The Death of the Novel
I am reading The Da Vinci Code. Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel? as Lord Rees-Mogg queried, and Pope before him. Nevertheless, here is a little list of things that have irritated me already:
1) In spite a 500 year tradition of referring to the peerless Renaissance trailblazer as Leonardo, Dan Brown has now decided that we ought to be calling him 'Da Vinci'. This is quite simply monstrous.
2) The use, or possible conception, of the verb to serpentine. This usage is sufficiently disgraceful, and although I am, in theory, in favour of the organic advancement of the English tongue, I feel Brown is perhaps not the person to whom to entrust this delicate task.
3) Bad grammar (split infinitives, etc); awkward syntax that trips over its own untied clauses; a prose style that would make McGonagall blush; gratuitous use of italics for effect and suspense; a cheap, faux-Hollywood turn of phrase that should never be found outside a 12 year-old's creative writing assignment; and, finally - though doubtless more complaints will arise as I progress (if progress it be) - a bollock-gnawing propensity to patronise his readership by feeding us very basic points of information e.g. that his protagonist will be able to seek refuge at the US embassy because, apparently, it is not within the jurisdiction of the French police.
2 comments:
It is the prerogative of the writerly swashbuckler to dashingly split infinitives wheresoever he may find them. Or even, as my recent perusal of Against the Day has lead me to believe, to play fast and loose with any rules of sentence structure conceivable, imaginable, perceivable.
I think Dan Brown lacks the requisite 'esprit' to pull it off.
Incidentally, I ate one of your kind last week. He (unwarranted gender presumption but there it is) was stuffed with cheese and tomato and garnished with sliced cucumber.
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