So in my travels last weekend to the ever-glorious metropolis known as Chicago (now officially one of my favorite cities anywhere), I couldn't help but notice in the various newsstands and bookstores in Bradley, Pitt and O'Hare that Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code has finally been released in paperback with just about a month to go before the movie drops.

I think it's pretty safe to say I'm a reader, and if you've read this sucker for any discernible length of time you'd know this. That being said, I have somewhat mixed feelings about this phenomenon. For that matter, I have mixed feelings about any literary phenomenon, save maybe the Harry Potter books as they've proven to be a major source of inspiration for the young'ns to start reading. There's nothin' wrong with that, as I certainly don't think I wouldn't be delving into Vonnegut and Auster were it not for being weaned on the likes of Dr. Seuss and the Berenstain Bears series growing up (all of which my mother was thoughtful enough to hang onto for my eventual offspring, bless her soul).

But I think with any other sort of mainstream book becoming "the next big thing," there's a sort of misleading nature about the whole ordeal as these books are rarely the true crème de la crème, so to speak.

First off, let me offer the following disclaimer: I have not yet read Da Vinci. I had waited a near eternity for the blasted thing to be released in paperback as I find the cost of hardcover books to be outrageous. Leave it to the marketing geniuses at whatever publisher released the sucker to wait until the release of the film was in sight to do so, just to give sales and interest that one last spike before the opening box office weekend.

Then again, having an MBA in marketing, I shoulda guessed this'd be the case, so shame on me.

But in any event, I finally bought a paperback and Da Vinci and I'm only about 100 pages into it. I want to read it before the movie hits, because as we know, the film rarely trumps the book, plain and simple. In preparation, I flew through the famed prequel Angels & Demons in under a month's time. For what it's worth, I enjoyed it. I think Brown is very talented at researching his topics and managing to interlock history, fiction and conspiracy theory. I laud him for it.

However…

Herein lay the trouble with so-called literary phenomena and the like… while the story may be engrossing and enjoyable, at the end of the day, I don't find myself harkening back to it at any real point in time. That is to say, I fail to see what the underlying themes are, other than a really cool thriller peppered with heavy doses of imagery, actual fact and clever execution. Now for most, that may all be fine and dandy.

Clearly I'm not most.

(For no other reason other than the fact I couldn't find a better place to fit it, I offer a brief parenthetical aside/critique regarding Da Vinci based on what I've read thus far… I will try to keep it as spoiler-free as possible. What I've noticed about it more than anything else is that it's basically a carbon copy of Angels & Demons; only the names have been changed to protect the guilty. Bizarre murder gives way to a major crisis sparked by an antagonistic clandestine society, and intellectual everyman Robert Langdon must team up with an attractive female counterpart who is seemingly has more balls than he does. A combination of religion and conspiracy drive the story to unravel startling revelations that stand to rattle the very foundation of the Catholic Church. I'm pretty confident that by the end of Da Vinci, I'll feel the same way I did after watching Escape From L.A.: "I liked this better the first time around… y'know, when it was called Escape From New York. We now return you to your regularly scheduled diatribe…)

Now maybe it comes from a long history of reading comic books and watching old school sci-fi, but I always try to look for central themes and undercurrents to any story regardless of the medium. This also comes in large part due to the education I received under Douglas Glover, Kathryn Davis and Steven Millhauser at Skidmore. If you haven't heard of them I can't say I'm hugely surprised. Not a one of them is a New York Times bestseller list mainstay, and despite incredible critical acclaim (including the 1996 Pulitzer for fiction awarded to Millhauser for Martin Dressler), it's quite clear that none of them will ever "push units" like a Dan Brown, Stephen King, Danielle Steele, etc., etc., ad nauseum.

In fact, with the exception of Millhauser, I have yet to find either Glover or Davis's published works in any major bookstore chain.

I think what I'm getting at is the notion that literary booms focusing on one book should not be taken as representatives of the entire literary population at that given point in time. Maybe it can be compared to huge blockbuster films being all the rage when it's more than likely the small change indie films getting all the praise. I don't know, it's kinda difficult to classify. There's just something about me that feels this sorta hype is misleading in a way.

There's also the fact that said hype typically gives way to massive marketing and crossover into every medium imaginable. The example I offer is an oldie, but a goodie: Jurassic Park.

I remember being about 11 years old when the book was booming big time. I recall clear as a bell walking through the old Naugatuck Valley Mall (how's that for a flashback for all you native Waterbury folk?) and seeing a huge promotional display for Jurassic Park, well before the film came out. Shoot, this was well before I even knew a film was in the works. All I knew was that this book had a tyrannosaurus skeleton on the cover, and being a major dinosaur fanatic from the time I was about 5 years old, I was curious to say the least. Ultimately, I received the book from a cousin and read through the entire thing in a couple weeks. Again, this is still well before the film came out.

