Singing Dancing Authors

The Daily Beast: The more I read about Elif Batuman's THE POSSESSED, the more I think this book of essays about Russian literature will be right up my alley. Here she offers a list of "alternative Russian classics."

Financial Times: UVa gave some of its new grad students a Kindle DX at the beginning of the year to see whether it would be feasible to go electronic with virtually all its course material. Not surprisingly, the answer is "maybe."

One Minute Book Reviews: Today book blogger extraordinaire Janice Harayda announces the winner of her Delete Key Award for the worst passage she's read in the past year. And since she reviews a book a day, I'm inclined to trust her! Finalists include a disturbing number of my recent reads, like PRIDE AND PREJUDICE AND ZOMBIES, IT SUCKED AND THEN I CRIED and THE LOST SYMBOL (personally, the only one of those I wanted to send sailing across the room, but your mileage may vary).

New York Times: An adaptation of John Grisham's book A TIME TO KILL will take the stage in Washington D.C. next year, the first of his books to do so. It gives me scant hope that the company putting it on commissioned Rupert Holmes to write the script, the writer and composer of "Drood" but also "Escape (The Piña Colada Song)."

The Canadian Press: Margaret Atwood recently shot a cameo for a forthcoming Canadian movie called "Score: A Hockey Musical," in which she plays herself. I don't know what's better, that there is going to be a hockey musical (I picture it like the "Single Ladies"-driven episode of "Glee," except on ice) or that Atwood is considered famous enough to play herself in it. Biggest author coup since Salman Rushdie popped up in "Bridget Jones' Diary"?

Graphic for no reason: LOLerature.

The D'oh Vinci Code

A common argument used in favor of popular literature is that it caters to a strong public need to relax and escape. Mr. Throckmorton works hard all day at the salt mines, so how can you expect him to read Camus for an hour after dinner when James Patterson probably has a new book out? (Yes, I finally finished that feature.) In theory I should be more receptive to Dan Brown's THE LOST SYMBOL because I happen to be a little stressed at the moment, although I can't exactly create lab conditions with a control Ellen who is merrily skipping through a grassy field without a care in the world.

It took me three hours to read THE LOST SYMBOL, and frankly, my time would have been better spent re-watching "National Treasure" one and a half times. They both have Masons, and heroes who we are supposed to believe are buff as well as brilliant, but I would have laughed a lot more at "National Treasure."

So I'm going to spoil most of this book, or at least the parts I feel like, because I don't want you to waste your time. If you still want to read it unspoiled, turn back.

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Okay then. Nothing I predicted about this book came true, but the plot and its underpinnings were actually not the most annoying thing about this book. Maybe I would have been distracted from Dan Brown's substandard plot if he had managed to make me give a shit about its results.

So Robert Langdon is summoned to D.C. by his old mentor Peter, the director of the Smithsonian and a high-ranking Mason, only to find out when he gets there that Peter has been kidnapped by a lunatic and will die unless Langdon gives him an ancient Masonic secret he believes he needs to obtain by a merry overnight romp through Washington landmarks like the Library of Congress and the National Cathedral. First surprise: The Masons are the good guys! But they want to stay hidden lest people get the wrong idea about how awesome they are.

In a late-stage reveal (I told you I was spoiling!) we find out the lunatic who kidnapped Peter is actually his long-lost son Zachary on a complicated and bizarre quest for vengeance and possible deification. Zachary was a dissolute playboy whose father refused to bail him out when he landed in an Eastern European prison on drug charges, so he faked his own death and reinvented himself as a sort of spiritual body-builder, covering himself with ritual tattoos and believing he would attain some mystical power by infiltrating the Masons and getting their Big Secret, which is God... or Christianity... or something. (The fact that I don't care what the real answer is speaks to this book's problems.) The lunatic Zachary/Andros/Mal'akh (his spiritual bullshit name) combines the weirdest qualities of the priest from ANGELS AND DEMONS and the albino from THE DA VINCI CODE, while also having immense wealth and strength, and a tendency to wear make-up on civilian errands. (For real!)

