3 ms·

Is it just me, or does every self-appointed culture snob find the need to make the gratuitous digs on Dan Brown's work? The man's an amazing storyteller.

aaronbrethorst 16y ago
I think you could take the manuscript for a Tom Clancy novel, replace each instance of "Jack Ryan" with "Robert Langdon", "CIA" with "Harvard", and "Kremlin" with "Vatican", and you'd be 80% done with the next Dan Brown novel. How, exactly, an Italian, crypto-Opus Dei-member, 747 pilot crashing a plane into Harvard's Tercentenary Theatre during Freshman Convocation would result in Langdon becoming the next President of Harvard, though, would indeed require an amazing storyteller. That one doesn't quite write itself.
- jacques_chester 16y ago
  Langdon would be the only survivor of the senior faculty and would be automatically elevated to the post. He, and a sexy bimbo who is ostensibly an aerospace engineer, would engage in a whirlwind tour of the world, including * Finding 14th century patterns in the flight paths of major airlines * A gripping episode at the Boeing High Technology Escapades Centre near Seattle, Washington (warning: location may not exist) * 50 pages of hastily cribbed history notes about ancient greece * The discovery that the descendants of the Cult of Pythagoras and the the Eleusinian Mysteries have been secretly at war for thousands of years and that this explains all historical events up to and including Facebook. edited for typos and misspellings.
brc 16y ago
Apparently you're not culturally elite unless you can find new ways to make fun of Dan Brown and Tim Ferriss. I would respect this if the snubbers wouldn't trade their soul for the success of either author. Every snarky review I've ever read comes off as sour grapes and tends to devolve into a character assissination instead of a constructive criticism of the content. These guys write books that people evidently want to read. I fail to see the problem.
sethg 16y ago
When I make digs at Dan Brown’s work, they are anything but gratuitous. I should have thrown The DaVinci Code across the room when the narrator declared that Leonardo had invented public-key cryptography.

aaronbrethorst 16y ago

I think you could take the manuscript for a Tom Clancy novel, replace each instance of "Jack Ryan" with "Robert Langdon", "CIA" with "Harvard", and "Kremlin" with "Vatican", and you'd be 80% done with the next Dan Brown novel. How, exactly, an Italian, crypto-Opus Dei-member, 747 pilot crashing a plane into Harvard's Tercentenary Theatre during Freshman Convocation would result in Langdon becoming the next President of Harvard, though, would indeed require an amazing storyteller. That one doesn't quite write itself.

jacques_chester 16y ago
Langdon would be the only survivor of the senior faculty and would be automatically elevated to the post. He, and a sexy bimbo who is ostensibly an aerospace engineer, would engage in a whirlwind tour of the world, including * Finding 14th century patterns in the flight paths of major airlines * A gripping episode at the Boeing High Technology Escapades Centre near Seattle, Washington (warning: location may not exist) * 50 pages of hastily cribbed history notes about ancient greece * The discovery that the descendants of the Cult of Pythagoras and the the Eleusinian Mysteries have been secretly at war for thousands of years and that this explains all historical events up to and including Facebook. edited for typos and misspellings.

brc 16y ago

Apparently you're not culturally elite unless you can find new ways to make fun of Dan Brown and Tim Ferriss. I would respect this if the snubbers wouldn't trade their soul for the success of either author. Every snarky review I've ever read comes off as sour grapes and tends to devolve into a character assissination instead of a constructive criticism of the content. These guys write books that people evidently want to read. I fail to see the problem.

sethg 16y ago

When I make digs at Dan Brown’s work, they are anything but gratuitous. I should have thrown The DaVinci Code across the room when the narrator declared that Leonardo had invented public-key cryptography.