Being only 11 at the time I read it, I think I viewed it as everyone else did: a wicked cool story involving raptors. I doubt I could've grasped Michael Crichton's underlying "Frankenstein" theme of man playing God with science and genetics at that age. Turns out he was about he was nearly a decade ahead of his time when it came to the ethical issues of genetic cloning. But still, I was very taken with the story, and naturally went to see the flick when it was released in that memorable summer of nineteen-naughty-three.

By now, I was 12. Still young, but even I was able to figure out that they couldn't possibly fit everything from the book into a two-hour time span. What I don't think I could have prepared myself for was the blitzkrieg of marketing marvels that was to follow: toys, games, apparel, books, tampons, etc. Anything that a price tag could be placed on had the Jurassic logo on it.

As if the initial homerun wasn't enough, a sequel wasn't only expected, why it was downright mandatory, I say! Enter 1997 and Crichton's half-baked The Lost World. This time around, all themes of chaos and science gone berserk went out the window in grand Hollywood fashion. Even the title of the book was a direct tip of the hat to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's classic silent film which first exposed dinosaurs to the movie-going masses. In short, whereas the first book was just a book that hit big, the second installment was essentially a blueprint for the movie. And not only was the book a far cry from its literary predecessor, the film was a far cry from the book it was based on, making for one really, really atrocious blockbuster. Mission: Impossible III looks like freakin' Scorcese next to this dud. I won't even begin to go into the third film, which Crichton wasn't even attached to. Apparently a fourth film is in the works. Nothing like milking a cow until it's dead and its udders are spewing dust.

Not only was the sucker a major hit, but it seemed like any book Crichton wrote was bound for the silver screen from that point forward. After two prior film ventures in the 70's (The Andromeda Strain and The Great Train Robbery), anything the man wrote went to the big screen in the 90's. Congo, Sphere, even the post-JP penned Timeline all made it to theaters, all of which really, really sucked.

I guess what I'm getting at is that there's a snowball effect when this sorta thing happens, and commercialism totally overtakes whatever relevant artistic or intellectual value is inherent within the book to begin with. Now I grant you that dinosaurs are a far more marketable commodity as opposed to religious conspiracies, so you probably won't be seeing action figures bearing the likeness of Tom Hanks any time soon. Even so, you'd better believe that there will likely be a third book in the life of Robert Langdon, and at least one more flick. If you think the film is gonna bomb, I fear you're way, way outta touch, dear reader. The money is there, and it will probably be the easiest work of Dan Brown's life, because at this point in time, he could basically wipe himself on a sheet of Charmin, and that would go straight to the top of the bestseller list.

Meanwhile, the thing that bothers me the most is that there are infinitely better books languishing in limbo right now that are probably being overlooked by the general populous. Now granted, one could always argue that exposure to such fanaticism could offer a sort of floodgate effect and create scores of readers from whence there were none. Lord knows I didn't start flipping pages incessantly until I was introduced to Crichton's work. However, it wasn't until I read Slaughterhouse 5 and The New York Trilogy for a class in postmodern literature that my tastes really transformed and I adopted the style of writing that I employ now. Prior to that, my literary world was limited to Crichton and Dean Koontz. Again, stuff simply tailor-made for Tinsel Town.

Now that's not to say that Dan Brown's work is bad by any stretch. As I've said, he's certainly very well read in religious and iconographic history and has been able to parlay that knowledge into something really huge. More power to him, I wish I could do the same thing. And I think we can all agree that personal taste is a purely subjective thing and no two people will entirely mesh with their personal preferences. If nothing else, I'm glad that people are actually reading the dang thing as opposed to "just waiting for the movie." There's no term I loathe more than that. But at the same time, I just can't help but feel that no matter what, the bottom line is that a lot of misconceptions may be drawn about the literary world because of the hype here. Like a lotta people say, they're reading this book only because of the buzz. Shoot, that's why I'm reading it, only because it's become such a pop culture cornerstone for the new millennium that I would be remiss if I didn't at least become casually familiar with it.

I guess there's just something about me that cringes when I realize the guy has sold more copies than The Great Gatsby or Fahrenheit 451.

And lastly, to anyone that is just waiting for the movie, I hope you realize that A) the paperback is cheaper than your ticket, and B) it lasts a helluva lot longer. You go munch on your popcorn; I'm gonna chill in the coffee shop. Thank you for leaving.

Goodnight, and have a pleasant tomorrow.