Langdon's partner in this quest is his mentor's sister Katherine, a "scientist." Peter believed her experiments were so important he built her a multi-billion-dollar secret lab in the Smithsonian to do them. Mmmm, corruption! The only fully explained experiment involves weighing a man right before and after death to determine the weight of the soul, proving that Katherine doesn't see a lot of art house movies. Most of her work from what we see trends towards proving that THE SECRET is real, but we already have a lab for that, it's called "Oprah."

There's a lot of ancillary nonsense, including the fact that Brown saw fit to throw in a chapter in which Langdon calls his "New York editor" for help mid-quest and the editor peevishly reminds him he has a book due. I'm sure everyone at Doubleday and Brown's literary agency wanted him to autograph that page. But my real problem with THE LOST SYMBOL was that Robert Langdon is stupid in this book. Instead of building tension by having him do battle with his intellectual equals, Brown inexplicably has Langdon screw up every time he gets half a step ahead of the lunatic or the CIA, thus forcing him to either get captured or get bailed out by someone smarter. It's not fun watching someone who is supposedly a genius get tripped up by ploys that would be obvious to an ENCYCLOPEDIA BROWN reader. Did Peter give up his name under torture because he knew Langdon wouldn't be able to handle it, thus concealing someone who was smarter and better connected? It just doesn't make sense.

Finally, about 380 pages in, Dan Brown finds the perfect solution for the problem of Robert Langdon being a moron: He kills him! Too bad it doesn't stick. Having fallen into the clutches of Zachary/Andros/Mal'akh, Langdon is placed in a tank that begins to fill with water so the baddie can extort some information from him, and then kill him anyway. Langdon drowns. But wait!!!!! The tank is actually full of super-oxygenated water, so Langdon thinks he's drowning but he's really not! Instead he just blacks out and sees weird lights and such until revived by the CIA. Just like in the Great Flood or season 3 of "Grey's Anatomy," the creator forms an opportunity to kill off the most annoying creation by drowning but ultimately doesn't have the balls to go through with it.

After that, it's all a depressing downhill into mystic revelations and daddy issues. The end of the book features Langdon and Katherine watching the sun rise from the top of the Washington Monument, which is cool and all, but did we just go all that way so this guy could have his "Jesus Walks" moment? THE LOST SYMBOL could be read as Dan Brown's apology to Christianity for putting it on the villains' side in his last two books, but I think Brown honestly expected readers to have some kind of spiritual moment along with his hero. I thought my expectations for THE LOST SYMBOL were low; now I realize they weren't low enough.

Worst. Decade. Ever.

Is it time to stop celebrating everything the Noughties gave us? No, but the Guardian flips the script and asks for people's least favorite books of the past decade. There are some amazing zingers in the comments, like someone referring to "The Shite Runner" (Brits!), but to be fair a lot of books I love are coming up as well.

For me there's a real chasm between books I hated and books that simply weren't worth my time in retrospect. I know I just ripped on THE DA VINCI CODE, but when I read it I didn't turn every page thinking "God, why hast thou cursed us with this book?" (I'm Midwestern, not a Pilgrim.) It was like watching "The Rock" on TV; there were better things I could have been doing with my time than spending those two hours on the couch, but hey, I was mildly entertained, it gave me something to talk about with other people and after two hours it was over. (The "Da Vinci Code" movie, on the other hand, I regret every minute of, because I was expecting it to be funny-bad and it was just bad.)

This is a reminder to myself to do a full post of these, but let me just say, any article that calls Ian McEwan's ON CHESIL BEACH one of the worst books of the decade is crazy.

Breaking: More people reading Hebrew than Dan Brown*

Saw a woman reading THE LOST SYMBOL on the subway yesterday. I'm surprised it took me almost a month to spot one, though my sample is both small and non-indicative of the hardcover-buying population (and I'm not the most attentive rider in the world). She was past the 400-page mark and looked bored.

*I see a fair amount of young men reading in Hebrew on the subway -- again, not because the language is demonstrably taking off, but because I live downstream from a Jewish university. Other popular categories on my commute include back issues of the New Yorker and self-help in Spanish.

