Dan Brown’s new novel The Lost Symbol picks up right where The Da Vinci Code left off in another thrilling, puzzle-solving, authorities-eluding mystery.  The only difference is that it’s set in the capital of the United States of America, Washington D.C., a city which this reviewer had the pleasure of visiting twice this summer.  Brown’s previous Robert Langdon novels, Angels and Demons and The Da Vinci Code, were set in Rome and Paris respectively, two cities which this reviewer had the pleasure of visiting last year.  Having read all of these books, been to all of these cities, and seen most of the monuments described by Brown in person, I gotta say…America is boring.

Robert Langdon’s newest adventure is set first in the Capitol Building, where the protagonist is led by trickery and forced to cooperate with a C.I.A. task force known as the Office of Security (an Office which Brown laboriously notes is “real” [who cares?]).  The first 250 pages of the book take place within this building and take about two hours to read, which is more than enough time to spend in the actual Capitol Building, let alone one which is selectively described by mediocre prose.  Langdon participates in some good cop, bad cop routine with the unbelievable Inoue Sato, the director of this so-called Office of Security (no, literally, a character like that couldn’t exist – no spoiler).

Amidst the thrilling descriptions of paintings which most are unfamiliar with (compared to those in The Da Vinci Code), we are INTERRUPTED by the story of Katherine Solomon and her discoveries in a field called Noetic science (another “real” thing).  Solomon has discovered that human thought has mass and also has the ability to change the environment if focused correctly.  Her research is revolutionary, but it threatened by a madman, Mal’akh, whose purpose in the novel is made known through a series of one-line, one-sentence paragraphs of the most dramatic quality.  It’s difficult to find interest in Solomon’s story because it continually interrupts the one in which we’re interested, Langdon’s, with narrative dribble and useless background.

The two stories to which we’re introduced have only one thing in common at first: Peter Solomon, the brother of Katherine, has been abducted by the madman Mal’akh, who is now leading Robert Langdon, friend of Peter Solomon, on an intricate (and whole unnecessary) quest for the Ancient Mysteries.  This wealth of knowledge will dawn a new age of enlightenment for mankind, but Mal’akh, like every Brown villain before him, has only his personal salvation/atonement/redemption in mind.  Ugh, the way Brown writes these characters is so pedantic: they’re always so annoyingly in touch with their feelings, so unilateral, so doctrinaire, that the reader is just plain bored during the chapters about them.

Robert Langdon...I mean, Dan Brown

Well, despite the fact that Brown may be a lousy writer, The Lost Symbol does keep you reading.  The Ancient Mysteries, it turns out, are connected with the Masons, an ancient society which has played a role in Brown’s previous novels and a group about which the author (and protagonist) seem(s) to understand a lot.  Langdon’s quest to find his friend and Katherine Solomon’s quest to find her brother also become the quest for the Mysteries, leading the two characters around various parts of Washington D.C. and into some of the more obscure and admittedly interesting parts of American history.  Some of the abstruse facts about the Founding Fathers (which, after some research on this end, are mostly true) are fascinating, although their use in a fictionalized yarn is questionable.

My big concern with The Lost Symbol was that it was so much more interesting in Europe, in Paris, in The Da Vinci Code.  I’m not complaining, I enjoy a good thrill, especially from a book, but the closer to home Dan Brown brings Robert Langdon, the less interesting everything becomes.  Structurally, the book was also vastly inferior to its two predecessors.  Really there were only five settings, the Capitol, the auxiliary Smithsonian Museum (which is “real”), the Cathedral, the mansion, and the final location (no spoiler, sorry).  The first half of the book took place in the Capitol alone, which left me feeling frustrated and unimpressed by the lightning pace of the rest of the novel.  I don’t know what I expected, but I suppose it wasn’t this.

Since The Lost Symbol is The Da Vinci Code set in America, a critique of the motif that Brown uses is probably more permissible if you’re going to let this review make or break the book for you.  I recognize that if you’ve got a good thing going, you should keep it up, but you should also recognize the aspects of that good thing which are bad and try to change them.  For instance, Mr. Brown, the crisis in the story shouldn’t always be dependent on a relative of the female protagonist.  Vittoria Vetra’s adoptive father, Sophie Neveu’s grandfather, and now Katherine Solomon’s brother have all been the victims of Robert Langdon’s adventures, a recurrence which is just plain incommodious.  Secondly, not all characters think in the same voice – the homeless man outside the Library of Congress in The Lost Symbol sounded exactly like the Harvard professor inside the Library of Congress.  Does anyone else find that bothersome?  Finally, a paragraph is not a chapter unless your Kurt Vonnegut or a comparable contemporary.  In an interview I watched with Brown just before writing this review, his interviewer asked him if he sent in one chapter at a time or a block of them to his publisher.  I laughed, thinking how Doubleday Publishing would react if Dan Brown sent them a 300 word block of text about Mal’akh and his transformation into a god.  Ridiculous.

Hypocrite I may be, but I enjoyed reading The Lost Symbol and look forward to Brown’s next novel.  I just hope he can find some new words (“esoteric” twice in the same paragraph?) and break from some of the more tedious points in his speedy narrative.

