Spareink

Well- there’s no shortage of home-grown blowhards being elitists here, I promise:
http://www.complete-review.com/quarterly/vol3/issue1/oprah.htm

- although I do wonder what the top-ten best-sellers in Europe would be. Do they read Stephen King and Tom Clancy in Sweden or is there some sort of EU version of those guys?

Poor Eco- he’s just a medievalist terrified of his computer(http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_mac_vs_pc.html)- not a true literary snob. I think he’s writing about something (in Foucault’s Pendulum) different than what I thought was the idea in the DaVinci Code (one is a rejection of politics in general, the other specifically the Catholic Church, I had understood). I’d like to read DaVinci Code though, and the Left Behind series too, for that matter.

Andy Warhol as populist... yeesh- more like any item sold at Forbidden Planet vs. Andy Warhol, if ya ask me...

I don't really agree with this sentiment, though I see where you're coming from. The problem is that the Da Vinci Code actually doesn't seem to have any real literary merit, while Eco's work is full of them, while still retaining marketplace dominance. The Name of the Rose is the best selling fictional work in the world, holding second place only to the Bible, with regard to books that Americans are likely to have on their shelves and never read (I do realize this last comment supports your point rather than contests it). However, with Eco you must have a context for appreciation, while Brown seems determined to make even the most illiterate reader feel brilliant. The distinction between the two, rather, seems to be that Brown caters to the average American reader's ignorance and anti-catholic sentiment with poor prose and half-assed scholarship, while Eco takes great pains to compose in the narrative style appropriate to the period in question, reference actual works and people (with dialogue generaly taken from their diaries and letters) of the time and location, and ask obvious quetions of serious academic and philosophical merit as a red herring while making a point about basic quality of life (as his fictions have at their core the development of the character into something better and more noble, rather than the development of the plot at the expense of characterization).

I understand that your comparison seems true bcause you cannot enjoy Eco, but your personal level of enjoyment does determine the merit of the work, only whether you are likely to read it again. Hemingway would be a fabulous example of great literary content that very few ever finish, much less reread. Similarly, Eco's work requires great responsibility on the part of the reader to participate in the dialogue that is the book's infrastructure. Without the willingness totry to understand what Eco is doing, the book seems baroque and pretentious -- but only because the reader has not made the efort to become an equal conversationalist. Brown's brilliance is not literary but psychological, in that he manages to make the reader feel smart by subtly feeding you the information you need to see what will a paragraph before it does -- allowing the reader to indulge him/herself in a process of discovery (through painfully obvious clues), prediction (within a plot structure taken straight out of any Hollywood prison-break film, never mind the historical background), and validation (as it is nearly impossible to be wrong, since Brown has given away the answer beofer asking the question). While the average European reader is well-enough educated to appreciate the complicated literary, philosophical and historical allusions woven throughout Eco's work, the average American cannot, and is made to feel stupid and bored, like a 3rd grader in a trigonometry class. Brown, having identified this market segment, put together an offering that performs very well in it, but less so in other markets (Academia, for example, and most Continental markets), and even then, the work are rewritten by popular translators who strip the content of Brown's rather flat prose and make it more eloquent, a feature necessary to appeal to the European aesthetic.

Sorry. This is alot longer than I originally intented, but I found your point interesting and worthy of a full response. Intruth, I suspect the disagreement hinges on two different tastes for literature. I actually found the Davince code boring and rather trite, capitalizing on the sensationalistic nature of his stolen claim that the Holy Grail is the bloodline of Christ (This claim is actually hundreds of years old, and is menioned in Foucault's Pendulum in a conversation about antisemitic Christian secret organizations as a method used to bind down-trodden Chrisians together), while I find the dynamic nature of interacting with Eco's books to be very exciting. I love identifying the sources of his allusions and dialogue. On the other hand, you do not seem to enjoy his work, while you do enjoy Brown's, for reasons that your post does not make clear, though I respect your right to enjoy anything you like. My only point of contention is the actual distinction between the two -- you mentioned "fun", and that is highly subjective, while there are objective literary distinctions between the two, and they needn't be nationalistic in origin (Americans can enjoy and respect Eco, too, as I'm sure that many Europeans enjoy and respect Brown). Hope this did not come across as anything other than a genuine attempt at conversation.

Owen

Very interesting response Owen! Even if we may disagree, I'm glad you responded, and I'm not interpreting what you wrote negatively.

I agree that there is no right and wrong in taste, and I think our difference isn't just one of taste, but on the question: how do you judge quality? And my answer is that quality and marketplace success are so entertwined that it's hard to think about one without the other. Shakespeare in his day was a box-office smash--and still is. I'd love to see a list of the best selling works of fiction to see if Umberto Eco is up there--if so, I'd be surprised, I never knew he was that popular!--and your offhand comment about it being the sort of book that people may buy but don't read comes to the heart of my point, exactly. The Encycolpedia Judaica is also best-selling (among Jewish families) but I don't know any that have read it!

I'd also point out that, if the average European reader is more well-educated than his American counter-part (as you claim, and I believe you), then that suggests that the proportion of the European population that reads is smaller than that of the US. That might very well be true, but would you rather live in a society where fewer people read esoteric works, or where lots of people read non-esoteric works? I know what my preferences are!

-morgan