Post-Its: Smiling while reading aloud edition

Endearing if done right; more than a little creepy if done wrong.

Widener is still overrated: Harvard just dropped an unspecified amount of money on John Updike's personal papers, including letters, review copies with his notes in them and golf score cards(1). The author, who graduated 1954 but according to the Globe only set one short story at his alma mater, used Widener Library to research several of his books including 2006's TERRORIST. Well, to each his own. (Boston Globe)

In other news, water wet, sky blue: As in pretty much every sector save H1N1 vaccines, consumer spending on books is down right now, because Dan Brown failed to save the publishing industry he was previously accused of killing. Burn him! (NY Times)

This game is a metaphor for the decline of contemporary culture: Can you tell Dustin "Screech" Diamond's memoir BEHIND THE BELL from Ernest Hemingway's FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS(2)? (The Daily Beast)

Still two months left to be good: One of the items in the legendary/scary Neiman Marcus Christmas catalog is a $200,000 "Algonquin round table experience," in which you get a scintillating dinner party with writers(3) like Christopher Buckley, Adam Gopnik and Malcolm Gladwell. On the bright side, the proceeds from this ridiculous expenditure(4) will be donated to a great charity called First Book. (Via WSJ)

Believe the hype: This may just be ancestral pride shining through but I am super excited that a Swedish (5) adaptation of THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO will hit theatres here next year. It had looked for a while that an American company was going to buy it only to remake it, and that was worrying. (Variety)

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(1) RABBIT, ROUGH?
(2) In an earlier version of this post it read FROM WHOM THE BELL TOLLS. It tolls from thee! Ernest, turn off thy ringtone!
(3) The catalog guarantees eight authors will be there, as if the experience weren't commodified enough already.
(4) Insider tip: You can have dessert in the Round Table Room at the Algonquin any day for way, way, way, way less than this, although it's exorbitant when compared to a normal restaurant. Get the tiramisu.
(5) I have heard your blonde joke, and it sucks.

Post-Its: Oprah umps the doubleheader

Photo of the audience at the Brooklyn Book Festival's Happy Ending reading from the L.A. Times' Jacket Copy, with "proof" that I was there. (I promise this isn't going to become one of those blogs.)

Oprah.com: Oprah's latest book club selection is Uwem Akpan's SAY YOU'RE ONE OF THEM, a collection of short stories first published in 2008 by a Nigerian Jesuit priest with an MFA. The Washington Post broke the news yesterday, saying the distributor had "accidentally" leaked the choice. Did you have your money on BRIGHT-SIDED: HOW THE RELENTLESS PROMOTION OF POSITIVE THINKING HAS UNDERMINED AMERICA? You lost. (That's the title of the new Ehrenreich.)

Via the Book Bench: A new T-shirt company has created a line-up of baseball jerseys for an imaginary 19th-century-American-lit team. So many questions: Is it safe to mix fictional characters with nonfiction authors? How are Hester Prynne's reflexes? And would even the biggest Melville fan buy a shirt that has the number 1 and "Dick" on it?

NYT: Another literary movie goes head to head with "Bright Star" this weekend for the readin' crowd -- an Australian-helmed adaptation of J.M. Coetzee's DISGRACE starring John Malkovich as a recently dismissed college professor. Normally it would be a bad thing that I had never heard of this before, but perhaps it was just on the festival circuit because the consensus is good.

Via the Manhattan Users Guide: When was ALICE'S ADVENTURES IN WONDERLAND banned and why? Most of the other titles on this kitschy Banned Books bracelet I recognize, but that one stumped me. (Is too relevant.)

Slate: Matthew Schneier's round-up of guidebooks for men on how to be men is entertaining, not least for its discussion of yeomanliness versus gentlemanliness. Having seen the other side of how men's magazines come up with their tips, though, I'm not sure I would trust any of them.

NYT/ The Lede: You probably haven't spared a thought as to what Osama bin Laden wants you to read, but he's coming through for you. Check out the books an al Qaeda leader wants all Americans to read at your own risk -- after he saw it, Glenn Beck swore never to read again.

