This is from a famous novel.  Name the decade.

 

Sophie was silent, but Langdon sensed she was starting to understand her grandfather better. Ironically, Langdon had made this same point in a class lecture earlier this semester. "Is it surprising we feel conflicted about sex?" he asked his students. "Our ancient heritage and our very physiologies tell us sex is natural - a cherished route to spiritual fulfillment - and yet modern religion decries it as shameful, teaching us to fear our sexual desire as the hand of the devil....."

 

...."Professor Langdon?" A male student in back raised his hand, sounding hopeful. "Are you saying that instead of going to chapel, we should have more sex?"

 

Langdon chuckled, not about to take the bait. From what he'd heard about Harvard parties, these kids were having more than enough sex. "Gentlemen," he said, knowing he was on tender ground, "might I offer a suggestion for all of you. Without being so bold as to condone premarital sex, and without being so naive as to think you're all chaste angels, I will give you this bit of advice about your sex lives."

 

All the men in the audience leaned forward, listening intently.

 

"The next time you find yourself with a woman, look in your heart and see if you cannot approach sex as a mystical, spiritual act. Challenge yourself to find that spark of divinity that man can only achieve through union with the sacred feminine."

 

The women smiled knowingly, nodding.

 

The men exchanged dubious giggles and off-color jokes.

 

Langdon sighed. College men were still boys.

 

There are wary words that you learn if you read a lot, words that condemn the author and his work as surely as the appearance of Fabio on the cover of the paperback edition – if it wasn’t straight to paperback.  In movie reviews – well, anywhere, actually – the word “zany” or “madcap” is the sure admission of a crappy comedy and usually appears in those word bytes where the name of the reviewer and newspaper are too small to be read.  No actual reviewer of importance would use them.  There are famous reviewers who do, but they are the publicist’s friend, the ones whose existence is simply to be a shill for a studio, or all studios.

 

In fiction, in literature, in life, people don’t really chuckle, or at least not as much as they do in the books of bad writers.  In books where people chuckle, there you find the lazy author and, if the book is a huge success, the lazy reader.  How people laugh is a great insight to their character, and good writers expand upon it.  But anyway, what decade is the above passage from? 

 

It’s rather icky about sex, the way that a terribly misinformed book in the 1970’s was, the one entitled Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid To Ask.   That was a huge success, was not treated ironically, and reflected a population that could politely be called massively ignorant.  Among other things, gays are simply sick to the author, those propelling him to the dustbin of pop psychology.

 

But the selection above also features a Harvard lecture where college men lean forward to hear pearls of wisdom about sex from a professor, and the women, all knowing and mysterious, smile.  This is Peyton Place country, the 1950’s.

 

But it’s from 2003, The Da Vinci Code, and it is one of the most derivative and lightly researched novels with pretensions of deep thought to succeed of the last century.

  

It would be superfluous to note that the visiting professor, Robert Langdon, has to suffer early on a gushing description of himself by an admiring woman, reading a profile of him from a magazine.  In short, the man is accomplished, brainy, humble, and sexy.  His clothing is given the once over and, in all, he sounded tasteful and ……familiar.  So familiar.  Looked and dressed very much like the photo of the author on the back sleeve.  A clue, surely, to the fueling energy here.

 

I’d also like to inquire if a man, anywhere at anytime, while conjoined with a desirable woman, challenged himself to find that spark of divinity that man can only achieve through union with the sacred feminine, or that the woman in any reasonable state of physical arousal wanted him to.  The joys of orgasm need no extended explanation here, but usually when rut is in play, that’s about it.  People have needed and wanted more enlightened explanations for their basest emotions and instincts, and sharing orgasm more or less together is pretty damned great, but they’re pretty much fooling themselves if they think sexual satisfaction comes from a search for the divine, although it can seem so, and men will say or do anything to get laid by the women they want, and women tell themselves all sorts of lies to excuse purely physical desire, usually in explanations to spouse or boyfriend about some incident or other, perhaps involving a professor. 

 

And do Harvard men go to ‘chapel’ with intense regularity?  Are Harvard parties so hot and different from anywhere else?  Hello?

