The Lost Symbol

An interesting triangular logical contradiction occurred to me as I read Dan Brown's third Robert Langdon novel. Consider the following three statements: the book was fairly long; the book was a relatively quick and easy read; not a whole lot happened in the book. Any two of these truths can coexist easily. But introducing the remaining third one will always create an apparent paradox. A book can be both long and a quick and easy read, but typically only if it's fast-paced and full of action. A book can lack action and be long, but that would typically make it cumbersome to read. And a book can lack action and be a quick and easy read, but that would typically make it a rather short book. Yet, all three of these statements coexist as truth when it comes to The Lost Symbol, a predictable but entertaining enough romp through Washington, D.C. As was the case with the previous two Langdon books, supernatural symbology and wordplay-based riddles are recurring themes throughout the story, which takes place over the course of one night in accordance with the Dan Brown writing style. When I read the previous two Langdon novels - Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code - I was a senior in high school. I enjoyed them both, the former more than the latter. This was definitely my least favorite of the trilogy. I'm not sure how much of that has to do with being five years older and "wiser" than I was last time around, and how much simply has to do with Brown's style growing old. But most of it probably has to do with the absolute absurdity of this book. Suspension of disbelief is an important part of appreciating almost any work of fiction, but it only goes so far. For example, here, I could "accept" an ancient conspiracy regarding the true intentions of our Mason forefathers escaping the public eye for hundreds of years, but I couldn't accept when a scientist proclaimed that human thoughts have actual mass and gravity. "When enough people focus their thoughts on one thing together, the shared thought becomes massive enough to physically alter the world," she said, within the first hundred pages of this book. And so before even reaching the 100th page of this 640-page novel, I was already done caring about any story that took place in this blatant fantasy universe where human beings have supernatural powers. Fortunately, this ridiculous superpower was never actually used to advance or hinder the action in the narrative itself. Because of this, my broken suspension of disbelief was still strong enough to get me all the way through the story. The story never went after the gaping hole it had blown through said suspension of disbelief, so for the most part the horrible pseudo-science was ignorable. But then during the falling action of the story, when Langdon was getting ready to hook up with the traumatized lady scientist, it came back in full force. "I've seen people cure cancer just by thinking so strongly about it," Dr. Pretendology explains to Langdon. And the epilogue ends with Langdon just overwhelmed by a feeling of hope stronger than any he'd ever felt before. Look, I'm not trying to be the millionth guy to take an Internet shit on a Dan Brown book. The guy deserves credit, after all, for managing to make a long and relatively action-free book such a quick and easy read. But even as far as Dan Brown books go, this was a bit of a letdown. Give me Angels & Demons any day. Of course, I'm sure I'll still wind up seeing the inevitable Lost Symbol film adaptation. Maybe if I think hard enough about it, I can prevent it from coming out at all.