than an attempt to spark a similar awakening within the reader’s consciousness.
Is there anything in The Lost Symbol to persuade us to take that extra step in how we perceive it?
I would suggest this is a good time to consider the other major theme of The Lost Symbol, the one we’ve ignored up to now: Katherine Solomon’s preoccupation with noetics. “We have barely scratched the surface of our mental and spiritual capabilities,” Katherine thinks to herself early on. “Human thought, if properly focused, [has] the ability to affect and change physical mass . . . Human thought can literally transform the physical world . . . We are the masters of our own universe . . . This is the missing link between modern science and ancient mysticism.”
Similar celebratory references to noetic science, like Katherine’s far-out claim that she’s successfully established the weight of a human soul, crop up throughout the novel, and though some critics have called Katherine’s field of research an annoying distraction from the “real” story of the action-packed thriller plot, perhaps it’s more integral to Dan Brown’s intended effect than they recognize. After all, Peter Solomon’s final revelation to Robert Langdon is immediately followed by a similar presentation from Katherine—a speech that both complements and completes the wisdom passed on by her brother. “I have witnessed human minds affecting the physical world in myriad ways,” she tells Langdon. “We have scientifically proven that the power of human thought grows exponentially with the number of minds that share that thought . . . The idea of universal consciousness is no ethereal New Age concept. It’s a hard-core scientific reality.”
This alludes to the real-life research described in Lynne McTaggart’s The Intention Experiment, which Katherine (and thus Dan Brown) name-checked much earlier in the novel. It’s at this point that Brown reveals his own “intention experiment,” when Katherine tells Langdon: “I guarantee you, as soon as I publish my work, the Twitterati will all be sending tweets that say, ‘learning about noetics,’ and interest in this science will explode exponentially.”
Can we take this to be Dan Brown’s “mission statement” for The Lost Symbol—and is it possible Brown wrote this novel in order to put readers through an overwhelming experience specifically designed to make them receptive, through both esoteric and scientific arguments, to the possibility of human consciousness obtaining godlike powers, the “Great Work” of alchemical lore? And can those tweets, which began appearing shortly after the book was released to the public, be taken as evidence of the hypersigil’s successful activation?
Remember, I am dealing strictly in maybe logic here, unconcerned with what is true or false, only with what appears plausible based on the evidence seen. Allegorical page-turner, postmodern sorcery, or just a clever yarn? You’ll have to decide for yourself what to believe.
I should make one confession, though: not everybody forgot Stephen Rubin’s claims about the importance of the novel’s release date. I e-mailed Doubleday asking if September 15 was the date Rubin had been hinting at back in 2008 and, if so, what significance it held. A spokesperson replied with a simple explanation: the publication date was nothing more than “classic Dan Brown fun.” September 15, 2009, was 9/15/09; the sum of those three numbers was 33. (It’s a shame he didn’t get the novel completed closer to his original schedule, as he could have achieved the same effect on September 18, 2006, and worked in that reference to the laying of the Capitol’s cornerstone.)
As far as the public is concerned, then, the publication date of The Lost Symbol was just an opportunity for Dan Brown to make another Freemason in-joke, and has nothing to do with his intention of opening our minds to the ancient mysteries, at least not the ancient mysteries of the Eleusinians.
As far as the public is concerned, anyway.
The Critics Speak—Loudly
by Hannah de Keijzer
After a six-year wait, Dan Brown’s follow-up to The Da Vinci Code was never going to slip unnoticed into stores. But rarely has a book received the sort of attention showered on The Lost Symbol, fed by a relentless and, for the book industry, an unprecedented marketing campaign.
The release of the cipher- and symbol-bedecked cover in July 2009, followed later by a daily release of clues to its contents on Facebook and Twitter, set off a flurry of blog posts and tweets. Newspapers, magazines, and television fed the anticipation, offering speculation and commentary. Not only was The Lost Symbol the story, the security surrounding The Lost Symbol was the story, the decision to publish a Kindle edition was the story, the New York Times’s breaking of Doubleday’s embargo was the story, and an unauthorized early review of the book—in Norway!—was the story.
The effort had its intended result. The book sold a record one million copies on its first day. The number reached two million the first week. The Guardian (UK) heralded it as the “fastest-selling book of all time.”
