The Writer

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Details: Parent Category: Ideas Category: Fiction | Published: 11 March 2014 | Hits: 10423

The fellow sitting beside me slammed his book closed and sat looking pensive.

The bus was approaching Cremorne junction. I like the M30. It starts where I get on so I’m assured of a seat and it goes all the way to Sydenham in the inner West, past Sydney University. Part of the trip is particularly scenic, approaching and crossing the Harbour Bridge. We’d be in The City soon.

My fellow passenger sat there just staring blankly into space. I was intrigued. So I asked what he had been reading that evoked such deep thought. He smiled broadly, aroused from his reverie. “Oh it’s just Inferno the latest Dan Brown,” he said.

“So what did you think?” I asked.

“Well I’m a writer and all of us want to be read," he replied. "Eleven weeks at the top of the New York Times Best Seller list, outselling everything else several times over during that period speaks for itself. He's got a bankable name, even if this book is not his best.”

“He’s a great read on a plane,” I said. “The only problem for me when I was flying just after Inferno came out was that it was only in hard cover. Too heavy and bulky. So I didn’t buy it. But I’ve read it since. A borrowed copy. Brown got no royalty from me this time.”

“What did you think of it?” he asked.

“Well I’m getting a bit sick of the paperchase/scavenger hunt formula. It’s getting quite difficult for him to sustain the reader’s credulity when Langdon is so blatantly being led from city to city by a mastermind who stays just one step ahead of being foiled. And why wouldn’t Langdon be asking, as I was, about the point of leaving the clues, all involving his detailed knowledge of Dante’s Inferno?”

“Yes," he agreed. "About half way through I began wondering how the writer could explain why someone would deliberately lay a trail that if followed fast enough would apparently lead to their master-plan failing. The plot resolution turns out to be that the trail has been laid posthumously by the mastermind simply to let his enemies discover that he has already succeeded. But it’s a resolution that suddenly renders all the scrambling about that went before futile.”

“A classical deus ex machina, an unexpected resolution provided by the gods, in this case Brown” I agreed.

“But like his other books the story is filled out with all sorts of esoteric research and locational trivia,” I added. “Like some spy novels his books are becoming travelogues. I’ve been to, and even have photographs of, a number of the locations in the book, including St Michaels in Venice, most of the buildings in Florence as well as the Basilica Cistern and Hagia Sophia in Istanbul.”

He looked surprised.

Feeling that I had been caught immodestly providing my own travelogue I cut short the list and continued: “More than his previous novels, with more elaborate sub-plots, Inferno reinforced my view that most Brown plots are simply elaborate scavenger hunts.”

“Pursuing the blood of Christ or an errant priest using antimatter to secure the Papacy or secret Masonic knowledge or a ring engraved with a cryptographic key, the paperchase plot seems to have become a leitmotif in his work.”

“Did you go to all those places after the books came out? Are you a Dan Brown follower?” he asked.

“No of course not! I have other reasons to visit Washington DC, Westminster Abby, St Peters or the Louvre. It’s just that in the past ten years, since the kids got their own homes, we’ve tried to get overseas once or twice a year. And Dan’s pretty well been following us about.” I joked.

“But I have to confess that when we were in Scotland recently we did go to see the Roslyn Chapel outside of Edinburgh that features in both the Da Vinci Code and the film. Of course the following day we spent several hours on the Royal Yacht Britannia touring and having lunch. So I’m expecting to see that as a location in a future Dan Brown novel.”

At that point the bus reached Wynyard Park and my companion rose to get off.

“Happy writing!” I said as he moved to the door. “Do you have a name?”

“Dan Brown,” he replied.

It’s a common name I suppose.

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Sri Lanka

In February 2023 we joined an organised tour to Sri Lanka.

Beginning in the capital Colombo, on the west coast, our bus travelled anticlockwise, in a loop, initially along the coast; then up into the highlands; then north, as far as Sigiriya; before returning southwest to Colombo.

Fiction, Recollections & News

Peter Storey McKie

My brother, Peter, is dead.

One of his body's cells turned rogue and multiplied, bypassing his body's defences. The tumour grew and began to spread to other organs. Radiation stabilised the tumour's growth but by then he was too weak for chemo-therapy, which might have stemmed the spreading cells.

He was 'made comfortable' thanks to a poppy grown in Tasmania, and thus his unique intelligence faded away when his brain ceased to function on Sunday, 22nd May 2022.

I visited him in the hospital before he died. Over the past decade we had seldom spoken. Yet he now told me that he often visited my website. I had suspected this because from time to time he would send e-mail messages, critical of things I had said. That was about the only way we kept in touch since the death of his daughter Kate (Catherine). That poppy again.

I suppose that one of the reasons for not talking very often was that there were few things that we disagreed about. So, our last conversation, which amongst other things, encompassed the inevitability of death for all of us, was uncontroversial, even comfortable. We were brought-up to sort out our metaphysical leanings for ourselves. Both of us came to believe, like our parents, that there could be no continued 'life' after death. So, a dead body has no particular value, except, perhaps, as a memento for the still-living, our descendants and maybe historians to come.

Yet, as I have repeatedly asserted on this website, while we are alive, we all, continually change the present - and therefore, the future. As a result, after death we continue to exist in another way: through the affects of those changes, that we made, in the fabric of what is now - and thus: what will be.

Opinions and Philosophy

The demise of books and newspapers

Most commentators expect that traditional print media will be replaced in the very near future by electronic devices similar to the Kindle, pads and phones. Some believe, as a consequence, that the very utility of traditional books and media will change irrevocably as our ability to appreciate them changes. At least one of them is profoundly unsettled by this prospect; that he argues is already under way.