THE MCJ

AT THE FEET OF THE MASTER

James Lileks on That Book:

But on Saturday I read: sat outside in the gazebo and hammered my way through “The Da Vinci Code.” If “Angels and Demons” was a Tom Clancy novel for Art History majors, “Code” is “24” for pagans, I suppose. The writing, as others have noted, is bad – not unbearably so, but reading the book is like being borne along by a rushing stream of flat ginger ale. You’re certainly going somewhere, but the medium of your conveyance lacks distinction. Some moments were laughable – I could not imagine the character “Teabing” as anything other than “Teabag,” and almost imagined a bottom-heavy wet man with a string tied to his head. I did put the book down, laughing, when the author suggested that Walt Disney was in on the conspiracy to bring forth the truth about the Goddess. Why? Because of “The Little Mermaid,” which was just full of Piscean symbolism. Because the ancients, you know, revered fish, or crabs, or water, or something or other.

Those ancients: they revered everything. They worshipped the circle! Also the square. And, according to a 10th century French monk, the rectangle had certain mystical connotations as well, and that’s why our beds are rectangular. Up until the Council of Sealy, convened by King Quoil, everyone slept in circular beds like the ancient Zoroastrans, beds from which no one ever fell. But rectangular beds were easier to fall out of, so the Council mandated such shapes so people would be reminded of the Fall of Man, preferably on a nightly basis. And so forth. On and on. The wisdom of the ancients. They believed the moon was the Breast of the Goddess of Night! All well and good, So-crates, but we’ve been there, and it’s a rock covered in dust.

Blasphemer! You – no, sorry, only the evil horrible CHURCH accuses people of blasphemy, we pagans are a come-one-come-all sort of people, accepting of all beliefs. Except for Christians, who go straight to the Coliseum for lion appetizers. Anyway, the moon has mystical goddess powers! It affects the tide and the cycle of a woman’s womb!

Well, gravity will do that. All due respect, you guys didn’t have the whole story back when you were assembling cosmologies based primarily on observation. I mean, you made a nice start, but you were also poking through bird guts to see if the augurs were good. Nowadays we’ve come to believe that half-digested seeds are an insufficient means for predicting likely outcomes. The financial industry hasn’t used them for decades.

But we believed in the Goddess, and you, the patriarchal Western evil sex-denying female-fearing popish testosterone-intoxicated tool user has utterly removed the Holy Female from your spiritual realm!

Right. Exactly. Women, all gone. No sacred dames. Aside from that Mary, Mother of, but she’s just a footnote, and you hardly hear anything about her. You’re quite right; Western civilization is bound up in a cinched surplice of denial and prudery, and we spend our days in fear of the Holy Sexual Whatever. I – hold on, the TiVo just bonged – whoa! "G-string Divas" marathon on HBO tonight! Alright. Anyway, you’re quite correct; we do have a certain veneer of “civilization” draped around sex, inasmuch as the Twins do not open with the pitcher rutting with a consort on the mound. Which I’m sure is named after some part of Venus’ anatomy, and if only we knew it, we would be amazed at how some of our words and terms were derived from ancient cultures, man! Did you know George Washingon was a Mason and a hemp farmer? They’ll never let you know that. How do I know? I read it in a book in the library. Anyway, pass the bong.

You are missing the point! At this very moment, self-mortifying Opus Dei monks are plotting to suppress the old and ancient ways!

And more power to ’em. A bloody albino shows up at my door tomorrow, I’ll put him up, with gratitude. The alternative worldview postulated in “The Da Vinci Code” does not exactly give us anything transcendent and wonderful, friend; the most “sacred ritual” described consists of some old French grandfather, nagoy and panhandled, moaning under some grindy-hipped fleshy woman “with long silver hair,” while observers – yes, observers! – stand around in masks holding orbs, chanting. I met her in the grotto and she sheathed my sword, da doo ron ron, da doo ron ron. This may be why the interminable Latin mass became popular: absolutely zero chance of seeing Granny get it on in front of the bridge club.

UPDATE: The Captain was also unimpressed.

Posted on 5/30/2006 11:02:33 PM , 17 comments