Predictably, The Lost Symbol also propelled critics to their keyboards to see who could compose the most acerbic prose. “Didactic . . . repetitive . . . clumsy,” was Maureen Dowd’s snarky verdict in the New York Times. “In the next opus,” she continued, “Langdon will probably be wearing a red Shriner’s fez with his Burberry turtleneck and Harris tweed.” Lev Grossman, of Time magazine, said Brown introduced characters with “a kind of electric breathlessness that borders on the inadvertently hilarious.” Reviews by readers were hardly kinder: The Lost Symbol received a decidedly tepid three stars on both the Amazon and Barnes & Noble Web sites. Comments ranged from “the ending sucked” to “fire your editor.”
Other piquant critiques included:
• “ . . . lumpen, witless, adjectivally-promiscuous and addicted to using italics to convey excitement where more adept thriller writers generally prefer to use words.” (Jeremy Jehu of the UK Telegraph)
• Like “riding pillion on a jetbike driven by a demented architectural historian screaming conspiratorial travelogue descriptions into your ears via a radiomike.” (blogger Nick Pelling)
• “It is not the theological message of the Bible that ‘ye shall be gods,’ despite Dan Brown’s wishing it to be so. That would be the message of the serpent, not the message of the Savior.” (Ben Witherington on Beliefnet.com)
• Langdon is “the most irritating Harvard-educated, mullet-wearing sexless pedant of all time.” (Matt Taibi in Rolling Stone)
The book also inspired parody and satire. The online magazine Slate released a “Dan Brown Sequel Generator” inviting readers to select a city (Philadelphia, Ottawa, Chicago), a nefarious cult (Major League Baseball, Daughters of the American Revolution, the Shriners), and out popped a three-paragraph dust-jacket summary that looked shockingly simila
r to a real Dan Brown synopsis. At least a dozen writers mimicked Brown’s penchant for thinking aloud in italics. Meanwhile, blogger Phil Terrett said a simple “hello” to Robert Langdon might elicit the following response:
“Hello, now let me see, Hello is a word that originally was invented by devil worshipers for a new pudding they invented in Abyssinia in 1283, it was red, invoked hell and contained jello, hence hell-o. They began to take the pudding to food parties at each other’s houses and greeted their brethren with Hell-o. . . .”
And what was Dan Brown’s response to the torrent of negative criticism that has followed all his novels? “Some critics say I don’t write like William Shakespeare or William Faulkner, and they’re right. I write in a modern, efficient style that serves only the story.”
Indeed, Brown is an excellent storyteller despite stylistic flaws and a tendency toward information overload. He knows how to string the reader along: protagonists appear to die when there are two hundred pages left! How can you not want to find out how that’s explained? And since the next chapter is only three pages away, who cares if it’s already one o’clock in the morning? We have to keep reading.
Many of mainstream America’s newspapers lauded Brown’s ability to keep readers on the edge of their seats. “Call it Brownian motion: a comet-tail ride of short paragraphs, short chapters, beautifully spaced reveals and, in the case of The Lost Symbol, a socko unveiling of the killer’s true identity,” wrote Louis Bayard in the Washington Post. “Dan Brown spins a good yarn, plain and simple. When did that become something not deserving of respect?” demanded Reed Tucker of the New York Post. Or, as Katie Crocker of the University of South Carolina’s student newspaper, the Daily Gamecock, admitted somewhat guiltily, The Lost Symbol is “a read you curl up to, at home, when you feel your own drab life needs excitement.”
Janet Maslin, the reviewer for the New York Times, summed it up well. Dan Brown’s “authorial shortcomings,” she wrote, “were outweighed by his craft as a quizmaster and a storyteller.” And “within this book’s hermetically sealed universe, characters’ motivations don’t really have to make sense,” she argued, “they just have to generate the nonstop momentum that makes The Lost Symbol impossible to put down.” Dan Brown, she declared, had brought “sexy back to a genre that had been left for dead.” Just because many critics panned it, said Reed Tucker of the New York Post, “enjoying it doesn’t make us stupid. That’s TV’s job.”
