On Reading Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code": Is It Really as Bad as They Say?

Posted on May 4, 2013 by williamjcobb

So in The Writer’s World (imagine an alternate universe of eggheads, wannabes, dreamers, drinkers, and too-often-self-obsessed thinkers) Dan Brown’s blockbuster novel The Da Vinci Code (2003) has a reputation about on par with Ed Wood movies or, for a more literary comparison, that hugely popular The Bridges of Madison County (1992)—a stinker that made a ton of dough. But apparently Dan Brown has a new novel coming out, and the other day his publisher was offering a free ebook of TDVC . . . . And being the literary sleuth that I am (plus naturally curious) I decided to give it a go. Part of me wanted to find an answer for that basic question: Is it really as bad as they say? So I read it. And . . .
In a nutshell: Yes, and No. Is it “badly” written? Well, yes. Some of the sentences are true howlers. Brown has a knack for flat-footed prose, the inelegant sentence, the clumsy phrase, the awkward italicized thought (My God, this book couldn’t really be that bad, could it?!!), dialogue that only serves the function of explaining awkward plot twists, sloppy action description, and . . . the list goes on and on. Yet I still like the book. Which is interesting, isn’t it? It begs the question: Does a book have to be well written to be “good”? I’ll go out on a limb and say, I don’t think so. Are there books that are well written but “bad”? Yep. I’ve know some of those well.
What complicates The Da Vinci Code‘s case about being either a good/bad book (depends on the lighting, like certain dates) is that it is also a (rather awful) film, starring a good actor, Tom Hanks. I saw the film version first and thought it was laughably bad, muddled to the point of being absurdly nonsensical. The book does not have that flaw. In fact perhaps the book over-explains it’s “controversial” ideas. I grew up in a Catholic family, knew many priests (none of whom were pedophiles, by the way) who talked about doubt in an intelligent way, and so the notion of someone questioning the divinity of Christ seems rather run-of-the-mill. The novel actually does make that part of the plot interesting, and if not ground-shaking, at least fascinating from a historical viewpoint. All this leads me to lean toward the nuanced conclusion that a book can be badly written, and much fun. That would be my summary judgement on The Da Vinci Code. It’s like The Old Man and the Sea, only different. (p.s. I’m a huge Hemingway fan, and think him one of the great American writers, but TOMATS (fun to acronym that title) is a bit of a howler itself.

Posted in books/film, writing | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

On What We Learn from Birds, as "The Bird Saviors" Appears in Paperback Next Month

Posted on April 21, 2013 by williamjcobb

So in yesterday’s New York Times there’s a good piece about what birds can tell us about climate, here. I’m definitely a birder, though I prefer the term “birdist,” and have my own style in BirdWorld: I don’t join herds of other bird nerds to go to the same places and gawk at the same feathered friends. And I’m not big on lists. Why? To me it seems to turn the watching and admiring of bird life into a competitive sport, or another consumer-culture task to be checked off a list, as was captured in the hokey-but-likable comedy The Big Year (2011), starring Owen Wilson, Jack Black, and Steve Martin.
Me? I’m a devotee of The Jeff Lebowski School of Birding. We like the Zen moments. Like the time I camped beneath the woven-ball nests of showy Bullock’s Orioles on a riverbank beside the Gunnison River in central Colorado. The time I listened to various Great Horned Owls calling to each other in Two Medicine Lake campground in Glacier National Park last September. Or digging the birdlife in my Custer County, Colorado backyard, where I’ve watched Red-naped Sapsuckers feeding their chicks in nests hollowed in living aspens above Taylor Creek, or chased/followed Great Horned Owls hooting in the same meadows, calling back-and-forth to each other—all that as opposed to rushing around, trying to catch a quick glimpse of another bird and check it off my list. I guess it could be compared to a long-term love vs. those speed-dating services. I do have a rough sense of numbers, though. Realistically, if you can see two hundred or more species in a year, you’re probably spending some time as a birdist. If you can get a good photo of a Western Tanager in a scrub oak near your house, you’re probably humming a Zen koan in your sleep. Perhaps while listening to some Credence.

