- Joined
- Jan 6, 2019
Dunning-Kruger: the op-Ed.
I find it really bizarre that so many ‘authors’ of this kind of bollocks these days don’t seem to read any books. The way they mention Harry Potter cements this for me - that’s the level they read at, as adults.
Now HP is fine as a kids book, which is what it was written as. It’s not meant to be high literature. And the Da Vinci Code isn’t either - it’s an airport thriller and it does that job perfectly well. Not every book has to be high art. It was successful because people enjoyed it.
What the author spectacularly fails to realise is that their sneering tone at the lumpen proles reading dan brown falls flat when they start with the Harry Potter references and dismiss the fairly intriguing bits of history behind the setting of the book.
“Dan Brown wrote "The Da Vinci Code" on the basis of some interesting idea he'd maybe heard or read in a conspiracy book that fit neatly within whatever thriller plot was already boiling in his brain.” What an idiot. He wrote his thriller using a very large body of work that winds through loads of British andEuropean history. Which bits are true, which are not is up for debate, but there’s a history there that goes from biblical times, through the Templar persecution, fascinating stuff like Roslyn chapel (very real, I assure you) and all sorts of derring-do. Brown obviously based the book itself largely on ‘the holy blood and the holy grail’ which was a big splash back in the early 80s. But the history which runs alongside it of persecutions, societies, heretics, and royal feuding is real and fascinating, and remains so even if every single thing about the grail it asserts is untrue.
I would be willing to bet Cash Money that Adam Lewenthal hasn’t read any Umberto Eco. Or any history. Or really much of anything.
