I just finished reading Dan Brown's newest novel, Inferno. It's another historical-conspiracy thriller which now tackles the issue of overpopulation. The story again conscripts Robert Langdon, the Harvard professor with his eidetic memory and vast knowledge of history and symbology and iconology (whatever that means).
Instead of running through the underground halls of the Vatican hunting for symbols left by secret societies like the Templars and the Illuminati (from Brown's previous books, The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons), Langdon now interprets symbols which were derived from Dante Alighieri's The Divine Comedy (but mostly from the first of the trilogy, Inferno).
At the most part, the book was a page turner. Like his previous books, Brown masterfully ends each chapter on an anticipatory mode that keeps readers wanting to go through the next chapter. Furthermore, the chapters were really not that long, so moving from chapter to chapter is a breeze.
It is no doubt another book made for the cinema. The book jumps from one scene to another similar to how movies jump from one scene to another. At times, the scenes were juxtaposed in such a visual manner that Brown need only describe the next scene to make an impression upon the readers on what really is happening.
At times though, the book overwhelms the readers with too much history and explanations. Several times, the readers were presented graphs that illustrate the growth of the human population through time that one is jolted out of the realism that the novel was trying to create. Thus, instead of focusing on the fictional flow of events, I personally became more doubtful of the hidden thesis of the book.
While author took pains in arguing for the urgency of the population issue, it rhetorically fails in this regard by losing the readers' attention from the flow of the story. Many times, while bombarded with factual assertions in the book, I find myself stopping and looking it up in Google. This is easily done since I was reading the book through my iPad which makes shifting from book to Google as easily as swiping my finger.
And many times that I did google for the assertions made in the book, I did find inaccuracies (not blatant, but understandably done to fit it squarely in the plot). That's where the believability of the novel suffers. The novel is a fictional instrument and much of it's charm comes from illusion of creating its reality. Its rhetorical import is conveying its Truth through creating its own reality. Once this veil of illusion is pierced, it loses its charm and is now read as if it were a dissertation.
This was the same problem with The Da Vinci Code. Brown's claims on the introduction that certain parts were accurate did not bode well to readers who anticipated its historical accuracy. His interviews after the show did little to assuage the public.
But then again, I think that's more of Brown's: create much talk around it. And he's probably doing it again with Inferno. He might have learned much contrasting to the reception to his other book, Angels and Demons, which although written earlier, was less controversial and seemed meek to these two other books.
Still, I would have preferred the author to have stuck within the reality of the novel rather than assert the superiority of some mathematical assertion derived from Thomas Malthus' assertion in a work of fiction. It only exposes the novel to some uneasy questions.
For instance, Malthus claimed in 1798 that population growth will outgrow the resources needed to sustain itself (Malthus made the assertion is 1798, a time when he already though his world was overpopulated), and yet, 200 years later, our population keeps growing.
Of course, there are many other factors to consider… so it's academically irresponsible to dismiss Malthus and his theory (and his mathematics… to use Brown's term in Inferno) altogether. For one, Malthus wrote prior to the Industrial Revolution… a time when a new form of technology that increased food production. Thus, arguably, the natural limit to sustain population increased. But are we hitting this new natural limit? Are we able to find a new form of technology to allow us to breach this natural limit? Or is our population now self limiting (i.e., is human population slowly self limiting through the forces that Malthus describes)?
The arguments for or against it will continue… but this just serves to illustrate how the novel distracted the readers out of this fictional world and eventually lost the rhetorical argument.
You would not see C. S. Lewis' Screwtape Letters befall that same tragedy. C. S. Lewis being the great story teller (at the same time, Christian apologist) knew the strength of the novel lies in the reality it creates… thus, there was never an attempt in that book to take the reader out of that reality and argue ex libris (out of the book, if my Latin is erroneous).
The same way can be said with Carl Sagan's Contact. The novel's argument was so discreetly veiled in the reality of the story that readers would never suspect the motivation of the author. When I read Sagan's book, I didn't know the author and didn't know he's a proponent of “free-thinking” and against “religion and superstition.”
Having said that, I hope that the movie version would not befall the same problems. The book has a good story to tell. Let it drive the argument.
