Chapter 35
"It doesn't make sense," he finally said.
"Which part?"
Langdon is confused, constantly playing Watson to this Gallic Holmes who buys tickets for train journeys she never intends to take, thus wasting seventy precious dollars. Wassup, Bob, Harvard not paying you enough? But fear not, the plucky prof has his trusty sense of smell, enabling the duo to use their plucky UV torch (which is turning into a sort of curatorial sonic screwdriver).
And more cliffhangers. What happens in the Bois de Boulogne that can be so shocking to prim, fastidious Langdon? What else can Sophie have to tell him? And what ludicrous bollocks are we going to hear about the entirely imaginary Priory of Sion?
(Incidentally, I think we can come up with a few European stations that don't look like Saint-Lazare...)
"Which part?"
Langdon is confused, constantly playing Watson to this Gallic Holmes who buys tickets for train journeys she never intends to take, thus wasting seventy precious dollars. Wassup, Bob, Harvard not paying you enough? But fear not, the plucky prof has his trusty sense of smell, enabling the duo to use their plucky UV torch (which is turning into a sort of curatorial sonic screwdriver).
And more cliffhangers. What happens in the Bois de Boulogne that can be so shocking to prim, fastidious Langdon? What else can Sophie have to tell him? And what ludicrous bollocks are we going to hear about the entirely imaginary Priory of Sion?
(Incidentally, I think we can come up with a few European stations that don't look like Saint-Lazare...)
posted by Tim F at 7:33 am
2 Comments:
To respond to your last couple of posts in one: I do think it's Langdon's persistent dullness in the face of the obvious that irritates me most about the book. Why does he have to be quite so lost and confused? Why so non-astute? It's as if Brown thinks he has to dumb down his (male) hero for his reader to identify with him. And also, clearly, he doesn't intend the reader to identify with (female) Sophie. He makes her too slick. So I'm looking at what you said ("because she's not an American male, the author can't bring himself to craft his narrative around her") from the other side -- that is, the author decides he has to make his hero less intelligent than surrounding character history would suggest he really is/should be -- in order to "help us identify" -- and I find that rather insulting.
I think this is my number-one complaint with the book: more than the bad writing or the stupid title. It's the veneer of erudition it carries, while at the same time being at heart anti-intellectual. And it gets away with it because the narrative pace (although that too is an illusion) means you don't have time to stop and realise what a crock you're being sold.
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