This quote has gotten a lot of play around the webs as a means to take some of the stuffing out of the lit-rary snobs out there, whom I've never really met, and I've met a lot of snobs in the general sense. I once got in grave trouble saying that The DaVinci Code is a terrible book--it really is, by just about any standard of a novel. But what I assumed everybody knew (but didn't) was that it's possible for a book to have a terrific and entertaining story (which the DaVinci Code has) and still be rather an exasperating piece of writing. Dan Brown is an irritating writer: and no, it's not because I'm seething with envy over his success. He doesn't trust his reader so you have to sit through boatloads of dull expository dialogue, lots of reminders of what happened just two, teeny tiny chapters before, and viewpoints that shift so often you KNOW you are reading a book that is actually meant to be a movie. The danger of all those shifting story lines is that many of them in Brown's book just aren't as interesting as you'd hope. I didn't need to read pages upon pages about the albino zealot in DaVinci and we've got similar problems here in Inferno.
This would be the place to say something snarky about Brown, but I have nothing snarky to say about the dude. I read one of his books; it was entertaining and I was entertained and if there was anything about the book that was supposed to be deeper than that it went right past me. Being cranky about a Dan Brown book not being high literature is like yelling at a cupcake for not being a salad; it’s really missing the point. You don’t want the cupcake? Don’t eat the cupcake. Apparently lots of people like cupcakes. They don’t care that you want them to eat salad. You eat salad, if it’s so important to you.
That said, Scalzi's quote is much more apt than the 'sticking it to the lit-rary snobs' interpretation of it might suggest. Yep, cupcakes are yummy. But a steady diet of cupcakes is really bad for you. And the point is to know the difference between cupcakes and salads, when you can moderately consume one or the other and be a happy and indulged and also healthy and growing at the same time. It's not good to conflate salads with cupcakes just because the latter is more fun and sells better than kale. And it's not good idea to conflate an entertaining story with great literature, which challenges and changes us in addition to entertaining us.
So Inferno suffers from much of the same problems, and it has many of the same virtues, as DaVinci Code did. Virtues: I love international thrillers, and it's got lots of great scene-setting in Florence, Venice, an Constantinople. And OMG there's a proffie who is ACTUALLY THE HERO and not just a bit-player scumbag archetype who only became a professor to predate on his nubile undergrads. Woo! Just like with DaVinci, this might get people interested in Dante's Inferno, which is all to the good in my book. The problems are still the problems. The characters are one-dimensional super-characters--we find out his love interest has an IQ of 208 in the first 10 pages or so (I can't tell on pages; reading on iPad) and has been an acting prodigy! learns languages in a single month! and is (GASP!) a bit naughty rebel girl in her lissome athleticism! Good lord. There is every cringe-worthy
cliche possible: there is the scary lesbian-y man-woman assassin, the Sinister Corporation doing the bidding of the wealthy and privileged worldwide, there is a mad scientist who wants to RULE THE WORLD. Well, no. He actually just wants to wreck it and have his video shown.
Another point in its favor: one evil person is called the provost. Hee! I love evil people named after upper administrators I fear.
Anyway, all very entertaining, and I think Brown may be working with a better editor because the prose is a step above The Lost Symbol or the DaVinci Code--far less repetition and less expository dialogue (not all gone, but waaaaay less than lectures delivered in DaVinci.)
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