Dan Brown’s Digital Fortress and my admission to a little bit of snobbery in my reading taste…
Recently, I found Digital Fortress in a lonely corner in a bookshop near Kasai station, Tokyo. Although I had decided, many years ago, not to read Dan Brown’s works anymore, my hand reached for it. See, I have been doubting my fiction taste recently, suspecting of snobbism.
Now that I finished it, I would like to write down a couple of things on the book. First of all, it is a story that I would have loved to discuss with someone I had known ages ago. While reading, the memory of a cold December afternoon in the streets of Pristina, surfaced in my head. I was walking home from school, talking with this acquaintance of mine, probably debating something, fiercely. She was into science and science-fiction (her favorite movie was Avatar, 2009) and we often had disagreeing discussions. I think the topic of Digital Fortress would have fit nicely in our conversations, particularly that afternoon (having talked about government and military power abuses, Einstein’s theory of relativity etc). Anyhow, she was carrying this huge book of General Chemistry- we had a new teacher who practically forced us to read chemistry at uni level. Since she lived in another city and seemed to be particularly tired that day, I offered to take it and bring the book back to her in a day when she had a lighter bag. I think that was the only thing I did, she actually appreciated (LOL). Now, back to the topic.
As it is common, I read my first DB’s suspense (Angels & Demons) during my high school days. I remember liking it a lot, my teenager mind racing through the pages and as a kid with a tendency towards intellectualism, I thoroughly enjoyed an intellectual (Professor Langdon) in the main role, raising up to the challenge of saving the world. Then, I jumped into The Da Vinci Code. At the end, I was utterly disappointed with it, mainly because it followed Angels & Demons structure way too closely. Meaning, if we change the names a little bit, we get almost the same story. I concluded that I would most likely never read DB again. What for, anyway? It will most likely start with someone intellectually gifted being murdered, another character (probably male) of superior intellectual skills in an unrelated field being the main character, accompanied by a smoking hot, deeply intelligent character (most likely of the opposite sex, female). In the shadows, there is a killer, who for some reason always seems to have some physical disability and a mixed ethnical background.
“Unfortunately”, that is exactly what you will get in Digital Fortress. Being DB’s debut novel, it is a little more, as kids these days would say, cringe. However, and this is how I’m fighting my literary snobbism’, I focused on the story and let it carry me. As a result, I enjoyed it a lot. Yes, DB’s works are totally formulaic to say the least. In his masterclass, the author describes his joy of finding out the elements of suspense and writing thrillers. The problem is that Dan Brown uses too many of the same elements, in the exact same shape, over and over. It’s like with Danielle Steel, there is only so many “cheesy” romance books one can take. But and this is my advice, if you keep these books distanced in time, you end up enjoying them (in my case, I needed a decade of time).
Oh yeah, short plot (spoiler alert): The book is about cryptoanalysis and NSA’s (National Security Agency) role and power abuse in spying citizens. David Becker, who happens to be engaged to one of the main code-breaker of NSA, is not related to the field, yet ends up chasing a specially engraved gold ring in Spain, trying to save the world for something that he himself doesn’t quite understand what it is. His fiancée, the smoke show (smart and sexy, that’s how Dan Brown likes them, apparently) Susan Fletcher, is trying to crack the problem from within the headquarters of NSA, unaware of her to be husband being chased by a Portuguese deaf professional hitman.
P.S. it weird that the main character has the same initials as the author. Being his debut novel, I think DB played around a bit too much. However, especially for a debut, Digital Fortress is a great read.
Special thanks to my girl for reading the Japanese translation of Digital Fortress in parallel with me. Reading with her has been my favorite activity in recent times.
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