What a nuisance, though.

The patterns remind me of Van Gogh:

“It was you. You always do big farts, Dad.”

I figured that the boy’s father was feeling embarrassed enough, so I hid my giggles by walking to the counter with my purchase. Just thought I’d share it with you.

Insufficient funds

It’s not that the The Da Vinci Code is a masterpiece, but I’ve always found complaints about the book bizarre. There’s the historical inaccuracy criticism: that Dan Brown, inventor of crass fictions. These arguments never seemed particularly weighty considering that Dan Brown is a fiction writer.

There’s a movie at the cinemas called Becoming Jane, about Jane Austen and her supposed dalliances, cavorting around the meadows in her youth and whatnot. The film is called a speculative biopic, which is a euphemism for ‘we made stuff up’. It’s also capitalising on the Jane Austen revival of recent years, in its various zombie and book club manifestations.

Is The Da Vinci Code that different? Is it the religion thing? It’s not as though the book sits in the non-fiction section. It is a fiction novel, so why the huff?

Though I didn’t find Angels and Demons as compelling, obviously both books milk that mystique of art, history and religion, particularly from the Renaissance period. The Da Vinci Code is interesting. For instance, it touches on the idea of Jesus as a man, not a deity. You can chant historical inaccuracy all you like, but the history of Roman Catholicism—history, in general—is riddled with inaccuracies. I’m not saying that The Da Vinci Code should be treated like a textbook, but if you were to take the Bible as the only history of Catholicism, what would that say about Catholic history?

There are thousands of books that take history and spin yarns around its details. There are books that explicitly borrow from literature, like Geraldine Brooks’ March and, again, Karen Joy Fowler’s The Jane Austen Book Club. The difference, perhaps, is that few of them have enjoyed The Da Vinci Code’s success and I suspect that many of the writers steaming like teapots resent that Dan Brown is rich.

What is so offensive about the idea of millions of people around the world reading the same book? Does a book have to languish in obscurity or win the Nobel Prize to be a true book?

A book sells well and its author makes millions and people bemoan that the blockbuster novel is destroying literature. It’s true that there is an impact on the publishing industry, on writers and authors, and there are discussions to be had about that, but it’s also true that nobody likes a tall poppy. That copyedit of the first chapter of The Da Vinci Code just looked so petulant. I also think it’s mean: a way of saying that anyone who enjoys The Da Vinci Code doesn’t know what good writing is.

As for the complaints that Dan Brown’s writing is woeful and the editing process lax and so on—when I was reading the book, I didn’t even notice. It’s a remarkably clever story.

I can’t believe I’m about to write ‘when I was in Paris and Rome over the summer’, but when I was in Paris and Rome over the summer, I remember thinking that it was easy to see why people were entranced by The Da Vinci Code: clues in Renaissance paintings, secret societies, the shrouded and distorted history of Roman Catholicism.

The Da Vinci Code is gummy. The book wouldn’t be as enticing during a second reading, because the beauty of a great thriller is what alights on the next post. If you already know, the story loses its flavour. Still, I barely put the book down until I finished it and I don’t see why that’s a bad thing.

Historically inaccurate and poorly constructed, they sniff. If I may slip on my robe and ignite my pipe for a moment: what is history?

Sniff.

In my spare hours, I’ve been brushing up on French and I encountered a similar detail when doing grammar exercises:

le bonhomme (old fellow) – les bonshommes

le gentilhomme (gentleman) – les gentilshommes

Quite.

If you bought the book, you can scribble as much as you like. If it’s in a public library, keep your oozy biro away from it. Do you think that everyone who needs to write an essay on semiotic theory wants to read your reflections on the topic?

Get a blog.

Sometimes feminist literature falls off the ledge and into realms that I happily disagree with. Other times, I’m timid. Maybe it sounds silly, but I’m afraid of finding out what else I’m doing wrong; what other aspect of my behaviour is an assault on gender, reason, emancipation, and so on. Though I’m not the spokesperson for women everywhere, I don’t think I’d be the first to edge away from writing that makes me feel that I’m to blame for gender inequity.

I just finished reading One-Dimensional Woman by Nina Power, and it’s the first thing I’ve read in a while that addressed contemporary feminism forcefully, but without preachiness. It’s a short book and it only took me half a day to read. It’s interesting and funny.

Take this passage where Power talks about feminism and consumer culture:

Obviously the idea that straight women are constantly ‘competing’ for men is an awful one, but they are most definitely supposed to, according to the crazy logic of scarcity that consumerism depends upon. He’s the one! That handbag is the one! Hands off my bag/man!

There’s also an amusing story about an astronaut and the consumer preoccupation with chocolate, but I won’t spoil it for you.

One-Dimensional Woman focuses primarily on ideas of women and work, labor and capital. I’m glad I read the book before writing something about boardroom quotas, which I’ve been meaning to do for a while. When I was in Europe, I felt a bit disconnected from the habitual news cycle and bought The Guardian Weekly to read on a train from Berlin to Prague. In this edition, there was an article about Nicolas Sarkozy pushing to legislate female quotas in French boardrooms. Mon Dieu, etc. It’s irked me ever since, especially because I noticed the issue gaining some press in Australia recently.

I’m wary of quotas: numbers can distort as much as they elucidate. People talk of quotas as though statistical representation in parliament and in boardrooms are the only issues, which strikes me as somewhat glib. It can’t be that simple. People are so hellbent on nudging women into the labour force that no one seems interested in questioning the nature of that force: what you have to do/not do to get there and how women are affected when they’re working within those structures. Then there’s the assumption that if women attain positions of power, they’ll do great things. Fairy godmothers sprinkling their dust and jolting the somnambulant masses. Some might, some might not.

Though she doesn’t directly reference quotas, Power touches on something that I’ve been trying to express: that it’s important to look beyond the representational, and not just because representation can so easily be tokenism.

It was the wind shaking the doors and my mum being away. The house feels like it’s missing something, which is maybe why I spent three hours after I got home from work last night bustling about cooking dinner, cleaning dishes, bringing the bins in from the curb and straightening things. I promised my mum I’d be her understudy for the week, making sure my little sister doesn’t eat Doritos for dinner.

The motherliness of it all caught up with me last night when I scolded her for leaving a Tupperware container with bits of avocado smeared on the inside in her schoolbag for the entire weekend. I’m just waiting to catch her before she leaves for school so that I can comment on her eyeliner, but so far she’s evaded me.

Later, I made cupcakes and went to bed with a sore head. When I woke up at 4am with images of parachutes and underwater people in my head, one of the first things I thought of was the sound of my mum’s heels on our floorboards. When I was younger, my mum would sometimes work late enough that I’d be in bed when she got home and I’d hear her shoes as she walked in the door. I think I used to wait for her.

Santa Maria Novella train station in Florence, opposite Alberti’s Basilica Santa Maria Novella. Beautiful, isn’t it?