Dan Brown's Inferno

"While travel magazines have recently been citing the Philippines as a tropical paradise, American author Dan Brown seems to think otherwise based on his much-anticipated new novel.

In "Inferno," the fourth part in Harvard art professor Robert Langdon’s adventures, one of the characters goes through "the gates of hell" in Manila.

The description of the city is from the first-hand account of one of the fictional characters, the messianic Dr. Sienna Brooks.

Brooks, who has been working with humanitarian groups, went to the Philippines for a mission to supposedly feed poor fishermen and farmers on the countryside.

She expected the Philippines to be a “wonderland of geological beauty, with vibrant seabeds and dazzling plains.”

Upon setting foot in Manila, however, Brooks could only "gape in horror" as "she had never seen poverty on this scale."

She said her “dark depression” flooded back, with pictures of poverty and crime flashing through her eyes.

“For every one person Sienna fed, there were hundreds more who gazed at her with desolate eyes,” the book read.

One after the other, the book described chaotic Manila: "six-hour traffic jams, suffocating pollution, horrifying sex trade."

The book described the sex industry as consisting mostly of young children “many of whom had been sold to pimps by parents who took solace in knowing that at least their children would be fed.”

“All around her, she could see humanity overrun by its primal instinct for survival…When they face desperation…human beings become animals,” the book read."

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/lifestyle/05/21/13/dan-brown-calls-manila-gates-hell-novel

I think Dan Brown should cross the Philippines off his list of holiday destinations, for the moment.

And he gets very poor marks for observation - whilst I have spent five hours in a traffic jam, and seen dreadful poverty, one thing that I have NOT seen is "humanity overrun by its primal instinct for survival..."

What I think most of us notice is the determination to maintain human dignity in such conditions.

Would you say he stretches the bounds of reality a little?

He has shifted a lot of this, his latest book.

"Dan Brown's new novel Inferno has soared to the top of the UK's book charts in its first week in shops, selling a whopping 228,961 copies and dwarfing the second-placed title, Martina Cole's The Life, which sold a respectable 23,821."


http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2013/may/21/dan-brown-inferno-book-sales

Read his first book and thought it was very flimsy and not read any thing of his since. Very overrated and of minimal talent. The indie author I know who spends time on writers forums etc say he's not particularly liked within that circle. Helps that he's (dan drown) married to a high profile publisher as I'm lead to believe!!!

Old news but a driving force for Erap's policies?

Erap: Dan Brown’s descriptions should serve as wake-up call

"Manila mayor-elect Joseph Estrada yesterday agreed with Dan Brown the city is overpopulated and plagued by traffic jams.

In a telephone interview with The STAR, Estrada said Brown’s description of Manila should be taken by Filipinos, including him, as a wake-up call.

The former president said there is some truth to Brown’s fictional descriptions of Manila as a city plagued by mammoth traffic jams and overpopulation.

“That is the very reason why I ran for mayor because I was born in Tondo, Manila. Manila has the highest level of poverty incidence,” he said. “Manila has become the car theft and kidnapping capital of the country. Police are involved in criminalities. Vendors are subjected to extortion by bad cops and Manila is suffering from worst traffic and overpopulation.”

In Brown’s novel “Inferno,” one of the characters goes through “the gates of hell” in Manila. The city was also described as having “six-hour traffic jams,” “suffocating pollution” and a “horrifying sex trade.”

“I want to rehabilitate Manila. That is a wake-up call for all of us,” Estrada said.

He said a University of the Philippines (UP) study submitted to him showed that Manila has the highest level of poverty incidence in the country.

“There are many poor in Manila. There are also many jobless in Manila. It is overpopulated, the density is second to Bangladesh and it is the second densest city in the world,” Estrada said.

Meanwhile, Brazilian Paulo Coelho, author of the bestseller “The Alchemist,” told Filipinos that their souls “lead to the gates of heaven.”

Coelho sent his message to Filipinos on his Twitter account, which has almost eight million followers, yesterday, adding that he is “sure” Brown “unintentionally” gave Manila the gates of hell moniker.

“Dear Filipinos, your souls lead to the gates of heaven,” he tweeted, adding the hashtag “#fact” after the tweet.

