Why Brown still dominates American Pop-Lit

Along foreign beaches, American tourists have found a new means of social identification. Across the sea of fanny packs, sunglasses, and polo shirts, a wave of red and gold spines bearing the name Dan Brown hang like miniature shrines above masses of sun-drenched bodies. In even the most cautious social critique, those familiar spines force the realization that Brown has dominated the popular literary scene for an exorbitant amount of time. Even amidst the plethora of literature released throughout the year, there seems to be no doubt that The Da Vinci Code and the ensuing Dan Brown phenomenon dominated pop-lit in 2004.

In fact, The Da Vinci Code topped this year’s Bestseller charts at number one, while Angels and Demons grabbed the number four place and Deception Point pulled in at number ten. In Britain, the phenomenon looms at scandalous heights: all four of Dan Brown’s fictional works sit in the top-ten chart - and the trend doesn’t seem to be going away. This past November, Doubleday published The Da Vinci Code illustrated in its full glory - no doubt meant for the quasi-imaginative or the quasi-literate. And if that weren’t enough a film version of Brown’s top moneymaker starts production in May.

Yet Brown wasn’t the only one to pick a pretty penny from the tree of popular culture in the last year..Other authors and publishers have capitalized on what seems to be a recipe for quick success. Close to 25 recently published works allegedly investigate or debunk the pseudo-historic claims of The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons. In addition, countless new collections of Da Vinci’s diaries and histories of the Knights Templar and Mary Magdalene have furnished the bookshelves of Barnes and Noble, all sparked by the stunning popularity of The Da Vinci Code.

For some people, the fevered pitch of Dan Brown-mania has reached the level of a cult phenomenon. In France, Louvre curators report American tourists ignoring the majestic Mona Lisa, only to ask, “Is this the room where the curator was murdered?” In a small cemetery in Rennes-le-Chateau, the mayor - Jean-Francois L’Huiller - has ordered that a body of a priest be exhumed and relocated into a concrete mausoleum in order to discourage insidious “Brownian” grave robbers. Predictably, across the European continent, the tourist industry has boomed through the creation of entire tour companies that charge thousands to travel the book’s route through England and France.

The fact that Dan Brown has succeeded in finding the holy grail of modern society’s literary taste seems obvious, but the nature of this grail remains shrouded in mystery. Although the book moves well and the plot is original - especially considering its genre - Brown’s writing and style are mediocre at best; he often entirely ignores issues of diction and sentence structure, his characters are lifeless stocks, and his historical premises, while intriguing, lack much credibility. So why does Dan Brown’s writing have so much staying power in American Culture?

The Da Vinci Code, in particular, plays strongly to a reader’s vain self-perceptions. Brown sets forth frighteningly obvious but exciting puzzles, causing the reader to be proud that he or she understands them before the main character does. A similar device has contributed to the goliath success of the Harry Potter series, throughout which I often find myself cursing out Harry and his cutsie companions for their utter stupidity. In addition, The Da Vinci Code provides the reader with an incorrect but easily understandable version of a complex history. This naturally makes the reader feel a little haughtier than if he read a scholar’s interpretations of Christ’s rise to fame in the ancient world.

In Brown’s fictionalized world, easy answers help to compensate for increasingly complex reality. One can’t help finding traces of positivism permeating Brown’s work. It’s no accident that the protagonist, Langdon, is working to break a code of secret symbols. The need for order and meaning lies deeply buried in the subconscious of society. In a post 9/11 world, in which the collective conscious lies helpless in the face of terror attacks, wearying wars, and unsolvable social riddles, Brown’s hero – Langdon - represents an ordering principle that speaks to minds troubled by postmodern dilemmas.

This definitive view towards the problems of history makes Brown a terrible historian. The Code’s unmitigated claim of historical accuracy gives readers an easy answer to a difficult situation. While fueling controversy on one hand and attracting more new readers, this claim elevates a work of fiction into the realm of “nonfiction.” For example, Opus Dei, an organization portrayed negatively in Brown’s work, has posted a lengthy response to numerous questions as to why Opus Dei supposedly wants the location of the grail to be kept secret. No small feat for a pop-novel

The book further plays on a lack of control by pitting two elite groups - one a cult and the other a secret religious organization - against each other; meanwhile, the rest of the world is left out. These covert operations mimic the conditions the modern mind has been struggling to grasp: a real world in which intelligence and terrorist organizations battle for hegemony while the common man remains oblivious to these inner operations.

Finally, The Code involves one of the most controversial entities ever to come into existence: the Church. Yet this alone can’t explain the books immense popularity. The world which was just recently enraged by the Catholic Church’s sex scandals is now besieged by problems of the utmost social gravity. By radicalizing one of the most stable institutions on the planet, Brown hits gold. He creates a healthy form of intellectual displacement by gravitating toward a controversy in which suicide bombers don’t blow themselves up and airplanes don’t fly into buildings. In the end, there is no real danger in attacking the church. The institution, for better or worse, is here to stay.

Don’t get me wrong, Brown isn’t simply playing on the fears and the needs of a modern audience. He has created a fluid, original, and understandable novel. It’s just that a part of me wants to believe Jean-Francois L’Huiller’s words regarding the exhumation of a corpse in his tiny village: “The world has gone mad.”