Posted in Birding, books, Climate Change, The West, Uncategorized, Water Crisis | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

"The Bird Saviors" as an Example of "Cli-Fi": The Hot, New Literary Subgenre—Climate Fiction

Posted on April 20, 2013 by williamjcobb

So I’m amused to see this piece on NPR books, which defines a new literary subgenre called Cli-Fi, for Climate Fiction, via a good friend (Thanks, Elizabeth!), here. I’ve noticed a number of novels that have elements of Climate Change in them lately. Last fall a friend pointed out similarities between The Bird Saviors and Barbara Kingsolver’s Flight Behavior. It’s not like this is just now happening: Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) is a literary masterpiece about Climate Change, which leaves the “why” of it mysterious, and uses the cataclysm of a dying planet to wax philosophical about the nature of humanity, the love between a father and son, why a bomb shelter might be a good idea . . . plus the hazards of road-tripping across a post-apocalyptic landscape populated by ravenous cannibals. And while the fun-but-hokey film The Day After Tomorrow (2004) is more exaggerated and preachy, you have to love the absurdity of Dennis Quaid jumping that ice-sheet crevasse (clutching a jumble of ice-core samples) in the first scene, or snowshoeing from D.C. to New York in, oh, less than a day. But maybe we’ve reached a “Tipping Point”—a term often used by Climate Change scientists—in the number of references to climate chaos in fiction.
I know I’m among the many in our fracking United States of America who are embarrassed at our politicians cowardice and greed at continuing to deny or give lip service to Climate Change. These stooges are no doubt bought off by Big Oil/Coal (not to mention plain, old-fashioned Stupidity), even though the scare tactics about the cost of mitigating Climate Change are completely exaggerated. What’s the better choice—short-term profits for companies like Exxon (regularly posting “record profits” as storms swamp our cities, fires burn our forests?), or a sane, innovative approach to promoting green technologies and sustainable energy sources? It’s not one or the other. The oil people are going to make their billions (oh, but don’t forget the tax breaks!) for the foreseeable future. Still we could do the Right Thing. Burn less. Moderate. Drive more fuel-efficient cars, walk or ride a bike when you can. Build smaller homes with solar-panels installed from the get-go. Try to decelerate the alarming numbers of Climate Change. Am I optimistic, at the moment, this will happen? No. But you have to hope. And if we write about the problem, imagine its next results, maybe that will get more people thinking about it.

Posted in Birding, books, Climate Change, Cormac McCarthy, Economics, The West, Weird Weather | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Sandra Cisneros in Person, Complete With Reboso, as in Her Novel "Caramelo"

Posted on April 18, 2013 by williamjcobb

So I’ve been swamped with end-of-the-semester work lately, with no time to stop and think or write, but this week at Penn State we’ve had Sandra Cisneros as a Writer-in-Residence, and she’s been fantastic—gracious, kind, and inspiring. On Monday night she gave a talk to a huge audience of students at the State Theater, and answered all their questions, even the baffling or difficult, like one from the kid who stepped up to the microphone and asked her, “I’m about to graduate and I’m not sure what to do with my life. Should I become a writer like you?” We had a reception for her at my home on Tuesday night, and I got a chance to talk with her. We’d both spent time at the fabulous Paisano Ranch near Austin, Texas on writing fellowships there, and she’s living in San Miguel de Allende in Mexico now, where I once had to run nearly a mile to catch a train that had already left the station, with my luggage aboard (and me with a splitting headache from a tequila hangover, to boot). I love her novel Caramelo (2002), and have taught it before. She described its narrative technique through a metaphor of weaving the various strands of colored thread in a caramelo-colored reboso (a type of Mexican shawl) that is a centerpiece of the novel. (A fan of hers also gifted her a reboso at the beginning of the event, which was sweet.) She also lives in San Antonio, which is close to my heart, the Texas Hill Country locale where I grew up. She’s one of the great writers from our Southwest, my favorite region of all.

Posted in books, The West | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Brace Yourself for Weird Weather: On Reading "The Year Without Summer" in the Year Without a Spring

Posted on April 6, 2013 by williamjcobb

So one of the reasons books like William and Nicholas Klingaman’s The Year Without Summer: 1816 have much resonance at the moment is that scientists are warning we’re at the cusp of a period of chaotic and unpredictable weather, due to climate change, and (for worse) we probably have to get used to it. It’s actually a fascinating book, with juicy cultural tidbits spicing up the stew of just how bad the weather in North America and Europe was after the eruption of Mount Tambora in April 1815. Here’s an observation about Ireland in that time period:
“The great majority of Ireland’s rural population—probably between 75 and 80 percent—resided in the poorer classes of small tenant farmers, cottiers, and laborers. They typically lived in mud cabins, the meanest of which consisted of ‘a single room, a hole for a window with a board in it, the door generally off the hinges, a wicker-basket with a hole in the bottom or an old butter-tub stuck at one corner of the thatch for a chimney, the pig, as a matter of course, inside the cottage, and an extensive manufacture of manure . . . [taking place] on the floor.’ Straw often sufficed for beds; the only cooking utensil a large iron pot; and stumps of fir trees for chairs” (123).
But mainly what it describes is a litany of misery caused by the quickly changing climate. Fortunately for the people of the 19th century, this was a relatively short-lived shift, limited to the few years when the volcanic ash greatly affected the climate. What we’re now doing will likely affect the climate for centuries. In today’s New York Times there’s a good article about changes in a South America glacier, noting that 1,600 years of ice melted in a mere 25 years, here. Brace yourselves, citizens. The weather is going to get freaky. This spring is awfully late in arriving. Not that this is “caused” by climate change, but still. I’m ready for some green.

