The Dan Brown Enigma

by Graham A Thomas

  The plotting and direction, Wiersema felt, were considered to be clumsy, and the trademark twists and turns that Brown had used so well in previous novels were not in evidence in The Lost Symbol. ‘An effective approach in his previous books, here the metronomic regularity of leading declaratives (“If Langdon had not yet grasped his role here tonight, soon he would” and “…Robert Langdon might suffer a similar fate” etc.) is almost insulting in its clumsy manipulativeness.’

  Wiersema went on to state that Brown had insulted the reader when using his usual procedure of keeping information back to build tension while the real identity of Mal’akh was ‘so thuddingly obvious I would be stunned if a single reader hadn’t figured it out less than a hundred pages in. This makes the next 350 pages, and the big “reveal” an exercise in frustration. I was distracted from the narrative as I tried to convince myself that Brown couldn’t possibly be so obvious, couldn’t possibly stoop so clumsily. Unfortunately, he was. And he did.’

  The review ended by calling The Lost Symbol a ‘heavy-handed, clumsy thriller’. The disappointment, it said, came from knowing that Brown can do better. ‘If it didn’t have Brown’s name on the cover, it would disappear without a ripple. Sure, it sucks the reader in, but, ultimately, it plays them for suckers.’[278]

  In the UK The Daily Telegraph also gave The Lost Symbol a rough ride, saying that although it wasn’t ‘quite the literary train wreck expected, there is less distraction from the familiar hokum which, precisely because it is so familiar, looks ever-less like ingenious puzzle-spinning and ever-more like a wearisome party trick.’

  The reviewer, Jeremy Jehu, suggested that as The Da Vinci Code had divided families, perhaps The Lost Symbol might bring them back into the fold because ‘they could all find it simply bland.’ Jehu certainly didn’t hold back. He called the narrative ‘lumpen, witless, adjectivally promiscuous and addicted to using italics to convey excitement where more adept thriller writers generally prefer to use words.’ If the book had a saving grace, he said, it is the setting, which gave Brown much more opportunity to get his locations right because it was set in America, ‘not Europe, a culture whose manners and mechanics Dan Brown utterly and hilariously failed to comprehend in The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons.’[279] Harsh words.

  Countering that point of view was Time, which said that the story was fun, if not a little bruising. Even though there were a lot of things the Time reviewer did not like about the book, there were some fundamental things that were right. ‘It would be irresponsible not to point out that the general feel, if not all the specifics, of Brown’s cultural history is entirely correct,’ wrote Lev Grossman. ‘He loves showing us places where our carefully tended cultural boundaries – between Christian and pagan, sacred and secular, ancient and modern – are actually extraordinarily messy.’

  For example, Langdon points out that the Capitol building was created as a shrine to the Temple of Vesta, ‘one of Rome’s most venerated mystical shrines,’ and that the Temple features a painting that shows George Washington looking like Zeus. ‘Power is power, and it flows from religious vessels to political ones with disturbing ease. This may or not be obvious, but it is true, and deeply weird, and not at all trivial.’

  Grossman also said that in Brown’s world there are no such things as coincidences ‘and things are not just things: they mean something. Brown’s hero, Robert Langdon, is after all a symbologist (following a branch of human intellectual inquiry that – it cannot be stated enough times – doesn’t exist, at Harvard or anywhere else).’ [280]

  Another area where Grossman provided positive feedback was in talking about Langdon’s ‘inexhaustive sense of wonderment’. According to the review, Langdon’s inner struggle lies between his healthy scepticism that is firmly routed in academia and ‘the ever mounting evidence that the world contains something miraculous that said scepticism can’t account for.’

  Grossman concluded that in The Lost Symbol Brown was trying to illustrate the fact that Washington DC is one of the world’s great capitals, with its own share of secrets, mystery and intrigue, ‘one that can hold its own with Paris or London or Rome.’ Brown, Grossman says, was trying to reclaim Washington’s richness, ‘its darkness, and its weirdness. It’s probably a quixotic effort, but it is nevertheless touchingly valiant.’

