Word: code
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Somebody has probably already pointed out that the publication date of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code - March 18, 2003 - came just two days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. That isn't a conspiracy, it's just a coincidence. But it does - as fans of The Da Vinci Code often say - make you think...
...Consider: Brown's novel proposed an alternate history of Christianity, wherein a bitter schism took place shortly after Jesus' death, between the mean patriarchal faction who concealed Jesus' marriage and the nice faction consisting of startlingly liberal first-wave feminists. In other words, The Da Vinci Code recasts the history of Christianity into something that looks a lot more like the history of ... Islam, wherein an early schism took place between the Sunnis and the Shi'ites. Could the book's passionate following in a predominantly Christian America express a secret, even unconscious sympathetic identification with Islam? Or a repressed...
...himself a huge challenge. What he did for Christianity in Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code, Brown is now trying to do for America: reclaim its richness, its darkness, its weirdness. It's probably a quixotic effort, but it is nevertheless touchingly valiant. We're not just overweight tourists in T-shirts and fanny packs, he says. Our history is as sick and weird as anybody's! There's signal in the noise, order in the chaos! It just takes a degree from a nonexistent Harvard department...
...There was an awful lot going on,” Stein says. “We were trying to put out the fire and write a new fire code at the same time...
...with the details: “People walk about with names like Kaplinksi or Eshtahaul or Bar-Ziva, and girls walk around in various colors, and all enter and exit rooms with the number 526 or 3002,” he writes. But in time, he reveals that a code of some kind underlies his authorial choices. He alludes to the birth of his children, pointing to the bud of the “true” story then placing it deferentially aside. One does not get the sense that the sparseness of the secondary characters is simply a matter...