How to write an intellectual thriller

Recently, and completely by coincidence, two novels have crossed my path. The first, The Rule of Four, takes place in modern times and involves several people’s attempts to solve a riddle rooted in documents and lives that existed centuries ago. The second, The Da Vinci Code, takes place in modern times and involves several people’s attempts to solve a riddle rooted in documents and lives that existed, um, centuries ago.

Both books were phenomenal bestsellers, although The Da Vinci Code is by far the more famous of the two. Code I read in two and a half days because I couldn’t put it down. The Rule of Four I’m only halfway through, although I’ve been reading it for weeks.

I can’t talk about my experiences with either book without also discussing these novels’ vastly superior progenitor: Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s Pendulum, published to massive acclaim back in the late 80s. Foucault’s Pendulum takes place in modern times and involves several people’s attempts to <strike>solve</strike> manipulate and embellish riddles rooted in documents and lives that existed centuries ago. Eco’s book, steeped in true scholasticism and written with a Nabokovian poetry, makes Rule and Code look like grammar-school papers, although Rule, at the very least, is passionately interested in the depth and gravity of its conceit, something of which Code could not be accused.

The Da Vinci Code is, as I and others have pointed out, Umberto Eco for dummies. The inherent snobbery in this remark is well-placed, but it isn’t very generous in helping people understand how incredibly entertaining the book is. If Agatha Christie had been interested in more than pastoral English manners, she might have written a book like this: completely disposable, void of inner thought — the very crux of literature — with characters so thin you can see through them. Paradoxically, Code’s author, Dan Brown, isn’t interested in depth, despite the magnitude of his ideas and the reach of his imagination. His faux-controversial provocations regarding the history of Christianity and the very identity of Jesus Christ, which make the heretical reader giddy with pleasure, are perhaps new for people who don’t read much. For the rest of us, the ultimate controversy regarding a fictional Christ “secret” came from the pages of Michael Moorcock’s 1967 sci-fi masterpiece Behold the Man.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved The Da Vinci Code. I also love pizza and porn.

The Rule of Four is a more difficult beast to decipher. Unlike Code, it is at its heart a more honest novel, with more authentic attachments to the historical subject matter. It is also an incredible bore. Here’s why. Somebody — the authors or perhaps the editors — decided that we might be interested in the lives of a bunch of Princeton students as they navigate their petty academic squabbles. No, we’re not. Every time the book focuses solely on the oddities and enigmatic incongruencies at the heart of the novel’s riddle, it’s alive. When, instead, we’re treated to campus rituals, frat-house dining protocols, and the bitchy conflicts between a bunch of tenured old men, the book grinds to an almost unreadable halt.

Rule was written by two young authors. Perhaps the real division in quality — exciting historical stuff vs. boring campus conflicts — may be attributed to the way these young men decided to write their book. Who knows? Unfortunately, I don’t know if I’ll read through to the end…

…Reading these books has just made me want to dust off my Foucault’s Pendulum hardcover and revisit a tale written by a master no one else since him seems able to touch.

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