  So we know what the reviewers thought of The Lost Symbol but what about the readers? At the time of writing more than 700 people had written a review for The Lost Symbol on Amazon UK, with the book getting an average three-star rating (193 people had given it five stars and 167 one star).

  One reviewer who gave the book five stars called it ‘excellent,’ and said, ‘You couldn’t ask for anything better from Dan Brown.’ But the one general thread running through the comments was that The Lost Symbol was disappointing compared to The Da Vinci Code.

  ‘Don’t get me wrong – the book is certainly a page turner and in the style of Dan Brown always leaves you on a cliffhanger wanting to know what happens in the next chapter – but I felt the story line was a little disappointing and seemed to lack depth and fizzle away towards the end. I expect more from this author now and am interested to see how (or if) the character develops in the future.’[281] That said, the reviewer still gave the book a four-star rating, even though he said Langdon’s actions had become ‘a bit boring’.

  Another four-star review said the book was entertaining and ‘like all of Brown’s books it is hard to put down with cliffhangers at the end of each of the short chapters. I enjoyed the book and I guess the best conclusion is that this, like his other works, is pure escapism, as they are very far-fetched and the plots do stretch the imagination.’[282]

  At the lower end of the spectrum, one two-star review opined that the ‘plot didn’t flow as it was broken up by too many “facts” and I couldn’t personally understand the links that the characters were making to move the plot forward. For this reason, I found myself scanning certain pages and wishing I could hurry up and finish it.’[283]

  Another reviewer said, ‘You do not sympathise with any of the characters whatsoever. In fact you are more likely to wish that the villain would come out on top. At least that would make things interesting. Dan Brown has concentrated far too much on facts and figures that end up becoming awfully tedious, and you end up feeling that you would have been better off reading an encyclopaedia. I suspect that, as can sometimes happen after an author becomes successful, Dan Brown has been a little lazy with this novel. I hate to be so negative, as I really do enjoy most books I read, but this book was really bad.’[284]

  And finally, one of the many one-star reviews intoned, ‘This is a complete load of rubbish, based clearly on a formula which may have worked once or even twice but clearly it is short on ideas and relying very much on reputation to carry it through.’[285]

  Another urged readers to save their money, while one ended by saying, ‘Face it, Dan Brown, your basic story wore out with The Da Vinci Code, time to try a different approach.’

  So we can say from the above that first, the book is entertaining for some readers but not for all, and secondly that it reflects the world around us through the facts, realistic locations and culture that Brown has gone to great lengths to include in the book. The locations are certainly real and described accurately.

  However, it is formula writing. Brown hit on his formula with Angels & Demons and has simply substituted locations and science, but the characters are very similar. Langdon’s female companions are almost identical, the villains are very similar as are the plot lines. On that principle, Brown falls down with The Lost Symbol.

  Is it an adventure? Those readers who gave it four or five stars think it is. Many said it was a page-turner and very hard to put down because of Brown’s trademark cliffhanger chapter endings. So we can say that most people think it is an adventure.

  Is it written in a witty stylish way? The answer to this is probably not, because there isn’t any indication from the reviews or comm
ents from readers about this book being witty or even having any humour or charm at all. Most of the reviewers agree that the writing is not good or is heavy-handed, which makes the idea of it being written in a stylish way a little difficult to accept. Still, it is up to the reader to decide if Brown’s fifth novel meets the five principles or not.

  This brings us to the facts and the science. ‘Our history is as sick and weird as anybody’s!’ Lev Grossman wrote in his Time review. ‘There’s signal in the noise, order in the chaos! It just takes a degree from a nonexistent Harvard department to see it.’[286] Brown says it’s almost all real. He puts a Fact page right at the beginning of this book and expects us to embrace his version of the truth. But is it fact or is it all smoke and mirrors?

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  * * *

  SMOKE AND MIRRORS

  Now we’ve come full circle in the Dan Brown story, there is one question that only Brown can answer.

