|
IMO it's a bad book.
It has all the characterization of a comic book and the plot - or the extended riddle-me-this narrative just held no interest for me. I can tell you that sus also teaches art history and she also thinks the book is a hack job, a badly written snore, and a typical popular-fiction easy-reader.
I suppose if I had to elaborate on why I think it's so bad (and I suppose I'll have to, since I have a student doing an Independent Study Project on it) is that when symbology is presented as a series of one-to-one relationships, as it is in many popular books on dream symbolism, for example, all of the living and resonant qualities of symbols is rendered quite dead and lifeless.
It's the "easy answers to complex questions" syndrome that concerns me. To bring a one-to-one symbological perspective to works of art - da Vinci's for example, really does a disservice to the artist, art history, and more broadly, the open-ended significance, ambiguity, and potential meanings available in works of great art.
IMO, the only way to defend this book is to see it as a light time- passer, good for reading at the beach or on a plane trip, but nothing serious enough to merit anything resembling meaningful discussion.
Perhaps the notion that discussing the themes as have been listed above does merit some consideration - as they are significant topics. But the mere fact that they are mentioned by this author - and that he hangs his narrative on them - does not credit him with doing anything more than raising the issues. He could have done that with a simple list of interesting points that attend to the subject. The fictional treatment here is not a work of literature but a work of rank popular writing.
__________________
create evolution
|