Thanks to A.O. Scott, I now have a concrete example of the “retardedness” of Dan Brown’s prose which I mentioned in my previous post.
From A.O. Scott’s NYTimes review
To their credit the director and his screenwriter, Akiva Goldsman (who collaborated with Mr. Howard on “Cinderella Man” and “A Beautiful Mind”), have streamlined Mr. Brown’s story and refrained from trying to capture his, um, prose style. “Almost inconceivably, the gun into which she was now staring was clutched in the pale hand of an enormous albino with long white hair.” Such language — note the exquisite “almost” and the fastidious tucking of the “which” after the preposition — can live only on the page.
I rest my case.
I concur dammit! With this post and the previous one also.
Seriously, I have the same problem as you do: I couldn’t read DVC because of Dan Brown’s atrocious prose. I kept tripping and tripping over the clumsy phrasings. (But then again, banning the movie was even more stupid. With all the brain-dead people running around, who said Dawn of the Dead was a fictional movie. Duh!)
Here’s a pretty good analysis of the FIRST FEW SENTENCES on Brown’s lousy book:
http://itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/000844.html