On The Historian

Recently finished reading The Historian. Not too bad, not so great: somewhere closer to Dan Brown (yech!) than Eco (yeah!). To put it on a more precise continuum, more like Club Dumas (not appalling!), but leagues ahead of pretenders like The Rule of Four (appalling!). I kept wanting it to be a metaphorical meditation on the beauty of handing down and receiving cherished books from generation to generation. It almost was about that, to its credit.

But it started me thinking about something that bothers me about this current fad of conspiracy books: what's with the ancient mysteries we could all discover with a little light research? Sure, a lot of it is piling on (Brown, etc.). I'm starting to feel that it's more about arguing for a more elevated place for genre fiction in the canon -- that even a Dracula thriller can be philosophical and meditative, maybe even ponder literary history. In fact, The Historian reminds me of moments in Chabon's Kavalier and Klay, especially in the way it cherishes/belittles older genre books (Bram Stoker, instead of Chabon's comics).

I love genre fiction in its own right, but sometimes all these references to ancient manuscripts and famous libraries, and master painters, and renowned architecture feels like putting a line of plaster sculptures down the hallway of a McMansion.