Saturday, January 15, 2005

Da Vinci, pt. 2

I would like to deconstruct what I said earlier on "Da Vinci Code".

I wrote:

"Real pulp fiction is tight storytelling and not some whining guy delivering us lengthy monologues stripped straight from pseudoscientific non-fiction books as dialogue."

Now, having gone through some courses in male studies (feminism applied to men and differents discourses of masculinity) in university (some ten years ago), I got to thinking that maybe I should be more careful of what I write down here... Let's see:

"Real pulp fiction is *tight* storytelling": "tight" is a word that is often applied to masculinity. It means that men are tight, as women are not (they are fragile, loose, all that). So, I implied that pulp fiction is male, as opposed to long and chatty bestselling novels (which, in due course, are feminine).

Furthermore, I implied that Dan Brown is a "whining guy". Now, that could mean that I think he's a feminine man, since in heterosexual discourse real men are not supposed to whine. Brown is not tight and he whines, so I have to exclude him from my literary canon. That also shows when I say that he has "monologues" instead of "dialogue". Does this mean that "dialogue", i.e. action (Hemingway), is masculine and "monologues" are feminine, eternal dwelling in one's thoughts only.

We could also claim that "tight" is something that is not penetrated. There's of course man's hard outer shell through which nothing is shown, but there's also the rectum. Pulp fiction is tight, so it is unpenetrable, covered by a hard outer shell. Dan Brown is not tight - I want to ask if that applies also to his rectum.

Oh well, now this got out of hand... I just hope Dan Brown reads this!

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