Symbolically Speaking
Excuse me whilst I dust off this old keyboard. The past week I've been trying very hard to finish reading The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown. I, like most of America, enjoy Brown's books. I really have to wade through a quagmire of bad dialogue, shoddy character development and latent homosexuality to get to the nugget of value in his books, but oh what nuggets they are. The absolute best thing that Brown's novels have to offer a reader is the lesson of deeper thinking. How much of his story is historically verifiable is not nearly as important as the opportunity to learn how to question. How to corroborate. How to connect. The messages of books like The Lost Symbol are really the cure for a problem that has plagued mankind for eons, the inability to think symbolically. Taking literally that which was meant to be symbolic is literally and symbolically destructive to the human experience. 
One of the ironies that wraps itself around Brown's books is that, while he has no compunction about taking light jabs at Mormonism, he also has no problem with making the central themes of his novels out of Mormon doctrines and theologies. The newest installment in the Brown archives is no exception with its theme of mankind's potential for godhood. Another irrevocable point made in the book, one that has fascinated me for years, is the concept of eternal and permeating truth, that the same truths are found in every ideology, religion or philosophy because they have a genealogical path back to one great truth.
I realize that this is nothing more than a glorified book report but the urge to write overwhelmed me and the book is fresh on my mind. I heartily recommend any of Dan Brown's books as they are great for inspiring curiosity. I only caution those who are tempted to read one of them and then try to have an "enlightened" discussion on any of the novels' topics because Dan Brown is sort of the Wikipedia of novelists... he's a fantastic spring board into the material but not exactly a reliable sole source. And thus ends another demonstration of the very trait that makes me nigh unbearable to those around me who just want to enjoy the blasted book/movie/TV show. The eternal plight of a cynic, I guess.