The novel was also an unexpected boon for Masons, many of whom had anticipated the same evil conspiracy-within-a-conspiracy treatment from Brown as the Illuminati received in Angels & Demons. Arturo de Hoyos, Grand Archivist and Grand Historian of the Scottish Rite in America and a top-ranked 33° Mason, found The Lost Symbol “respectful” of the brotherhood. The Masonic Traveler was downright effusive, noting that “Brown’s treatment of Masonry was very tender, almost too much so . . . in parts [Brown was] almost writing as if he were creating one of our own brochures.”
A few critics also found intellectual heft in Brown’s latest offering. They understood that Brown’s appeal came not just from the story, but also from the way he wrestled with big ideas not usually associated with action-adventure tales. As Stephen Amidon in the Sunday Times (London) put it: “Brown’s big breakthrough is to understand that most fiction readers these days are really looking for nonfiction books in disguise.” Steven Waldman of Beliefnet credited it with renewing interest in deism, the faith of our Founding Fathers. (Dan Brown has himself reminded his audience that America was not founded as a Christian country, but became one.)
Perhaps the most intriguing theme to emerge from among the reviewers of The Lost Symbol was that it was very much an “American” story.
First, there’s the childlike, innocent fun of Langdon’s puzzles, which reflects Dan Brown’s own childhood. “On Christmas morning, when we were little kids, [my father] would create treasure hunts through the house with different limericks or mathematical puzzles that led us to the next clue. And so, for me, at a young age, treasure hunts were always exciting,” the novelist told one interviewer. Adam Gopnik, of The New Yorker, highlighted this theme in his review: “Tom Swift and the Hardy Boys were always in the midst of compelling conspiracies; there was always a code that had to be cracked, and ancient Asian priests and ancient Asian cults invading their cozy American worlds.”
Second, the novel “comes home” to America after Langdon’s adventures in Paris and Rome. Brown imbues Washington with the same sense of intrigue he’d already bestowed upon his European settings. This note, from Lev Grossman of Time, may not be exactly a welcome home for a hero, but it resonates:
What he did for Christianity in Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code, Brown is now trying to do for America: reclaim its richness, its darkness, its weirdness. It’s probably a quixotic effort, but it is nevertheless touchingly valiant. We’re not just overweight tourists in T-shirts and fanny packs, he says. Our history is as sick and weird as anybody’s! There’s . . . order in the chaos! It just takes a degree from a nonexistent Harvard department to see it.
Dan Brown himself appraised his choice of settings this way: “Washington, D.C., has everything that Rome, Paris, and London have in the way of great architecture—great power bases,” he told NBC. “Washington has obelisks and pyramids and underground tunnels and great art and a whole shadow world that we really don’t see.”
Third, what could be more American than our drive toward self-improvement and self-realization? The message of hope and moral uplift that is most often found in talk shows and Hollywood movies? “Ye are gods,” Brown (selectively) quotes the Scriptures, as he suggests that you, too, can elevate your consciousness to the point where you will understand “The Word.”
Adam Gopnik saw it this way: “Brown’s secret turns out to be the same as Oprah’s beloved ‘Secret’—you can have it all.” Or, as Janet Maslin put it: “In the end it is Mr. Brown’s sweet optimism, even more than Langdon’s sleuthing and explicating, that may amaze his readers most.”
Perhaps Dan Brown’s own review of his novels says it best. As he told Matt Lauer of NBC News, “One thing I love to do is to get people to see things through a slightly different lens. . . . I think my books contain a lot of meat, but it tastes like dessert.”
Acknowledgments
This book has been a fascinating journey among the many layers of plot, puzzles, and ideas to be found in The Lost Symbol. Many people have helped us see it to completion.
As ever, the people to whom we owe the greatest debt are our families: Julie and David, Helen and Hannah. We imposed upon them the side effects of a pressure-filled deadline; their understanding never flagged. The importance of their wisdom, love, and support cannot be overstated.
The book owes its existence in the first place to Danny Baror, agent extraordinaire, who had the vision and turned it into reality. Thanks as well to Heather Baror, who has joined her father’s team.
We also want to thank our contributing editors. First and foremost, David A. Shugarts, extraordinary investigative journalist, invaluable contributor to the entire Secrets series, and great storyteller. His singular insights into the mind and methods of Dan Brown has allowed him time and again to predict, with remarkable accuracy, the ideas and plotting of The Lost Symbol, as evidenced by his groundbreaking Secrets of the Widow’s Son, written in 2005.
