{"id":510,"date":"2009-12-19T13:49:23","date_gmt":"2009-12-19T05:49:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/?p=510"},"modified":"2013-11-19T10:40:45","modified_gmt":"2013-11-19T02:40:45","slug":"the-demosthenes-sock-puppet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/2009\/12\/the-demosthenes-sock-puppet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Demosthenes Sock Puppet"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/dan_brown_lost_symbol1.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/12\/dan_brown_lost_symbol1.jpg\" alt=\"dan_brown_lost_symbol\" title=\"dan_brown_lost_symbol\" width=\"150\" height=\"198\" style=\"margin-right:8px;\" class=\"alignleft size-full wp-image-490\" \/><\/a>To me, the most salient feature of a Dan Brown novel is the manner in which he ineptly inserts flashbacks in order to provide the reader with necessary background information.  I suppose that Brown thinks he is livening up the information by presenting it within the framework of a former lecture.  These flashbacks invariably entail unlikely enthusiasm on the part of his audience, including unbridled ejaculations of surprise.<\/p>\n<p>The best example comes in <strong>The Da Vinci Code<\/strong>, when Professor Langdon is giving a lecture on the feminine properties of the Mona Lisa to prison inmates.  That&#8217;s right!  And during the lecture, the convicts enthusiastically react to his revelations, as if his visit is the best thing to happen to them since their incarceration.  <\/p>\n<p>Chapter 6 provides the first example in <strong>The Lost Symbol<\/strong>.  During his first lecture of the year in his Occult Symbols course, as he introduces the hidden iconography of Washington D.C., students yell out &#8220;Awesome,&#8221; they hang on his every word, laugh at his every joke, and even recognize Masonic rituals when presented with slides.  <\/p>\n<p>These flashback lectures&#8211;I am sure there will be more of them in the chapters ahead&#8211;are so inauthentic as to border on the absurd.  Robert Langdon has the charisma of a dirty sock puppet, yet in every situation, he is welcomed like a modern day <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Demosthenes\">Demosthenes<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Every one of these flashbacks is so awkward as to induce nausea.  But I soldier on.<\/p>\n<h5>Pages read: 32 <br \/>\nPages To Go: 477<\/h5>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>To me, the most salient feature of a Dan Brown novel is the manner in which he ineptly inserts flashbacks in order to provide the reader with necessary background information. I suppose that Brown thinks he is livening up the information by presenting it within the framework of a former lecture. These flashbacks invariably entail [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2720,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[423,557,559,558,526,425,421],"class_list":["post-510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-writing","tag-dan-brown","tag-demosthenes","tag-dirty-sock-puppet","tag-mona-lisa","tag-robert-langdon","tag-the-da-vinci-code","tag-the-lost-symbol"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=510"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2732,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/510\/revisions\/2732"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2720"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/entropy2.com\/chaosfactory\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}