Finding Community at the Comic-Con

By Karah Boodt

40: The number of years Comic-Con International in San Diego has operated.

4.5: Number of days in July that fans flood the San Diego convention center.

6,000: The amount of bodies that can be seated in the center’s largest room, Hall H, without the intervention of the fire martial.

34: Approximate number of hours spent waiting on the sidewalk to get into Hall H by the Twilighters heading the line.

“And then Buffy staked Edward…the end.” So read dozens of t-shirts worn throughout the San Diego convention center. Here and there one might also spot shirts sporting a caricature of Robert Pattinson’s face along with the brief line, “Edward is Gay.” Yet for every one of the anti-Twilighters, it seemed there were fifty pro, all wearing variations of team Edward or team Jacob paraphernalia. Nowhere could one go to avoid the debate.Twilight Spoofers from The Hillywood Show hanging out at Comic-Con

Filmmaker Kevin Smith—who garners a panel every year whether or not he has any projects on the way—presented what is perhaps the best take on the franchise bashing during his Friday panel in Hall H, stating, “That’s what I love about a comic book convention. People will come to a convention, stand there in a fuckin’ Spock costume, look at somebody in a Chewie costume and they’re like, ‘Look at that fuckin’ geek.’ How dare you pass judgment on those twelve-year-old girls who like vampires! They need to be encouraged, because in six years they’ll be eighteen-year-old girls who like vampires…. There’s a plan and it’s working.”

Smith’s defense of the franchise might be a bit testosterone driven, but his point concerning nerd aggression is valid. Like the franchise or not, there is no denying that at this time, the Twilighters are the only fan base enacting the most sacred of fan activities, namely the endless lines.

For years Star Wars fans have been notorious for waiting outside of theaters for days, and even weeks on end to get their hands on tickets for the latest installment of the saga. More recently Harry Potter fans have gained attention for bringing the sensation to bookstores. And every year across the world, fans in general go to various conventions to spend what seems like 75% of their time waiting in lines for panels, autographs, sneak peeks, exclusive memorabilia, and bathrooms. Thus, with no upcoming major releases from any of the older franchises such as Star Wars and Star Trek, and with Harry Potter only making a showing in the form of merchandise, the nearly all female Twilight fan base received the torch and ran with it. I didn’t see any Star Wars fans or Trekkers sleeping on the sidewalk a day before a panel, it was all Twilighters, and I have no problem in saying that at this moment they deserve respect for being the only fans to prove their mettle.

To avoid sounding like the stereotyped, oblivious female con attendee described by the L.A. Times a few weeks ago, I’ll get off the Twilight subject (and just to put it out there, I didn’t bother ogling Jake Gyllenhaal’s abs either).

Twilight Spoofers from The Hillywood Show hanging out at Comic-Con

The first lesson you learn at Comic-Con is unless you have a Time-Turner, there’s no way you can go see everything you want to. This is not just because of the sheer amount of panels going on throughout the weekend (which can easily overlap if your interests expand past one franchise), but because of all the other things you have to spend hours in line for. If you want Hasbro merchandise, better dedicate a day to the line. If you want an autograph from anyone known to more than ten people, better dedicate a day to the line. If you want to see the last panel of the day in Hall H, better get in line the night before just to be sure you even get a seat.

This means that the second lesson you learn is how to be flexible. In my case this worked out better than I could have hoped. For example, in wanting to see the Twilight Saga: New Moon panel in Hall H Thursday afternoon, I had to get a seat in there first thing in the morning. Prior to the New Moon panel, Disney was slated to present a series of panels on their upcoming 3D releases, including Alice in Wonderland. Not only was the audience treated to Tim Burton’s first ever panel and a kick-ass 3D trailer for the film exclusive to Comic-Con, but Burton’s “imaginary friend” Johnny Depp made a brief appearance which resulted in Tom Cruise-like behavior by the majority of the room. Let me stress that I personally cannot decide which of the three parts of that panel (Burton, the trailer or Depp) was the best.

Also, in having nabbed a seat early in the day it was a no-brainer to stay past the New Moon panel for James Cameron’s Avatar panel. Up until now Cameron has allowed only a few set images to be released and the only image of one of the alien Na’vi to be seen was a close-up of half a face on the official Comic-Con banners lining the streets of San Diego. Choosing to wait for that panel was one of my smartest choices of the con (the least intelligent one being to eat at the famous Kansas City Barbeque—where a scene from Top Gun was filmed—I almost asked if it was overpriced and without taste before the movie, but I thought better of it). Not only did Cameron, Sigourney Weaver, and Zoe Saldana sit for audience questions but they kicked off the panel with a whopping twenty-five minutes of footage from the movie, all in 3D! But don’t worry, you too can get a sneak peek on August 21^st, when Cameron hijacks as many digital theaters around the states as possible to show fifteen minutes of footage, for free.

As I was attending the con under the pretense of working on my senior thesis, I was only able to attend a few more panels. In particular my favorite was one celebrating the tenth anniversary of the show Farscape, where it was announced that a new run of DVDs would be made available this fall at a quarter of the price of the original DVDs (which were running at $100 a season). Two of the lead actors, Ben Browder and Claudia Black, were in attendance and kind enough to do a few quick autographs at the end of the panel.

