He's Having A Laugh

Added on 06 September 2010

Here at I Didn't Know What It Was So I Ate It we just read The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. Well, I read it. On my own. So not we; I.

It's too late to review The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown, as everyone else has already reviewed it. A lot of people think it's rubbish, although not the man at the Sunday Express, who nearly died from a cardiac arrest while reading it, apparently, he found it so joyously, exquisitely exciting. One suspects he might have written that with an eye on getting his quote on the cover of the paperback edition. It would appear, however, that he didn't die, as he was in such a fit state to write the review afterwards. Perhaps he just peed himself with excitement but didn't like to say.

I thought it would be good to come up with something original to say about The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown and honed in on Mr Brown's absurd overuse of the word chuckle. Now Dan and I are pretty much in the same league in terms of international authorial stardom - albeit it's a league with over fifty million writers in it; he's in the top three and I'm in the bottom three - so it would be unprofessional of me to denounce the man's use of any verb, never mind one so mundane as chuckle. However, he scatters the stupid verb around like autumn rain. It's a fast-paced thriller with people dying and all sorts of evil and dark secrets and all sorts of shit, and yet on every second page someone is chuckling.

What was his editor doing? What was the copy editor doing? Perhaps they have great stand-up rows at the publishers, where Dan threatens to take his next book to HarperCollins if he doesn't get to use his full quota of silly verbs.

I've been talking about this for two weeks now. My wife says I'm obsessing.

So I typed 'Dan Brown' 'Lost Symbol' Chuckle into Google and discovered that hundreds of people have already written about it. In retrospect it's obvious. Of course I'm not the first person to notice the word chuckle on every alternate page.

Langdon felt the dagger slice through his left testicle and he had to chuckle.

Solomon found himself chuckling as the blood drained quickly from his severed wrist.

With a chuckle, Tom Hanks realised that his next movie was going to be a complete stinker.

That kind of thing stands out.

So I'll have to think of something else.