Dan Brown’s Lost Symbol – Good Hokey Fun

Last night I finished reading Dan Brown’s new novel The Lost Symbol and this morning I’d like to share a few of my thoughts with the world.

First, this novel is not great literature by any stretch of the imagination (which is probably why there were no pre-publication copies for the critics), but it is an engaging read.  It held my attention and kept me reading when I could have been doing something else (like blogging).  And that’s how I judge a good book, so it passes the test.

Dan Brown has re-used the formula he used so successfully in The Da Vinci Code, and the results, while not dazzling, do not disappoint either.  The plot is a Masonic treasure hunt through Washington, D.C., with Brown’s protagonist, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, assembling and decoding a centuries-old cipher map to find the ultimate Masonic secret (which of course has been hidden in plain sight all along).  Think National Treasure and you’ll get the idea.

The plot has plenty of twists and turns and puzzles for the reader to ponder along the way, but having read The Da Vinci Code I found some of them predictable, to say the least.  For example, the solution to the final puzzle, which had the book’s main character perplexed for several chapters, jumped out at me right off the page.  Also, I am now wise to Dan Brown’s device of deliberately withholding information from the reader in ways that are designed to mislead, and I am also familiar with some of the material he uses as background for his story.  As a result I was often able to guess what was coming up next, and when it did, it sometimes seemed a little hokey.  Hokey, but fun.

The book contains many references to Masonic ritual and symbolism, and overall it sheds a very favorable light on Freemasonry.  I expect it to generate much interest in the fraternity (indeed, the Grand Lodge of California’s website, www.freemason.org, crashed under the weight of traffic two days after the book came out and has yet to recover) with a corresponding upsurge in membership.  The author obviously has a favorable opinion of the order and if he’s not already a member I wouldn’t be surprised to see him become one soon.

Two words of caution though.  Masonic ritual varies from state to state and from country to country, so if you join the fraternity, don’t expect to find everything exactly as it is in the book.  And as Brown mentions, Masonic symbolism is open to many different interpretations, so don’t expect to find “the ultimate answer” to the mysteries of Masonry in the book.  In many ways, Masonry is more about the search for the meaning of symbols, than about their actual meaning.  In this book, as in Masonry and in life itself, the journey matters more the destination.