Posted in books, Climate Change, The West, Weird Weather | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

"The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History" by William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman

Posted on March 27, 2013 by williamjcobb

So I’m reading William K. Klingaman and Nicholas P. Klingaman’s The Year Without Summer: 1816 and the Volcano That Darkened the World and Changed History (published just last month), which is billed as similar to Simon Winchester’s outstanding Krakatoa: The Day the World Exploded (2003), and so far it’s living up to that comparison. I’m fascinated by past examples of climate change, not only for the insight into history these accounts provide—David Keys’s Catastrophe (1999) is still one of the best—but also for the implication they have for our future. The Year Without Summer (a title that provokes a memory of that animated favorite, The Year Without a Santa Claus) is about the eruption of the volcano Mount Tambora in Indonesia in April 1815, but it’s scope stretches far beyond the geology of the volcano (though it covers that aspect as well) and into the cultural/political spinoff effects. 1816 is famous for being the year that Mary Wollstonecraft Shelly wrote Frankenstein (and while staying at the same estate in Switzerland with Percy Bysse Shelly, John William Polidori wrote The Vampyre, known as one of the earliest vampire tales in English). Legend has it the summer was so cold and dreary they had to stay inside and tell or write spooky stories. What is well documented is that crops failed disastrously in New England and elsewhere, causing cultural and economic upheavals. It’s like The Day After Tomorrow, only in reverse—more like Two Centuries Before Yesterday. Well, not quite.

Posted in books, Climate Change | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Review of Jim Crace's "Harvest"

Posted on March 12, 2013 by williamjcobb

So my review of Jim Crace’s new novel, Harvest, appeared Sunday in the Dallas Morning News, here. I liked the book, mainly for its style more than its subject or story, which was taken to task in an interesting review in The New Republic, here. (Note: I only read that review after mine had been published, maintaining a policy of not reading reviews of books I’m reviewing until after mine is done, so I won’t be corrupted.) Apparently Crace has threatened to “retire,” though that’s kind of amusing, seeming somewhat overwrought and precious. But that doesn’t change my mind about the book. It’s graceful and memorable in its own way.

Posted in books, Uncategorized, writing | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Review of "Oz: The Great and Powerful," Plus "The Paperboy" Meets "The Master"

Posted on March 10, 2013 by williamjcobb

So last night I stumbled into the new James Franco/Mila Kunis special effects love-a-thon Oz: the Great and Powerful, and could easily do one of those catty, snarky Hollywood send-ups that go, “It was like The Princess Bride meets The Lord of the Rings, with a dash of MacGyver thrown in for seasoning.” Which would be more or less accurate, but also shallow and glib. Since it’s just out this weekend, I won’t blurt out any spoilers here, but will say the China Girl was my favorite character. It’s borderline scary for young children, though my six-year-old daughter (who seems afraid of nothing) liked it. Some great visuals, which is not surprising. I read the NY Times review that lamented how the new Oz fell well short of the original 1939 masterpiece. But that doesn’t surprise us, does it? What perhaps is most surprising is how good the original is. But my recent viewing did not stop there, in the land of Oz . . . .
Being a Pete Dexter fan, I couldn’t wait for his novel The Paperboy to be filmed, but heard less-than-enthusiastic reviews of it once it came out. Plus it wasn’t showing anywhere close to me when it did appear in theaters (and I was living in deepest darkest remotest Colorado), so I’ve just recently seen it. I have to admit I was disappointed. Nicole Kidman was on the mark, almost perfect as the in-love-with-deathrow-inmate skank, and she was most of the fun of the movie. But at times it didn’t make much sense, lacking much of the context and cohesion of the novel, which is about sex and journalism and family and fame and a decidedly swampy Florida backdrop. Best scene: an outrageously horny Nicole Kidman, languishing in a car outside the prison gates. Truly weird. But the end seemed quite different, and much more “Hollywood,” than the novel. So the cliche of “The novel was much better” is true in this case, and I walked away a disappointed fan.
Same goes (I will not say “Ditto”) for Paul Thomas Anderson’s The Master, which I was looking forward to, read some glowing reviews of, then noticed that no one seemed to be saying good things about it once it hit the theaters. It’s similar to the mood of Anderson’s There Will Be Blood, but Blood had much more complexity and clarity. Joaquin Phoenix is Freddy Quell, an alcoholic weirdo bumbler of sorts, the main focus of the film, and most of it focuses on his interactions with Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd, an L. Ron Hubbard stand-in of sorts. Freddy is searching (for meaning? for answers to his drinking problem?) throughout the film, but what it has in common with The Paperboy is a high HQ (Horny Quotient). When the film ends with Freddy having sex with a strange woman he just met, and laughing, it does seem that’s all he really needed all along, which is funny in a sardonic way.