To someone on the outside, an event like Comic-Con might seem bizarre and some might even wonder just what the purpose of it is. While much of it is about the chance to indulge one’s inner nerd, there is much more going on beneath the surface.

First, in our society which is so atomized by the combination of intense individualism and the anonymity of social networking websites, cons are a chance to see just how new communities are created. Wednesday night as I stalked about bemoaning my lack of a four day pass which would allow me to enter preview night, I came across a group of women ranging in age from their early twenties to mid-thirties all wearing the same shirt, which read “The Vamp Pack.” For the purposes of my thesis I sat down to interview them. As it turned out they were all either a part of or listeners of the Twilighters Anonymous Podcast. They had come together from all across the U.S., many of them meeting face-to-face for the first time that very afternoon. Yet here they were, all together camped on the lawn outside the convention center chatting away like long lost sisters.

Second, with my involvement in protesting the upcoming film The Last Airbender, I made it a point to meet up with some of the other protesters attending the con. I knew they planned to hand out flyers and pins as well as attempt to get signatures for the latest petition to boycott the film. I met up with the couple who were heading the attempt a few of times over the weekend, and by Sunday afternoon they had run out of their entire stock of flyers and buttons (7,000 and 1,500 respectively) as well as garnered over 200 signatures.

They had spent much of their time near the Nickelodeon pavilion where there was a large advertisement for the film. Originally the plan had been to stake out spots near the Paramount pavilion to make it clear that while the film is under boycott the original series is still well-loved and supported. However, with the advertisements posted only at Nickelodeon, the protest adapted. I spent several minutes getting footage of them handing out flyers and talking with parents and children who passed through the pavilion about the movie. While some passed by without giving them much notice, many people were curious about what they were saying, even nodding and adding their own take on the mistake being made.

Seeing how the con could bring people together both socially and intellectually made the trip all the more worthwhile. Even having been to several Star Wars conventions in the past, nothing could have prepared me for the sheer size of Comic-Con and it truly is something you have to see to believe. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to go back again, but until I can, I’ll just have to suppress the urge to ask anyone in odd attire for a picture, and keep from joining random lines in hopes of snatching some schwag.

The Nobel prize in literature is reserved for authors whose bodies of work span decades and demonstrate not only a proficiency for the written word, but also an understanding of human nature and emotion that goes beyond convention. Last year the prize was awarded to Jean-Maire Gustave Le Clezio of France, an author who not only pens best-sellers but is also regarded highly throughout the literary community as being a “true” artist of the highest order. An author of over forty works in the last forty years, his novels, such as Onitsha (1991), Diego et Frida (1993), and most recently The Prospector (2008), delve into the human experience with confidence and vigor. Wandering Star (first published in 1992, re-released in 2004 by Curbstone Press) however, is a novel that despite the rest of the author’s catalog, falls flat too often to ignore, though not so often as to be unforgivable.

Wandering Star weaves together two discrete stories that follow two discrete girls, one Jewish and one Palestinian, who meet once, briefly and by chance. The two girls’ stories are tied together not by plot, but by substance within their own stories. Both girls are (wait for it) wandering stars in search of a homeland– Esther seeks to escape the Nazis and the Holocaust as Nejma experiences the horror of the Palestinian refugee camps. It’s a story of suffering and dark times with moments of love, kindness, and the beauty of nature shining through it all.

My first impression was that the book would’ve benefited from more editing. I found two typos on page six, and it’s not like I was combing through looking for them. There are also several inconsistencies in the story line, and too many minor plots got dropped into nothingness. I have to question the translation (provided by C. Dickson).

I got the sense LeClezio didn’t like Nejma as much as he did Esther. Nejma’s story seemed underdeveloped, and ended abruptly.

Wandering Start contains lots and lots (and lots) of prose between spats of unfulfilling dialogue. The language is beautiful (seriously, beautiful), but tough, and dense, like Henry James, but prettier, and oh-so French. The book feels timely considering it was written almost twenty years ago, but it’s not really, and the quasi-insights (“diet” insights, if you will) offered to me often left me feeling empty, a feeling I’m not accustomed to from Le Clezio.

The narration jumps between an omniscient storyteller who cares little for the characters’ feelings or thoughts and passages that read like personal diaries. The author’s voice was more than a bit too strong everywhere; the protagonists are female and the story is related from many different points of view, but it was hard to forget that just one male was writing it. The characters felt plastic, almost unrealistic, which is very atypical for Le Clezio who usually has characters so full of life and humanity.

It’s an amazing story told with the utmost beauty against the most wretched pain, and Le Clezio does a masterful job writing in a way that neither moralizes nor politicizes the very real suffering that Esther and Nejma experience. If you’ve never read anything from this author before, though, start with something else (anything else, really), because this book was not as inspired or thoughtful as a reader would expect from a Nobel Prize winner, or even from Le Clezio, pre-Nobel.

Sliding scale rating: 5.5-7.5 out of 10.