 

Well, these are just a few things that leap out of this four hour read.  It touches on some truly bizarre aspects of Christianity and art, history, and people in general, but its derivations are so obvious that I’m rather surprised nobody I’ve read has noted them.

 

First off, this is Foucault’s Pendulum Lite.  Nearly twenty years ago, the Italian Umberto Eco wrote a longer, more fascinating, sexier, and deeper work about three editors who make up a story that turns out to be, if not true, of interest to parties who actually exist.  A huge best seller, it too is about the Templars and the people like Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code, who write books more or less about them.  It mentioned Leonardo and nothing of the alleged code in his work but then the restoration of the Last Supper wasn’t complete when Eco wrote. 

 

The one truly intriguing thing in the Code is the analysis of this painting.  It is certainly true that the disciple to Christ’s right, the place of honor, looks deeply feminine.   I can’t quite make out the bust line that Brown can, but I certainly note, as Brown does, that this person and Jesus wear similar, hardly exact, clothing in reverse.  But so do others in the painting.  And there are odd things.  A hand with a knife belongs to none of the parties there.  But if Mary Magdalene is a disciple, which of the men is replaced?  By Brown’s description, Simon Peter is replaced, the Rock Upon Which.   Brown’s point is that …..well, let’s spill the beans.

 

As has been known for a long time everywhere, monarchies want to justify their existence by claiming divine blood.  Alexander claimed to be from Zeus like Hercules, and the Egyptians did the same with their gods, and the Romans just declared their Emperors gods, and it’s very old.  An early French dynasty did the same, but of course the prevailing religion of power was Christianity and so they decided they were the descendents of Christ and Mary Magdalene who were, according to the Gnostics, a married couple, which is consistent to how a Jewish rabbi of the time would have lived.

 

Further, they claim that this Mary was the Holy Grail, the chalice, the womb of Christ’s seed who was spirited out of the Holy Land after the Crucifixion because they feared the authorities would kill the Messiah’s offspring.  She ended up in France in a Jewish community there.

 

It is claimed by this book and others that early on in the Christian church, there was no claim of Christ being divine, but that was decided upon by the Nicene Creed, which eliminated all competition for the struggling church by declaring unapproved thoughts and interpretations of the Gospels heretical.  This is an old tale, and it has been in many books, including Eco’s, and there is no proof for it or anything like it.  In any case, if true, Christ’s blood certainly wasn’t much or got diluted quickly because the dynasty in question didn’t last long, did little of consequence, and has vanished almost entirely from history. 

 

Brown claims that a secret society has existed all these years to protect the bloodline of Christ.  That’s the essential story in the Da Vinci code.

 

There is a great deal of discussion about the Holy Grail, which apparently is not the Cup of the Christ at the Last Supper (and good question by Brown: why in the world would that be a big deal?  True: would the spoon or fork or butter plate?) but the bones of Magdalene, who is the repository of all the old Goddess myths written about and made popular if not up by Robert Graves, a man who loved to tweak and finagle the intellectual establishment of his day.

 

In any case, the novel ends with the implication that the Grail is now buried back in Paris in the Louvre under the glass pyramid.  Although he doesn’t actually say that.  In any case, feminine voices reach the man’s ears as he reaches this spot, so we conclude, eh?  We conclude.

And concluding is something the book wants you do.  Its back pages are filled with logrolling quotes from other authors, all of whom are New York Times best sellers.  But no quotes from the Times itself as to the book’s quality. 

 

Well, although an albino hit man for Opus Dei and a mad crippled villain recall Thomas Harris’ last novel, and although Peter Paul Blatty (The Exorcist) is owed a nod here and there, The Da Vinci Code stands alone as a bizarre novel for our time.   And you have to ask, what is its attraction?  Imagine Foucault’s Pendulum written by Clive Cussler and you have it to the life.   Of course, given the fact that nobody notices the similarities, it’s possible nobody actually read FP, despite its international best seller status.

 

Pseudo-intellectual implications appeal to men, and the elevation of women in today’s popular religion appeal to women.  There is nothing wrong with purporting that Christ and Wife are better than Christ alone.  Behind every great man, etc.  But any civilization that recognizes the dual importance of both genders is also smart enough to realize that trivial details in the life myths are unimportant. 

 

Do Unto Others needs no back story whatever.  Why do we insist upon one?