Posted in books/film, Film, Nicole Kidman, Pete Dexter, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

On "Medicated Barbies" & (a World) Not Safe for Facebook, Plus Tanning Moms and Pirates

Posted on March 8, 2013 by williamjcobb

So I’ve become a (sometimes reluctant, but who isn’t?) user of Facebook—or that infection otherwise known as “social media”—though I’m pretty intermittent, maintaining some self-discipline to only log on when I have the time (yeah, right). I told a friend I’ve gotten down to a few minutes a day (check True/False): But I do try to have fun with it when I’m on, usually joking around with old friends. (And where’s the harm in that?) I saw with some satisfaction that our Overlords at FB are doing a redesign (an article about it appeared yesterday in the NY Times, here), which I’m all in favor of, considering FB as it looks now is one of the ugliest, most-cluttered webpages I visit. And when she sees those annoying ads in the margins, my daughter keeps asking me, “Who wants you to date older women, Daddy? Are you going to divorce Mommy?” And I’m like, “No, Darling. That’s just the Facebook cartel, trying to sell people. Can you spell human trafficking?”
But besides the bad design, I’ve noticed that FB makes us all so polite, due to the public nature of making comments that can be viewed by the many “friends” we have. I’ve coined a term: NSFB, Not Safe for Facebook. It’s like NSFW (Not Safe for Work), but instead of risque images, it refers to an anecdote/quip I want to tell a friend, but don’t want to paste it on the site for all to see. Like my idea for a new Medicated Barbie: She’s rather sleepy, moody, and petulant. Her hair’s a mess but she has a ton of hot clothes. You have to coax and plead with her to get her to come out of her box. And you can make her talk if you call her on the tiny cellphone accessory, but all she says is a lazy, drawling, “Whatever.”
But if I put that on FB, I’m sure I’d offend some friend of mine. On FB, I notice it’s safer to keep it simple and upbeat. Though sometimes we take that too far, don’t we? I mean, “I like Walmart”? Or “I like Target”? What next? Are we going to start getting corporate sponsors for our friendships? “Oh, that’s Tammy. She’s my Hope Depot friend of the week!” Plus my friend Jason? He just ordered an Older Medicated Barbie: You open the box and out walks that horrible Tanning Mom woman, ready to visit the spa and raise some hell.
So I’m getting only healthy role model dolls for my little one, like these clean-cut scurvy dogs:

Posted in Photography, Social Networking, Uncategorized | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Snow Drought in Colorado & the I-Told-You-So Problem With Climate Change

Posted on March 3, 2013 by williamjcobb

So this year’s snowpack is pathetic in Colorado and other points West, which is a harbinger of a further summer drought, as detailed in the New York Times, here. Count me as one of those West lovers who are in the “pray for snow” mode, and actually, there’s been some lately in my home turf of Custer County, Colorado. Unfortunately, the problem is much bigger than a few snowfalls. The problem in the West is that much of the creek (and river) flow depends on snow melt in the spring, and once all that snow melts, if there’s not enough to last the summer, the creeks dry up, and then the forests and meadows become dry as well.
But I have the odd position of straddling both East and West, living in Colorado and Pennsylvania, and I see the great divide in awareness of Climate Change, with the West sensing an urgency, and the East sensing it another in a long line of crises. The weather has changed greatly in the East, too, but the results have not been as seemingly problematic. As just an anecdotal example, where I live in Pennsylvania we had one hundred inches of snow in my first winter here (1995). This winter? I’d guess over ten but less than twenty inches of snow, total, as of March 2nd, with a scant three weeks left of winter. I’ve read much on the issue and sense that the top scientists have been dead-on target with their predictions, and will get no satisfaction from any I-told-you-sos. It’s been called a “slow-motion crisis,” which is accurate, I suppose. But it’s also become a crisis of intelligence and reason, which appears to be losing out to stupidity and greed. I always have hope for some turnabout in policy, but I don’t expect it. The latest nail in the coffin is the State Department’s assessment of the Keystone Pipeline, which implies that it will be approved, here.
So here’s my daughter, throwing what years from now we’ll recall wistfully: “Oh, yes. That was what we called a snowball. People would throw them at each other to have fun. Now all we have is rocks and dirt.”

Posted in Climate Change, The West, Uncategorized, Weird Weather | Tagged , , | Leave a comment