Thursday 10 May 2012

Why Dan Brown deserves the Nobel Prize for Literature

And as far as depth goes, the book is about as deep as a saucer of milk for a rather skinny cat. There is nothing much to puzzle about or ponder. You can pick up the book and read it from cover to cover without the supervision of a person with literary leanings.

(This post was first published as a newspaper column in approximately 2008 and is now part of 'The Writing is on the Coffee Cup.)

 The world’s literati can sleep soundly tonight. I have not been asked to assist with the selection of candidates for this year’s Nobel Prize for Literature. So as these things go, if you are one of the literati, expect a win from some tortuous, convoluted novel with lots of deep meaning, by a relatively unknown author. And if you are a virtually unknown author who publishes literary conundrums, you too can enjoy a good night’s sleep.

That being said, I have reached a conclusion on my selection for this year’s winner.

The book, ‘The Da Vinci Code’, is right up there at the top of my list of deserving winners, just above JK Rowling for Harry Potter.

Admittedly, Dan Brown hardly needs the money. After all, he is a very, very wealthy man, and his next book will probably make him that much wealthier. But he does deserve the prize.

In case you haven’t yet read ‘The Da Vinci Code’, the synopsis is the same as the synopsis of the film. If you haven’t yet seen the film, you can either go and see it at the cinema or wait for it to come out on DVD. Or, like 44 million other readers, you can go out, buy the book and read it. Suspend your disbelief and / or any murky desire for things literary, and you will probably enjoy a rip-roaring thriller with enough controversial bits to sustain a conversation through a rather long dinner party.

Stylistically, Dan Brown achieves the near impossible: the complete absence of pretentious devices or hectic vocabulary. Anybody who has the goal of writing professionally, or who does write professionally, will tell you how difficult this is. Dan Brown’s sentences are short, to the point and contain none of the long words or interesting metaphors of which more literary writers are so fond.

And while we are on the topic of brevity, it is also interesting to note that his chapters are short as well; some are just a page in length.

His characterization is refreshingly two dimensional. Obviously he hasn’t spent too much time reading ‘The Hero’s Journey’. The characters are called upon to do their thing, and get them done without the impossible motivation of compensating for endlessly rehashed residual guilt brought about by traumatic childhood incidences or maiden aunts abandoned in burning buildings.

And as far as depth goes, the book is about as deep as a saucer of milk for a rather skinny cat. There is nothing much to puzzle about or ponder. You can pick up the book and read it from cover to cover without the supervision of a person with literary leanings.

In short, Dan Brown has written a well paced thriller that is easy to read. And there are a number of others of a similar caliber.

So why give someone who writes potboilers a Nobel Prize for Literature? The answer is really quite easy: the ‘Da Vinci Code’ sold 44 million copies. If you haven’t yet said ‘wow’, think about the implications of that number.

Dan Brown deserves a Nobel Prize for Literature, simply for his magnificent contribution to the field of readership. I am sure, that amongst the 44 million, there must be many millions who never bothered to pick up a book before. And amongst those, I am sure that millions actually decided to read his other books and then went on to pick up books by other authors.

But enough of the hyperbole, polemic, overstatement and adulation. Here is the point.

The search for meaning, and too much depth in literature, has produced quality, but at the expense of readership. And too much depth has detracted from the original crux of reading: telling stories.

Without the compulsion of the story, fewer and fewer people read. There is no need to debate this fact: people have shown it by staying out of bookstores in droves.

The analytic depth in any piece by Shakespeare and Dickens was incidental to the story. Without the story, people would have stayed away from Shakespeare and Dickens in droves as well.

In one regard, Dan Brown deserves to be ranked alongside the great writers: he is a masterly storyteller.

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