  In both The Da Vinci Code and in The Lost Symbol Brown started each book with a Fact page. In the case of The Lost Symbol that page says that all the rituals, science, artwork, organisations and monuments in the novel are real. The book opens with a ritual where the new initiate to the Freemasons drinks red wine out of a human skull that represents the decay of the flesh while the wine represents blood. This is said to be part of the 33rd Degree ritual and it is performed at night in the Scottish Rite House of The Temple in Washington DC. According to Brown, ‘The ceremony is described accurately. The fiction comes in as to whether or not it still happens at this moment in history in this room.’[287]

  However, this claim was refuted on NBC’s Today programme in October 2009 by the Grand Archivist of the Scottish Rite of the Freemasons, Arturo de Hoyos, who is also a 33rd degree Mason. He said that there were errors on the first page of the book. ‘We don’t perform the 33rd Degree in this building. We don’t confer it at night. The candidates to the members are dressed wrong. And the ceremony’s wrong.’

  But in the same programme Lodge 198 in Colorado opened its doors to the cameras. The Senior Warden in this lodge said he was sick and tired of people saying that Freemasons had no secrets. ‘Nothing could be further from the truth.’

  This lodge practices alchemy, which in the old days tried to turn base metals into gold but now represents personal transformation, taking men who are already good and turning them into something special. Initiates into the brotherhood are taken through an intense ritual that begins when the initiate’s vision is taken away by a ‘hoodwink’ which is placed over his head. Dressed as the Grim Reaper, a Master Mason warns the initiate that he will be enlightened, overcome darkness and be purified, but if he is afraid he is not to continue.

  The initiate then goes into a chamber of reflection where the ‘hoodwink’ is removed ‘and you’re presented with what is a very interesting image. And Dan Brown described it pretty well in his book.’[288]

  Brown’s hope with this book is that ‘it starts to pull people in the direction of the ancient mysteries, to look at the world through a different lens. This idea of the power of the human mind and the ability of thought to actually transform the world in which we live,’ he explained.

  Perhaps one of the most telling revelations by Brown is that the symbols and ancient mysteries come from a book called The Secret Teachings of All Ages. ‘That really is a core book for a lot of what I research and a lot of what I believe,’ Brown said.

  Written by Manly P. Hall in the 1920s, the book studies the wisdom of the ancients. Hall founded the Philosophical Research Society in Los Angeles to take these studies further, to look at how a person can become more fully human through reaching a higher level of consciousness. ‘The ancient mysteries deal in the concept of the power of the human mind,’ explained Brown. ‘The Masons celebrate mankind and the power of the human mind. In fact, in the Second Degree ritual there’s actually a line where they say, “Here you will learn the mysteries of human science.”’ [289]

  This human science is noetic science, which Brown said was the reason it took him so long to write The Lost Symbol. ‘I’m a sceptic and I hear about these experiments that are being done that categorically and scientifically prove that the human mind has power over matter.’

  Marilyn Schlitz, Director of the California Institute of Noetic Sciences, told the Today programme that the Institute’s researchers are running experiments where people through thought alone can affect how ice crystals are formed. Researchers in this field have put machines called random generators in many countries. ‘These are essentially electronic coin flippers. So if you imagine flipping a coin 100 times, you would expect based on a normal probability distribution, that you’d get an equal number of heads and tails.’[290]

  But perhaps there’s another way to find out more about Dan Brown and his version of the truth. TV presenter Tony Robinson of Time Team fame followed in Langdon’s and Brown’s footsteps to decode the mysteries of The Lost Symbol for Channel 4. At the beginning of his quest Robinson asked if there are ‘ancient secrets that turn men into gods and can you really move objects through the power of thought alone?’[291]

  Robinson’s impression on reading the book was that Dan Brown ‘absolutely loves Masons. He says they are the most trustworthy people in the world.’ They should be, because according to Brown they are the keepers of secret knowledge that could be incredibly dangerous if it fell into the wrong hands. ‘According to Brown, this secret ancient knowledge can unlock godlike powers that lie dormant within us but only a handful of people can do this, those who are deemed worthy,’ Robinson explained.

