Dan Brown - Angels & Demons
I'm gonna give him a little longer to impress me, but so far it's not going well. I don't even want to get started on the science, so instead let me address two car-related gripes in the first 60 or so pages:
1. We're informed that the lead character, Langdon, drives a Saab 900S. Why an S, we might ask. Well, perhaps Brown is actually being very clever in conveying a huge amount of information about his character in four digits; perhaps he's trying to make things easy for the Hollywood props people (this is clearly a book written for film); or perhaps he doesn't know much about cars so just copied what was written on the back of one. Giving him the benefit of the doubt and opting for the first possibility, what does 'Saab 900S' tell us about Langdon?
i. His car was between about 5 and about 15 years old at the time the book was published; perhaps it was meant to be new when the book was written and just wasn't changed to 'Saab 9-3S' during editing; but perhaps we're supposed to see Langdon as someone who drives a lightly used car.
ii. It's a Saab, the typical shorthand for nice, safe, intellectual, middle-class, and perhaps more so in America, a degree of imagination in buying something Swedish rather than a Camry.
iii. It's a 900, so we're talking intellectual (or architect) rather than executive; a poor comparison, but Colin Firth's character in Love Actually drove an old-style 900.
iv. It's an S, which might just be a crucial point. Or it might be an entirely superfluous detail that means nothing. Is Brown telling us that Langdon likes a few refinements, some electric windows perhaps, but not the full leather-seats-and-air-con of the SE? Is he telling us that Langdon didn't opt for the high power of the high-pressure turbo versions? Is he telling us that Langdon is alternative yet conservative? Or just that he can't afford the top model?
v. In the UK at least, a high proportion of convertibles are Saabs (though this is not to say that a high proportion of Saabs are convertibles); is Brown hinting that Langdon drives a convertible? Thus that he's having a mid-life crisis? That he's a bit of a hairdresser? That he enjoys the great outdoors? I'm inclined to think this is an analysis too far even if none of the foregoing was, because with Brown's subtlety I'm pretty sure he would have spelt it out for us if Langdon's car was a soft-top.
2. In Switzerland, Langdon searches 'in vain' for a seatbelt in the 'black Peugeot sedan' in which he's being driven at over 100mph. OK, let's unpack this. We'd better assume that it must be a pretty modern car, given that it's easily capable of that speed. So we're looking at a 406, or a 607; no reason to believe that CERN would run a fleet of classic 304's or anything anyway. So given that all cars have had seatbelts for at least 15 years, even in the back seats if we allow that Langdon might have been riding there, why is he searching in vain? The Swiss are as we know safety-conscious, so we surely don't believe that Peugeots are stripped of their seatbelts on import. And besides, we're not told that "Langdon reached for his seatbelt but, curiously, found that despite all the mechanisms being in place the webbing had been cut and removed"... The only way I can think of this working is that Langdon, as we know, may not be a very scientifically-minded kind of guy; had he been in a Renault Espace, which has slightly strange seatbelts with two plugs, one for each side of the seat, it might have made sense. But he'd still have been able to find the seatbelt even if he couldn't use it. Or in a BMW where the rear seatbelts used, at least, to be anchored in the centre rather than on the pillars (it was meant to help prevent rear passengers being thrown together in an accident), he might have only looked on the lateral side and not the medial, and concluded there was no seatbelt. But this argument simply doesn't stand for Peugeots.
3. Unrelatedly but because it's annoying me, why are people being addressed as Mr. Langdon, and Ms. Vetra, when they're actually Professor and Dr? Admittedly as I don't have a PhD I don't know how common it is not to use one's title, but surely when being addressed by title by an academic colleague in an academic environment, you'd expect them to use the correct one?
I think reading further in this book might be hazardous to my idiot-tolerance and fool-suffering abilities...
1. We're informed that the lead character, Langdon, drives a Saab 900S. Why an S, we might ask. Well, perhaps Brown is actually being very clever in conveying a huge amount of information about his character in four digits; perhaps he's trying to make things easy for the Hollywood props people (this is clearly a book written for film); or perhaps he doesn't know much about cars so just copied what was written on the back of one. Giving him the benefit of the doubt and opting for the first possibility, what does 'Saab 900S' tell us about Langdon?
i. His car was between about 5 and about 15 years old at the time the book was published; perhaps it was meant to be new when the book was written and just wasn't changed to 'Saab 9-3S' during editing; but perhaps we're supposed to see Langdon as someone who drives a lightly used car.
ii. It's a Saab, the typical shorthand for nice, safe, intellectual, middle-class, and perhaps more so in America, a degree of imagination in buying something Swedish rather than a Camry.
