In Praise of Dan Brown, Sort Of

From "The heroic absurdity of Dan Brown," by Clive James, in Prospect--

The less he can write, of course, the more admirable his achievement. As well as the heroism of Robert Langdon, we must think of the heroism of Dan Brown. This is a man who started out with such a shaky grasp of the English language that he still thinks “foreboding” is an adjective meaning “ominous.” I also relished “Sienna changed tacks.” Read aloud, these three words would suggest that the pretty, young woman had altered her arrangement with the Internal Revenue Service. But Dan Brown has never read one of his own sentences aloud in all his life; and why, now, would he need to? He can buy and sell all the pedants in the world.

It's easy to dump on Dan Brown. But it's not so easy to write like Dan Brown, despite what the reviewers might think--if it were, more people would be name-brand authors who sell a gazillion books. 

Comments

[Adam]

This is one of the funniest things I've read in a long time.