Via Idealist: Here's a category of Things Named For Writers I never contemplated before. The first annual Runyon 5K on November 15 will memorialize journalist and short-story writer Damon Runyon with a bit of a lope through Yankee Stadium. I have not been in the new stadium yet, and I wouldn't call myself a fan, but the proceeds are going to cancer research, and this sounds downright cool. I... am seriously thinking about doing this. (Lobotomy went well, by the way.)

Likely last ever Infinite Summer corner: This week after one of their numbers was nice enough to link to my Brooklyn Book Festival coverage I joined wallace-l, the David Foster Wallace listserv, although when they find out how new I am to the magic of DFW they will probably kick me off. But that's where I learned from New York magazine via Sarah Weinman that -- are you ready for this piece of trivia -- DFW was a creative writing classmate at Amherst of none other than Dan Brown. Yes, that Dan Brown. My mind is blown like I just watched The Entertainment. (Now they've got another reason to get rid of me, my horrible jokes.)

Publishing Apocalypse

Dan Brown's THE LOST SYMBOL comes out today. OMFG. No one will ever buy or read another book again!! Let's panic!!!

In lieu of reading the actual spoilers, I'm sticking to my prediction from four months ago. I didn't use the Slate Dan Brown generator to come up with that, but it's fun to play with anyway.

I hope everyone associated with Brown's publisher, agent, assistant and movie franchise is taking the day off to drink Hypnotiq in a bubble bath.

But to plug a book that I will actually read -- Jon Krakauer's long-awaited WHERE MEN WIN GLORY: THE ODYSSEY OF PAT TILLMAN hits shelves today. Such is my confidence in the author, I pre-ordered this book; haven't read a word, but you should all go out and buy it anyway.

Not shocked to see that the The Streets is not a Dan Brown fan. To be fair though, I have to go the other way on this, since I finished the book (and wrote a few words about it) but couldn't make it more than 15 minutes into "How to Lose A Guy...".

Come to think of it, ANGELS AND DEMONS did one other thing for me: It allowed me to recognize Bernini's "Ecstasy of St. Theresa" when it has come up, multiple times, in INFINITE JEST. It's the secret Dan Brown-DFW connection! Cue exploding Internet.

Dear America, We Need To Talk About Dan Brown

I finally got around to reading ANGELS AND DEMONS -- or if you prefer, I used the excuse of going to Rome, where the book is mostly set, to see what the rest of you have been reading all this time. (I previously used a rainy Sunday afternoon as an excuse to plow through and quickly forget THE DA VINCI CODE.) There will be massive spoilers for both of these books coming up, so if you care about that now, disengage.

I think it's so cute that we've all been going around pretending these books are about Religion and Deep Thinking. Really! Because they are really about sex -- those who fight for it and those who fear it. Guess which ones are the good guys? Oh, you naughty reading politic, you.

Think about it: In THE DA VINCI CODE, Robert Langdon, champion of secular life, fights the mysterious elite Opus Dei to keep word from getting out that Jesus had sex, and likely not just once in order to save a kitten from falling off a cliff. In ANGELS & DEMONS, Langdon believes he is fighting a murderous re-incarnation of the Illuminati, who are magically able to Do What Computers Can't(1), but actually in protecting a sexy nuclear scientist he is defending her questionably defined project against the legendarily sex-panicked(2) Vatican, particularly the late Pope's right-hand man whose life is totally wrecked when he finds out he is the late Pope's biological son and thus tainted by original sin despite the cold embrace of the church.

Oh yeah, and about that sexy nuclear scientist, alias Vittoria Vetra. This was a character of Denise-Richards-in-Bond-movie levels of disbelief, who is described as "smouldering" not five pages after finding out her father has been brutally murdered. Really? She can't have a few minutes of tear-stained messedness? And unfortunately her magnetic appeal is filtered through Robert Langdon, which makes him seem like a guy who would use personality tests on women in bars. "You're standing in a room... what color is that room? It's okay, I'm a symbologist." Oh, but it's okay, say his defenders, because he's sexy too. But saying a guy has a "swimmer's body" isn't the same level of objectifying as mentioning over and over how great at yoga someone is where it makes no sense to do so, only you know what that means. That means she's hot! Any community yoga class will disavow you of this notion quickly.