Paul Berger, who has served as a researcher, writer, and editor on our previous Secrets books, was once again a reliable and cheerful aide-de-camp, ready at all hours to fill in the hole or find the missing piece of a puzzle. We wish him well as a new father, and express our thanks to Sofie for lending so much of Paul’s time to us. Lou Aronica is the newest member of our team. Lou is a richly experienced publisher, editor, and author, and his interviewing and writing skills proved of great benefit to this book.
Our network of expert contributors are the heart and s
oul of this book. They responded generously when asked for their hard-won insights on very short notice. We thank them all for very special contributions: Amir Aczel, Diane Apostolos-Cappadona, Karen Armstrong, William Arntz, Lou Aronica, Michael Barkun, Paul Berger, Steven C. Bullock, David D. Burstein, Richard Dawkins, Arturo de Hoyos, Hannah de Keijzer, Elonka Dunin, Glenn W. Erickson, Heather Ewing, Jack Fruchtman Jr., Warren Getler, Marcelo Gleiser, Deirdre Good, Ron Hogan, Mitch Horowitz, Eamon Javers, George Johnson, Steven Johnson, Mark Koltko-Rivera, Irwin Kula, Thomas Levenson, Lynne McTaggart, Michael Parkes, David Plotz, Ingrid Rowland, Jim Sanborn, Marilyn Mandala Schlitz, Jeff Sharlet, Mark Tabbert, and James Wasserman.
We were also fortunate to work with the able team at William Morrow, led by our editor, Peter Hubbard. Peter’s own fascination with science, cosmology, and new paradigms of thought made him an ideal partner for this project. We also want to thank Liate Stehlik, publisher; Lynn Grady, associate publisher; Tavia Kowalchuk and Shawn Nicholls from marketing; Shelby Meizlik and Seale Ballenger from publicity; art director Mary Schuck; and the rest of the Morrow team.
Personal acknowledgments from Arne de Keijzer: Warmest of thanks for the understanding and support given by family and friends, including Dan Burstein, Julie O’Connor, and their son, David; Steve de Keijzer and Marni Virtue; Bob and Carolyn Reiss; Jelmer and Rosa Dorreboom; Brian and Joan Weiss; Clem and Ann Malin; Lynn Northrup; Sandy West; Ben Blout and Marit Abrams and all my other forbearing friends. Hannah de Keijzer, whose contribution can be found in chapter 10, was not just a fine editor and researcher, but of great moral support. Elonka Dunin, our friendly dean of sleuths, wrote the cipher found in my dedication. I also thank all those who helped us, in large ways and small, to develop this amazing run of Secrets books.
Personal acknowledgments from Dan Burstein: My wife, Julie O’Connor, and my son, David D. Burstein, have not only put up with a lot to make these books happen but have contributed a great deal as well. As a family, we have spent countless hours trying to decode artworks, mysteries, clues, and connections in the Dan Brown novels. We have traveled in the footsteps of Robert Langdon to Paris, Rome, and now Washington, D.C., as well. As tangible indications of our rich family collaboration on these pursuits, Secrets of The Lost Symbol features an essay by David D. Burstein (see chapter 2) and photographs of notable buildings in Washington by Julie O’Connor. My partnership with Arne de Keijzer to create and write these books is a family affair, too, and I deeply appreciate the love and support from Helen and Hannah de Keijzer. Special thanks to family, friends, and business partners for all their ideas, practical help, moral support, and patience while I have been occupied trying to finish this book: Jean Aires, Dan Borok, Craig and Karina Buck, Bonnie Burstein, Max Chee, Betsy DeTurk and her family, Marty Edelston, Judy Friedberg, Adam Guha, Joe Kao, Barbara O’Connell, Cynthia O’Connor and her family, Joan Aires O’Connor, Maureen O’Connor, Peter G. Peterson, Angeles and Sergio Sanchez, Sam Schwerin, and Brian Waterhouse. As I think about the forces that have shaped my life, my ideas, and all my creative works, including this book, there is perhaps no more important acknowledgment due than the one to my parents. If ever there were immortal souls in this world, they belong to Dorothy and Leon Burstein, who died in 1983 and 1991, but whose gifts of wisdom and values remain accessible to me every single day of my life.
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