  First Robinson visited the United Grand Lodge in England. The first surprise was that the doors to the lodge were not locked, as one would expect if the Freemasons did really hold such powerful ancient knowledge. He also discovered that there is no Chamber of Reflection in this lodge. Could it be that the English Masons don’t use these chambers but others do?

  Robinson next found out that initiates are blindfolded at first because the ceremony of initiation is meant to represent rebirth. He also finds out that on the first ceremony the masons roll up a trouser leg, which in the old days was done ‘to show the state of your leg, if you were diseased or weak. Then you wouldn’t have the strength to work in the quarry.’

  Of course Masons don’t have their trouser legs rolled up all the time, just in this ceremony. ‘Stone masonry is the source of the symbols rituals and language of freemasonry today. It is also the source of its secrecy,’ Robinson explained. ‘Once builders of fabulous castles and cathedrals, stone masons were considered to be masters of a magical art. They were important members of society answerable to kings and bishops. The skills they passed onto their apprentices were jealously guarded. In a period of mass illiteracy it’s likely that elaborate secret handshakes and passwords identified members of the stone mason fraternity.’[292]

  Robinson was next taken into a room adorned with ancient symbols and icons, and where the ceiling was covered with symbols and images from the ancient world. But he discovered, at this lodge at least, the Freemasons are not the guardians of secret ancient mysteries.

  As he couldn’t find what he was looking for in England, Robinson continued his quest overseas, in Washington DC. ‘The men who created Washington were political idealists. Revolutionary and democratic ideas were common to the enlightened 18th century and to Freemasons, whose core values included fraternity, equality and liberty,’ Robinson explained.

  To find out if the Founding Fathers of America had a Masonic agenda, Robinson went to the Pennsylvania Statehouse in Philadelphia, where in the summer of 1776 the United States came into being when the Declaration of Independence was signed. Many of the Founding Fathers were Masons and Robinson stated in the programme that their Masonic influence should be seen in the Declaration of Independence.

  Meeting up with a high-ranking Mason, Akram Enlias, Robinson asked him if he thought the creation of America was a Masonic experiment. The second line in the Declara
tion of Independence – ‘the law of nature and of nature is God’ – is at the heart of Masonic philosophy, Robinson was told. ‘The Founding Fathers believed in the natural order of the universe and if you look at the rituals of Freemasonry, this part of the teachings in the Second Degree, which says it is part of the endeavour, is to imitate the divine plan which manifests itself in nature,’ Enlias told him.

  Next stop on his epic quest was the Library of Congress in Washington DC. ‘Thomas Jefferson, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and his idealistic words are deeply woven into the fabric of the US. If America was anyone’s vision it was his,’ Robinson told the viewing audience. ‘The progressive values that Jefferson championed – liberty, equality and progressive democracy – were in tune with Freemasonry, as were his calls for universal education. This ideal was set in stone in the Library of Congress, which grew out of his collection of books.’

  In The Lost Symbol, Langdon takes refuge in the reading room of the Library of Congress and marvels at its architecture. The Founding Fathers created the building because they realised that members of Congress would need information on virtually any subject. Robinson asked the curator if the building was Masonic because of its ornate symbols and architecture. The answer was disappointing. It isn’t a Masonic building, despite the fact that it shares some images. ‘Dan Brown says it is the most beautiful room in the world and it’s hard to argue with that.’

  Robinson learned that the Masons did not hold a monopoly on enlightened ideas. Thomas Jefferson promoted similar values. ‘He shared many of the same ideas as the Masons – liberty, equality, justice for all and that sort of thing – but he saw them as commonsense values,’ explained Robinson. ‘So while a handful of Founding Fathers were Masons, America wasn’t their creation. There was no Masonic masterplan.’