Dan Brown and general persiflage

[erastes]

Well, I finished Dan Brown's Deception Point in about 2 hours in total. This is because he is so bad - so VERY bad - that you can literally flip through the book reading only a few lines on each page, some pages missed out altogether.?~

His obsession about describing EVERYTHING is so so nauseating.

I tell you, I wish I could write as badly and be as successful.  I need to find a really shocking premise expounded by someone else and write a predictable thriller about it.

I suppose predictable is a bit unfair. After all, when the heroine is stranded on an iceburg, which then calved into the sea (the artic... where the survival rate would have been about 2 minutes) I really wouldn't expect there to be a submarine within 2 miles radius and when she started tapping SOS out with her ice pick, I wouldn't have expected anyone to hear....

The bit where I was REALLY wanted to jump up and down on the book and set it on fire was towards the end.  He set up this premise where the heroine sent some vital documents to her father's office.  He wrote nearly a whole chapter on this - how she did it, how she (oh so cleverly) tricked the Black Ops force to remove the dampening field on the area so the signal would go out - how she hoped that the machine would redial.. and every few minutes he'd remind us that she was sending it to her FATHER'S office.

Then - at the beginning of the next chapter, as the villain finds out what she's done, he walks towards her and she thinks something like: "She knew that he would know what she'd done, that she'd sent the fax. To her father's office"

It's like he thinks that the act of turning the page will have wiped our memories or something. 

The other thing is that I get no mental pictures as he writes. At all. He flipped from Washington to the Arctic (named because the Greek for bears is Arktos and there are no bears in the anarctic, which is ante-arktos or something OMG I learned something from the horrid Brown) then off to New Jersey, and back to Washington - and I never got a sense of how things looked, felt, smelled, tasted, sounded.  As a descriptive writer he absolutely sucks - he just vomits forth fact after fact and doesn't involve the reader in what's happening.

I know. I shouldn't read this crap. But I do think that reading the bad stuff is almost as educational as reading the beautiful stuff. And frankly, it's more inspirational.  When I read my peers like Lee Rowan and rwday and evremonde and dubaiyan and gehayi and so so many others I think "fuck - why do I bother?" (and that's not false modesty or fishing for compliments, erastes is having trouble getting into his stride, whereas underlucius found pretty writing much easier.) but then when I read Dan Brown or others as bad it gives me heart and determination to continue and to improve and to learn.

And the reason I read Dan Brown first from the library books I have is that I have The Gallows Thief by Cornwell next, and I'm hoping that will be a completely different experience.

I'm watching "Rambo" - I've never seen it before. Amazing how a big film like that slips past one's radar.  It's a lot better than I thought it would be. It would be improved by some gay subtext, but then again, what wouldn't?

Comments

[erastes.livejournal.com]

David and Jonathan has been done? Point me!!!

I never saw John the B as a bear - explain please

I wondered if Cain and Abel had a chance. It should do, specially if Cains wife was the as evi as they say

[tharain.livejournal.com]

Well, how curious. I'm afraid the D&J thing was a rash assumption on my part, since it's always been such a flash point for arguments. However, a quick google search shows nothing in the land of flat out fiction on the subject. So. There you go. Surpassing The Love Of Women.

John the Bear: Lives in the desert, has a beard, wears furs, kinda bear-influenced. Although, maybe not. Sounds kinda hot, actually.

Cain and Abel, gay incest? Very inflammatory. A love triangle? Who *was* Cain's wife? Lilith, theoretically, was Adam's first wife. Toss her into the mix. My, my.

About Cain's Wife...

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Actually, I once owned a book that contained all the bits and books of the Bible that had been edited out over the years. In the Cain and Abel story in that book, Cain and Abel had differences that went beyond Cain = farmer and Abel = shepherd.

See, they were fraternal twins. Not to each other. Each man had a twin sister. And their parents' idea was that Cain would marry Abel's twin, and Abel would marry Cain's twin. Like mating animals from two different litters. The general idea seemed to be that Cain wasn't as closely related to Abel's twin sister because she wasn't Cain's twin--even though they had exactly the same parents.

Problem--Cain had the serious hots for his own twin. And one day, after the two had brought their offerings to God, they got in an argument about who was going to get which sister. And after a few minutes, Cain picked up something (a stone, the altar rock, a cane, a plough...it varies according to what version you're listening to) and killed his brother. Some versions say that Cain strangled Abel. Then Cain ran off with his sister, and they started a family in the east.

And Adam and Eve had another kid, Seth. And when he grew up, he married Abel's sister.

This is actually pretty close to the Muslim version of the story of Cain and Abel. And apparently it exists in the Midrash of Leviticus, too.

So it really was about jealousy and incest. Just not gay incest. Oh, well, you can't have everything.

Re: About Cain's Wife...

[erastes.livejournal.com]

That's very interesting. And intensely irritating that I can't slash it up. Grrr!

Thank you, hun. You are a mine of information!

Re: About Cain's Wife...

[gehayi.livejournal.com]

Why can't you? Just say that Cain and Abel's rivalry over their twins started because they had so much trouble admitting that they really wanted each other. And Abel figured that having Cain's sister was as close as he could get to having Cain, but Cain figured if he couldn't have Abel he'd rather not have Abel's sister as a substitute. And Cain's sister knew and understood his deepest, darkest desires, but loved him, even though she knew she shouldn't...

Re: About Cain's Wife...

[tharain.livejournal.com]

Oh, the fundies would have FITS over that one. It would be a delight, if only for the screams of anger.

Being raised a Baptist, I didn't know about the "twin sisters and incest ridden murder" aspects of this story. My education was strictly orthodox Protestant. Man, we miss out on all the juicy stuff.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

You are an evil muse. I may have to do something about that. After all the other bleeding projects!! But it certainly bears some consideration.

Trouble is the main characters in "Transgressions" are called D&J, but if I do the Bible story later (and blindly ignore all the lovely research that gehayi has dug up, I guess it will be far enough down the line for people not to care.

Am loving the idea of John the Bear. That would make Jesus a bit of a Twink.

*dies of the giggles*

[tharain.livejournal.com]

I am so very glad that I didn't have a mouthful of coffee when I read "Jesus the Twink". Talk abuot a messy computer.

Talk about an Apocryphal Gospel: "The Gospel According to Peter The Leather Daddy."

I'm frightened.

I actually have a sort of "Jesus The Twink" plot running around in my head, as a follow up to my first novel (in the cleaning and hunt for a publisher and agent stage). But, like you said, it's pretty far down the line in the project list.

Frankly, I'm thinking gehayi is being a bit more evil than I am. That's a Bright Shiny Object of a plot bunny indeed.