Dan Burstein

Where I got the book: publisher provided a free copy in return for an honest review. And I TOLD them I wasn't a Dan Brown fan.

So let's imagine a literary party, circa 2003. Two writers are schmoozing the head buyer of Barnes & Noble, which back then was a major force in bookselling.

Gosh.

Let's think about that for a moment.

Done?

OK so anyway, Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code is HUGE at that point. HUGE. And the writers go "hey, B&N buyer, say we wrote a book ANALYZING The Da Vinci Code? Y'know, show more about all the mysteries and stuff?"

She peers at them over the top of her martini glass and breathes:

"I'd take 50,000 copies."

KA-CHING!

Because those two writers--Dan Burstein and Arne De Keijzer--had stumbled on to a vital fact. It wasn't Dan Brown's writing that had taken TDVC into the big time. Let's face it, it couldn't possibly be.

IT WAS THE STUFF.

And thus a niche industry was born: Taking Dan Brown Seriously And Analyzing His Stuff.

And this is, what, volume 4?

The authors make sure you know they don't take DB seriously, but give a nod to his success:

"No matter how maddening he may be from a literary point of view--the dialogue is often cringe-inducing, the characters are generally made of flimsy cardboard, the suspensions of disbelief he asks of his readers are extraordinary--somehow, he works it so you want to keep reading."

Well, you certainly do if you're going to produce a book on the subject. Burnstein and De Keijzer have assembled a cartload of experts, mostly academics, to write about various aspects of Inferno, and for the most part this spinoff makes pretty interesting reading. Most of the time, the experts assume a stance of superiority with respect to Brown's book, pointing out gaffes and inadequacies with professorial glee. They want to make it clear that they know exactly what Brown's up to:

"At the core of this book, and perhaps all of Brown's books, is a complex dynamic between mass culture and elite culture, and its author's astute self-fashioning with respect to that dynamic. He is happy to exploit mass culture, but at heart he considers himself an exponent of elite culture."

but their critical tone makes it clear that it is they who are the true exponents of elite culture. On the other hand, they're not beyond the occasional heavy-handed wisecrack worthy of Brown himself:

"Zobrist's Inferno...is what is known in Hollywood as a 'McGuffin': it moves the plot insofar as everyone tries to get their hands on it. Taking the form of an ovoid sack, it is more closely an 'Egg McGuffin.'"

As we move farther into the book, the tone tends to become a little more respectful of Brown's opus. The chapter on the clues strewn by Brown on his website and in the book's cover images was pretty interesting; DB evidently knows how to hook an important segment of his readership. The next chapter addresses another aspect of Brown's popularity, his ability to home in on locations that his audience find interesting. And then the whole thing wraps up with a number of short essays by Burnstein that could probably go under the title of Stuff I Couldn't Find Another Place For.

Personally, I'd have preferred a big, shiny, coffee-table book with more pictures and less academic waffle. But this book is clearly aimed at people who either a) love DB's books and want to know more or b) hate DB's books and want to list the ways in which they are BS. Both audiences will get a chuckle or three, and maybe some elucidation, out of this compendium of essays. Furthermore, considerable thought has obviously gone into the arrangement of the material, and it has been edited into a very consistent whole, something that's very hard to do when the contributors are academics from all over the globe. So I'm giving it 3.5 stars, which is 1.5 more than I gave Brown, for turning his BS into clean-smelling fertilizer. show less

Very interesting read from a different perspective than Dan Brown. As with all fictional stories based on a specific conspiracy theory, using the reality of history, historical events, and/or physical locations, landmarks that exist, you will eventually need to take a bit of poetic license to keep the underlining plot believable.

It's obvious the author focused on these less viable connections. Though, overall Brown's research created a remarkable story. One not to be so easily discarded show more after a single book of critque. show less

I thought I'd read his while re-watching Angels & Demons (2009) for flavor and context. Here's a breezy overview of explaining the sources of Brown's historical elements around the Illuminati as well as the Catholic Church and Baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Interesting and relevant, the historical facts are told by a variety of experts and the different voices keep it engaging. There's even a couple of nice summary lines from Neil deGrasse Tyson about appreciating what Brown "got show more right" while enjoying the work of fiction for the work of entertainment that it is.

The "Masons" part is a summary of the conspiracy theories around that secretive fraternal organization and an overview of its actual history. It's added on because it appears the belief was Brown was going to move onto them after the Illuminati. (Maybe that happened, I don't know.)

Merged review:

I thought I'd read his while re-watching Angels & Demons (2009) for flavor and context. Here's a breezy overview of explaining the sources of Brown's historical elements around the Illuminati as well as the Catholic Church and Baroque artist Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Interesting and relevant, the historical facts are told by a variety of experts and the different voices keep it engaging. There's even a couple of nice summary lines from Neil deGrasse Tyson about appreciating what Brown "got right" while enjoying the work of fiction for the work of entertainment that it is.

The "Masons" part is a summary of the conspiracy theories around that secretive fraternal organization and an overview of its actual history. It's added on because it appears the belief was Brown was going to move onto them after the Illuminati. (Maybe that happened, I don't know.) show less

I'd half hoped for a book featuring relevant historical background on some of the assertions made in The DaVinci Code, and I was encouraged by Burstein's introduction, as it sounded like this was what he was trying to achieve in writing Secrets of the Code. But it seems Burstein may not have had the requisite training or motivation to carry off such a moderately ambitious project, as his research seems to have consisted mainly of reading everything he could lay hands on about the subject show more without regard to whether it was written by crackpots or scholars, and his authorship seems to have consisted mainly of compiling excerpts "exploring" different "perspectives" about the possible historical basis of the persona of Mary Magdalene, et al., with minimal added conceptual synthesis or analysis (which is, I feel, a problem in itself, though I cannot review text which doesn't exist).

It's hard to lay blame on Burstein himself for the many strange, erroneous claims made by the authors he included (such as the statement by Lynn Picknett that the name of ancient Egypt, KMT, was a reference to the racial phenotype of its people rather than the fertility of its land), but he cannot be completely blameless as it's mainly due to his freewheeling standards for vetting sources that the historical connection of his text is tenuous at best. show less