As a public service, I thought one should put up on the Web a few paragraphs from the movie review of Da Vinci Code written by Anthony Lane in the May 29 issue of The New Yorker:

There has been much debate over Dan Brown’s novel ever since it was published, in 2003, but no question has been more contentious than this: if a person of sound reasoning begins reading the book at ten o’clock in the morning, at what time will he or she come to the realization that it is unmitigated junk? The answer, in my case, was 10:00.03, shortly after I read the opening sentence: “Renowned curator Jacques Sauniere staggered through the vaulted archway of the museum’s Grand Gallery.” With that one word, “renowned,” Brown proves that he hails from the school of elbow-joggers–nervy, worrisome authors who can’t stop shoving us along with jabs of information and opinion that we don’t yet require. (Buried far below this tic is a fear that their command of basic, unadorned English will not do the job; if Brown feels that way, he’s right.) You could dismiss that first stumble as a blip, but consider this, discovered on a random skip through the book: “Prominent New York editor Jonas Faukman tugged nervously at his goatee.” What is more, he does so over a “half-eaten power lunch,” one of the saddest phrases I have ever heard.

Should we mind that forty million readers–or, to use the technical term, “lemmings”–have followed one another over the cliff of this long and laughable text? I am aware of the argument that, if a tale has enough grip, one can for a while forget, if not forgive, the crumbling coarseness of the style, otherwise, why would I still read “The Day of the Jackal” once a year? With “The Da Vinci Code,” there can be no such excuse. Even as you clear away the rubble of the prose, what shows through is the folly of the central conceit and, worse still, the pride that the author takes in his theological presumption. How timid–how undefended in their powers of reason–must people be in order to yield to such preening? Are they reading “The Da Vinci Code” because everybody on the subway is doing the same, and, if so, why, when they reach their stop, do they not realize their mistake and leave it on the seat, to be gathered up by the next sucker?

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