One of These Things is Not Like the Other
(Debby)

Beowulf, Seamus Heaney translation
Great Queen Medthyth
Perpetrated terrible wrongs.
If any retainer ever made bold
to look her in the face, if an eye not her lord’s
stared at her directly during daylight,
the outcome was sealed: he was kept bound
in hand-tightened shackles, racked, tortured
until doom was pronounced – death by the sword,
slash of blade, blood-gush and death-qualms
in an evil display. Even a queen
outstanding in beauty must not overstep like that.

Strong Poison, Dorothy L. Sayers
As the taxi lurched along the rainy Embankment, he felt for the first time the dull and angry helplessness which is the first warning stroke of the triumph of mutability. Like the poisoned Athulf in the Fool’s Tragedy, he could have cried, “Oh I am changing, changing, fearfully changing.” Whether his present enterprise failed or succeeded, things would never be the same again. It was not that his heart would be broken by a disastrous love – he had outlived the luxurious agonies of youthful blood, and in this very freedom from illusion he recognized the loss of something. From now on, every hour of light-heartedness would be, not a prerogative, but an achievement – one more axe or case-bottle or fowling-piece, rescued, Crusoe-fashion, from a sinking ship.

The Da Vinci Code, Dan Brown
He felt himself suddenly reeling back to Harvard, standing in front of his “Symbolism in Art” class… blah blah blah
(Langdon walks to see the Mona Lisa) The Mona Lisa’s status as the most famous piece of art in the world, Langdon knew, had nothing to do with her enigmatic smile…blah blah
Langdon quickly gave Sophie the standard academic sketch of the accepted Knights Templar history, exmploaining how….blah blah blah Sophie looked over. “And you said they discovered something?” “They certainly did,” Langdon said, explaining how…blah blah blah.



So, the first two passages really do it for me, and the experts from the last one are examples of how that kind of storytelling really really do NOT do it for me.

The first two experts are taken out of context so I don’t know how they seem to you, but they are parts of books that for me are just transcendent. Beowulf has foes who are sympathetic and horrifying, a hero who is boastful with a history of being ridiculed, clear language that gives voice to a storyteller that you can really sense comes from long long ago. Strong Poison is a clever detective story while at the same time charting changes in the main character, Lord Peter Death Bredon Whimsey, that are (for me) really powerful and beautifully expressed.

The Da Vinci Code is about a controversial theory and includes some interesting historical facts (or not facts, depending on one’s perspective), but good lord, people, Dan Brown CRAMS these facts using particularly awkward literary conventions. The main character keeps getting lost in thought, thinking back to past Harvard lectures. Come on, man. Find a better way to explain history and your theories, please.

Also, there is no excuse for a chapter which starts as follows: “The Range Rover was Java Black Pearl, four-wheel drive, standard transmission, with high-strength polypropylene lamps, rear light cluster fittings, and the steering wheel on the right.”