iii. It's a 900, so we're talking intellectual (or architect) rather than executive; a poor comparison, but Colin Firth's character in Love Actually drove an old-style 900.
iv. It's an S, which might just be a crucial point. Or it might be an entirely superfluous detail that means nothing. Is Brown telling us that Langdon likes a few refinements, some electric windows perhaps, but not the full leather-seats-and-air-con of the SE? Is he telling us that Langdon didn't opt for the high power of the high-pressure turbo versions? Is he telling us that Langdon is alternative yet conservative? Or just that he can't afford the top model?
v. In the UK at least, a high proportion of convertibles are Saabs (though this is not to say that a high proportion of Saabs are convertibles); is Brown hinting that Langdon drives a convertible? Thus that he's having a mid-life crisis? That he's a bit of a hairdresser? That he enjoys the great outdoors? I'm inclined to think this is an analysis too far even if none of the foregoing was, because with Brown's subtlety I'm pretty sure he would have spelt it out for us if Langdon's car was a soft-top.
2. In Switzerland, Langdon searches 'in vain' for a seatbelt in the 'black Peugeot sedan' in which he's being driven at over 100mph. OK, let's unpack this. We'd better assume that it must be a pretty modern car, given that it's easily capable of that speed. So we're looking at a 406, or a 607; no reason to believe that CERN would run a fleet of classic 304's or anything anyway. So given that all cars have had seatbelts for at least 15 years, even in the back seats if we allow that Langdon might have been riding there, why is he searching in vain? The Swiss are as we know safety-conscious, so we surely don't believe that Peugeots are stripped of their seatbelts on import. And besides, we're not told that "Langdon reached for his seatbelt but, curiously, found that despite all the mechanisms being in place the webbing had been cut and removed"... The only way I can think of this working is that Langdon, as we know, may not be a very scientifically-minded kind of guy; had he been in a Renault Espace, which has slightly strange seatbelts with two plugs, one for each side of the seat, it might have made sense. But he'd still have been able to find the seatbelt even if he couldn't use it. Or in a BMW where the rear seatbelts used, at least, to be anchored in the centre rather than on the pillars (it was meant to help prevent rear passengers being thrown together in an accident), he might have only looked on the lateral side and not the medial, and concluded there was no seatbelt. But this argument simply doesn't stand for Peugeots.
3. Unrelatedly but because it's annoying me, why are people being addressed as Mr. Langdon, and Ms. Vetra, when they're actually Professor and Dr? Admittedly as I don't have a PhD I don't know how common it is not to use one's title, but surely when being addressed by title by an academic colleague in an academic environment, you'd expect them to use the correct one?
I think reading further in this book might be hazardous to my idiot-tolerance and fool-suffering abilities...
posted by Z31 at 5:39 pm
4 Comments:
I don't know anything about cars; this all seems to conform to my belief that Dan Brown thinks he's being thorough and clever in many areas when in fact he's a bit dense, however.
On point three though, it's actually perfectly reasonable to refer to a Dr or Professor as Mr or Mrs if they're being referred to outside their academic sphere- I've known several doctors who felt that being known as Dr N was at best misleading and at worst posturing, since they weren't medical doctors and didn't use their doctorate in their work, for example.
This doesn't let Brown off though, because it appears Langdon is called in precisely for his expertise in symbology. So who knows?
TCH
If I may continue by commenting rather than posting a new entry, it seems to me rather implausible that generations of symbologists were unable to work out the slightly trivial matter of 'how to write Illuminati so it reads the same upside-down'. Bunch of sympletons {sic} if you ask me...
Yes, not to mention the fact that in going on and on and on and on and on abou thow ingenious the symbols themselves were, he was basically just giving a vast ego-boost to himself and his artistic collaborator, comparing himself to geniuses of the Middle Ages, which I at least thought was pompous and, for the reasons you state, entirely inappropriate.
TCH
My parents were/are quite happy to be referred to as Mr and Mrs outside of work except for if dad was referred to as dr mum would get very annoyed if she wasn't and well fair enough her doctorate is just as valid as dad's. I think that if it was an option on a form or whatever they'd tick the dr box, but then it was kinda their job.
The only thing I can think is if the characters don't know each other very well and can't actually remember their exact title and so stick with the safe ones of Mr/Ms whereas if you refer to someone with an academic title the general theory is you'd better make sure it's the right one as calling a professor dr is a definite faux pas.....or at least that's what they tell us in chemistry..........which means you end up with converations with friends that go 'it's ok we'll ask doctor....professor? ....no doctor.....no wait........we'll ask Hubberstey.'......i think Hubberstey is actually a professor......completely unrelated really but arrived at in my head one of our lecturers this year was called Dr Love......no really......seriously.....his actual name.....not kidding
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