Tear down the walls
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
I made a big mistake over the Christmas holidays: I allowed myself to be intrigued by the vast sales of Dan Brown's books to the extent that I bought one. Being the anal retentive that I am I had to start with his first book, of course - "Digital Fortress". This promised to be at least of some interest in that it seemed to deal with encryption and secrecy and identity - all things that bear some relevance to my current work and which formed a large part of one of my favourite novels of recent years, namely Neal Stephenson's Cryptonomicon.
Well. Where Cryptonomicon could be said to contain a fair amount of accurate and penetrating analysis and history of cryptogrpahy, Digital Fortress could be described as being completely empty of anything relating to same. But, hey, it's a novel, so what counts is a good story. Ah, but in this case the story, too, was both vaccuous and, to use a crtically techincal term, utter tosh.
(The main character, the "brilliant, beuatiful mathematician" Susan Fletcher, who is the NSA's "head cryptographer", does a lot of swooning and screaming and worrying about her lover - as all head cryptographers do the world over, of course.)
So, what about the style? Surely it must be well-written to have sold so many copies? Don't even go there! I open the book at random (I kid you not.) Here is the start of chapter 89 (89!):
'Nuff said, I feel.
The most frightening thing is that I read somewhere that Dan Brown has taught creative writing. I hope it was a class of monkeys with a lot of typewriters.
Well. Where Cryptonomicon could be said to contain a fair amount of accurate and penetrating analysis and history of cryptogrpahy, Digital Fortress could be described as being completely empty of anything relating to same. But, hey, it's a novel, so what counts is a good story. Ah, but in this case the story, too, was both vaccuous and, to use a crtically techincal term, utter tosh.
(The main character, the "brilliant, beuatiful mathematician" Susan Fletcher, who is the NSA's "head cryptographer", does a lot of swooning and screaming and worrying about her lover - as all head cryptographers do the world over, of course.)
So, what about the style? Surely it must be well-written to have sold so many copies? Don't even go there! I open the book at random (I kid you not.) Here is the start of chapter 89 (89!):
The morning sun was just breaking over the Seville rooftops and shining down into the canyons below. The bells atop the Giralda cried out for sunrise mass. This was the moment inhabitants had all been waiting for.
'Nuff said, I feel.
The most frightening thing is that I read somewhere that Dan Brown has taught creative writing. I hope it was a class of monkeys with a lot of typewriters.
