My pastor asked me to be on a panel discussion on Friday night about The Book That Is Now The Movie. Yep, The Da Vinci Code. The problem is that I hadn’t read the book until now. Yep, I’d avoided it until now based on the expert recommendations of many fine folks, including my wife. But now I was cornered.
After all, my pastor knows that I am the editor of the finest Catholic newsmagazine (if I do say so myself), and in the May issue we have several articles by Carl Olson and Sandra Miesel on TBTISNTM. And that makes me an expert, right?
Happily, the discussion group is based on “The Da Vinci Deception”, by Mark Shea and Dr. Ted Sri (who I went to Steubenville with, incidentally), thus I have some solid support to stand on.
Still, it wouldn’t be right to present myself as any kind of authority if I didn’t read the book first, so I got a copy. And read about a quarter of it in a couple of hours last night. It’s not War and Peace. And I’m so very proud of myself because I only stopped to yell, “This is just idiotic. Who would believe this?” just a few times.
I can see why they’re making a movie about it. It is written like a script treatment and is very filmable. As for the content, while it’s not great literature it’s what I can an “airplane book,” something to read while you’re on a cross-country flight. Criticizing it based on its literary merits seems like a mistake to me. After all, people happily read all kinds of pulp, knowing from the start that it’s pulp. So immediately you’re going to have people thinking you’re just some kind of book snob. Instead, point out its obvious and numerous historical and religious flaws. I’m no medieval or patristic scholar and even I can find them on every page.
Should be a fun night on Friday. I plan on printing out every one of Amy’s cool responses to inane questions to have them at the ready. We’ll see what happens.
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