Chapter 14
Just when I'm praising Brown for the sense of pace that comes from his short chapters, he overplays it. Nothing really happens in Chapter 14, apart from setting up (but not yet delivering) a revelation about Sophie. Instead, we learn that Bezu Fache needs a high-profile arrest to silence his critics; that he lost a lot of money in the dotcom bubble; and that he wears nice shirts.
Beckett, of course, could spin an entire play from such character revelations, although Fache would have to spend most of his time in a dustbin. Is Brown aiming for this sort of existential absurdism here? And how would TDVC progress if this were the case?
Sophie: Let's go.
Langdon: But I need to do a poo.
They do not move.
Beckett, of course, could spin an entire play from such character revelations, although Fache would have to spend most of his time in a dustbin. Is Brown aiming for this sort of existential absurdism here? And how would TDVC progress if this were the case?
Sophie: Let's go.
Langdon: But I need to do a poo.
They do not move.
posted by Tim F at 8:02 am
7 Comments:
Sophie: Well go then.
Langdon: I will. Soon.
The water drips from the greasy pipe, like Peter's tears in a burning desert; for forty days and forty nights, until the crow reaches the shore of a firey lake of black fire and black trees and the knight of Tempar says: the belle dame sans mercy, follow my bread crumb sins to the owl with no name and there you will find the thing you have been looking for.
Langdon goes into a cubical and lets rip a massive fart. Sophie doesn't smile.
"...perhaps it's done already, perhaps they have said me already, perhaps they have carried me to the threshold of my story, before the door that opens on my story, that would surprise me, if it opens, it will be I, it will be the silence, where I am, I don't know, I'll never know, in the silence you don't know, you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on."
That's how I feel reading this book.
Maybe someone could do 105 plays based on each Chapter of DVC.
That sounds more like something Warhol would do.
Shortest chapter ever - I thought - until I turned the page.
This slow-reading means that I've noticed that every single plot development is repeated many times.
Here, we get the 'PS' bit explained all over again - just in case we'd forgotten..
Wan: But Sophie would smile. She'd then phone Bezu Fache and say "Zut alors, Langdon a coupé le fromage!" and all the DCPJ guys would rush to the bogs for a giggle.
Billy: I like the 105 plays idea. An Edinburgh project, maybe?
Spin: Maybe there needs to be a stripped down version, with all the repetition and padding elininated.
Oh God, there isn't really a Cole's Notes of this, is there?
Really, you guys, this seems like fun now but someone's going to end up crying.
FN - I think Tim's been crying for quite some time now.
Actually, Spin, I've dried my eyes, and reached some sort of Joycean epiphany about this. It's all a case of being appropriate to the source material. So: short posts, to give the illusion of pace and excitement; and if I drop out of sight for a while, I blame it on a DB-style writer's block.
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