As Brown said in a recent interview, it’s become fashionable to bash his books. Let’s see, last I read, Symbol has sold 2.3 million copies so far: the negative comments don’t seem to be having much impact.

Some of those doing the bashing are as inaccurate as the bashers claim that Brow is. Look at this opening “The plot, naturally, is all to do with the concealment of wisdom within sacred texts, and as it unfolds, it becomes first moronic and then somewhat offensive. Moronic, because it seems to believe that wisdom and knowledge are things which are acquired by placing a bit of gold on top of a bit of stone, and then wiping off some wax.”

The first sentence is subjective. Of course all reviews are somewhat subjective and depend somewhat on the reviewer’s taste. As a reviewer, I’ll stipulate that. But when a reviewer says that the concealment of wisdom within sacred texts is moronic and offensive, he’s making a very odd claim, for most of the world’s great religions center around sacred texts that have overt and covert meanings. What is our reviewer really showing us here?

Brown’s book in no way claims that wisdom comes from putting a piece of gold on top of a piece of stone. The gold and stone are the medium for a message, a message that–in fact–brings readers right back to the Bible.

Needless to say, there are plenty negative things worthy of commenting on on Brown’s books, such as the info dumps and the strange and somewhat tedious descriptions of places. We might even question whether the CIA’s interest in the piece of gold and piece of stone in “The Lost Symbol” is remotely realistic and credible, even as a plot device. But the reviewer here has lapsed into something else, a subjective and inaccurate attack on the symbols and meanings which will certainly be variously interpreted by readers based on their faiths and frames of reference. This lapse is outside the reviewer proper arena of commentary.

Malcolm