Metropolitan Manila Development Authority (MMDA) chairman Francis Tolentino, who had written to Brown to complain about the description of Manila, said the author has yet to respond to his letter." [/I]

http://www.philstar.com/headlines/2...an-browns-descriptions-should-serve-wake-call

I agree, Yuna. Strange how Erap did very little to improve matters when he was the President ...

This lady has an interesting slant on the Inferno analogy...

"Metropolitan Manila Development Authority Chairman Francis Tolentino was so offended by novelist Dan Brown’s description of Manila as “the gates of hell” in his latest thriller that the good chairman went to the trouble of writing Brown an official letter on MMDA stationery.

“While we are aware that yours is a work of fiction,” Tolentino says, referring to Brown’s “Inferno,” “we are greatly disappointed by your inaccurate portrayal of our beloved metropolis.”

This is not the first time Tolentino has disliked a work of Brown’s. Rappler.com says that in 2006 Tolentino “reportedly wrote” an article for the Manila Bulletin, panning Brown’s enormously popular book “The Da Vinci Code” and lobbying for the film to be banned in the Philippines.

Now where is it written that an author must forfend from disappointing?

Countless works depict places in a negative light, especially major cities from Los Angeles to Paris to Delhi. No one has complained like this, except us. Manila gets mentioned for once in a bestseller and it gets us riled?

It’s not even a work of literature. Dan Brown has been scored many times by critics for his clunky style. Here are some gems from Inferno:

“Their persistence has kept me underground…laboring beneath the earth like a chthonic monster.” “Chthonic” means “of or pertaining to the underworld”. Underground na, beneath the earth and chthonic pa.

“You know we have our methods. We can force you to tell us where it is.” We’ve heard this line in countless cartoons and bad movies.

“With a price tag of over 300 million U.S. dollars, the craft boasted all the usual amenities—spa, pool, cinema, personal submarine, and helicopter pad.” And, “…the incoming call was from a Swedish Sectra Tiger XS personal voice-encrypting phone…” Yes, thank you, Mr. Brown, all those details do advance the story.

“His mind felt alert but his heavily drugged body was slow to respond.” Don’t sedatives affect the entire system, both mind and body?

After a mysterious woman on a motorbike kills one of the protagonist Langdon’s doctors and pursues him and his companion with a gun, popping off shots, Langdon “…teeters on the brink of consciousness. Someone is trying to kill me?” Captain Obvious in the house.

A few passages later, “The sedative he’d been given in the hospital had left his mind as blurred as his vision. But just some pages before, “his mind felt alert…” What gives?

“Sienna, eez Danikova! Where you?! Eez terrible! Your friend Dr. Marconi, he dead! Hospital going craaazy!” I have never seen a question mark and exclamation point occur one after the other in print—until now. We’re not even talking about this horrible line of dialogue.

These examples are from the first few chapters. The rest of the book is more of the same cliché-studded writing Brown has employed (to great financial success) in the past.

How can anyone feel threatened by something like that? How can anyone even take anything Dan Brown writes seriously?

Relax. Just enjoy the frenetic action, obscure clues, and gripping suspense, and forget about it after you put down the book. Wait for the film, it’s sure to be a lot better.

Perhaps Chairman Tolentino has nothing else to do that he spends time on the clock reading novels and writing on official government letterhead missives like this which reflect his personal opinion and tastes and have nothing to do with MMDA.

Perhaps Chairman Tolentino has already solved the traffic problems of our major thoroughfares, cleaned up our streets of all garbage, ensured flood control measures in the entire city, developed housing to shelter informal settlers, and completed the myriad other tasks of the agency that anyone may see listed at their website, that he can turn his official attention to critiquing Dan Brown.

Look, we can’t expect to be exempted from things like this. We are part of the global community—we will indeed be mentioned by others, and not always in a favorable manner.

And the truth is that we do have horrendous traffic, shantytowns, petty criminals, poverty. Though Brown exaggerated, we need to face reality— and do something about it.

We waste our energy being prickly about little things, but what about the big things that matter, like the recent incidents with China and Taiwan and the US ship that tore up swaths of precious coral reef?

We are pushed around by our stronger neighbors and our response is an impotent buckling down, instead of standing up to bullies and saying, “Hell no, you can’t do this to us!”

But no, this is all we can do—whine that one of our cities was used as the location of a flashback scene in a work of fiction, when there are more pressing and important things we need to take care of.

Like growing up."

http://manilastandardtoday.com/2013/05/30/the-gates-of-hell-no/