After an interlude of pseudoscience I dearly wish I could pick apart, Langdon and Vetra find themselves racing through Rome trying to stop the supposed Illuminati killer from slaying people in symbolically appropriate ways throughout Rome. One of their stops is the church which holds Bernini's "St. Theresa in Ecstasy," which in the book has been shoved aside by the super-prudish church despite being specially commissioned for them because it is Just Too Hot. Having visited the Vatican Museums I can confirm that the church probably just didn't have room for it among their collections of copied Greek stuff, stolen Egyptian stuff and paintings everyone else forgot about. But Brown lovingly describes how the statue looks like she's in a less than spiritual ecstasy, and her testimony sounds more like a one-night stand than a prayerful vigil. Well, maybe to modern eyes it does, but surely if the Vatican had doubts about her purity it wouldn't have canonized her in the first place. And forcing the figure of St. Theresa to act as a piller for Brown's sex-is-good thesis seems kind of insulting to the religion from which she has sprung. I'm not Catholic, I'm just sayin'.

Thanks to chapters from his point of view, we know the killer is not only a super-mean dude, but he also gets his kicks from tying up and violating women (particularly in brothels, but he doesn't seem that picky). This is Brown going "Oh no, I don't mean all sex is okay, which only strengthens my argument!" If only he had really gone all-out on this line of thinking and made Vetra a sexy lesbian won over by the redeeming love of Ben Affleck. But we're supposed to believe that the Pope's chamberlain, a celibate man among celibate men, would enlist this clearly predatory guy in order to further his own ends even though he would likely be horrified by the outcomes. This is where the science of the book makes its regrettable bow, and the concept of Vetra and her late father being able to create matter is supposed to be such a threat that it forces Pope Jr. to protect his celibate reserve by employing someone whose mores are almost opposite to his. Naturally, the killer later goes after Vetra, who would be his next victim (because she's sooooo hot), only Langdon saves her, for which his reward is sex from her. Heaven (ha?) forbid she just shake his hand and invite him to a press conference.

All this is to say that I didn't exactly enjoy ANGELS AND DEMONS, although being unable to sleep on the plane I whizzed through it. Knowing that Ewan McGregor has been cast as the extremely sex-negative former assistant to the Pope makes me almost want to see it, if only to balance out the times I have inadvertently seen him in the altogether onscreen. (3) But I think it's funny how the controversy has focused on the Vatican's refusal to allow on-location shoots because they're "still mad" about THE DA VINCI CODE and the whole Jesus-having-sex thing -- a narrative which only confirms what Brown is trying to do in his books, which is pit his sex champions (Ron Howard, in this case?) against the censoring powers that be. If the Church is not compliant, he must be onto something! Or, you know, they just decided it would be too much of a hassle to have Tom Hanks, McGregor and Ayelet Zurer (Vittoria Vetra) running around in their much visited sites for weeks with large amounts of photographic equipment.

Are we hung up more on sex as a country, or more on religion? I think we would like to believe ourselves to be the latter because it reflects better on us than the former -- after all, we're just being philosophical! Of course, the correct answer to this question is, "yes," but this will not appear in Brown's new novel THE LOST SYMBOL, due out this fall. In fact, I'm willing to call it right now: The lost symbol is some kind of cosmic booty-call Bat-signal (4) whose existence is supported by some sweet Gaia-worshipers and all but destroyed by a nefarious league of nuns. (5) Quick review without reading: The nuns were better than the albino and the possessed Vaticanite.

(1) Langdon knows the Illuminati killed a dude because they used their special perfectly symmetrical seal to brand him, a seal that cannot be reproduced via computer. Really? That's your whole proof?
(2) In college I once tried to get into a seminar called "Sex Panic." I'm still a little bitter I didn't get in, if only for the excuse to shout "Sex!! Panic!!!" on main campus.
(3) Only one worth watching is "Velvet Goldmine."
(4) Dear Google searchers, you're welcome.
(5) But if this were actually true, I would read this book, because who doesn't want to read about a league of nuns?