August 15th, 2009
I loved the Matrix and Moulin Rouge, despite their being hyped. On the other hand, I did watch Lord of the Rings 1 & 2, but stayed away from 3. Tried reading book 1, but just managed a few paragraphs, and then stopped… (Well, perhaps someday…)
Did “The Unbearable Lightness of Being” have that much hype? I love that novel, have read it twice, and think of it as the kind/type of novel I’d love to write if I ever get the chance of writing one. (Haven’t seen the film adaptation with Daniel Day-Lewis…)
As for “The Da Vinci Code,” if you find a copy lying around, it’s worth reading din naman. For one thing, I do subscribe to the recuperation/rehabilitation of the “sacred feminine.”
One other reason why I stayed away from Dan Brown’s novel is that I’ve read Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum” and from what I had heard about “The Da Vinci Code,” it seemed to me to be a “Foucault’s Pendulum”-wanna-be.
I’m currently re-reading Eco’s novel. (I read it years ago, mistakenly thinking that it’d help me write a paper on Michel Foucault. Wala palang connect. Ibang Foucault ‘to… Or, meron din, if one looks at the obsession for power and techniques of power…)
It’s a more difficult read (Eco has latin, italian, spanish, french, portuegese quotes, many of them, not translated… Of course, the original was in Italian… Many allusions/references are rather obscure — to me, at least, and I imagine, to a general reader…) and, I think, more poignant. Well, it figures, considering that Dan Brown admired Disney adaptations of fairy tales. (I hated their sanitization of the conclusion of the “The Little Mermaid.”)
You have all the elements here, conspiracies (Templar Knights, Rosicrucians, the Grail, kooky characters, etc.), love, mystery, philosophy, literary criticism, human frailty/folly, etc. Eco also pokes fun at the genre. (This was written in 1988, english translation 1989.) A character in the novel, a publisher named Garamond, says, “Here are three volumes that have come out in recent years, all of them successful. The first is in English; I haven’t read it, but the author is a famous critic. What has he written? The subtitle calls it a gnostic novel. Now look at this: a mystery, a best-seller. And what’s it about? A gnostic church near Turin… It’s a gold mine, all right. I realized that this people will gobble up anything that’s hermetic, as you put it, anything that says the opposite of what they read in their books at school…”
So, if you’re after more than the Indiana Jones or Lara Croft (Tomb Raider) mystery and adventure, I’d recommend this one. This should have been made into a movie! One of the major characters, Jacopo Belbo, I’ve always pictured as played by Jason Alexander (he from “Seinfeld”). I don’t know… there must be something wrong with my imagination… for Belbo seemed a rather attractive man. But there’s something about his cowardice and frustration that seemed funny… and Jason Alexander simply comes to (my) mind.
Imagine Jason Alexander saying: “Ma gavte la nata.” (“Take out the cork.”)
Or, if you’re looking for something that’s closer to “Unbearable Lightness…” in tone and flavor, you might wanna read Jeanette Winterson’s “The Passion” or “Written on the Body” (Now, here’s a woman novelist that’s philosophical!) I’m also a fan of sorts.
Happy reading, everyone!
best regards,
rosicruc-ian
—
“In those halcyon days I believed that the source of enigma was stupidity. Then the other evening in the periscope I decided that the most terrible enigmas are those that mask themselves as madness. But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.”
- Casaubon, in Umberto Eco’s “Foucault’s Pendulum”