There isn't much particularly novel to say about Brown's work, nor much that separates this one from any other. So I wanted to take a second to ponder the hidden reality that Brown evokes in this and the other adventures of Robert Langdon. Though each tale is clearly a work of fiction, the reality they inhabit/create is meant to serve as a referent for our own. The possibility of these stories is informed by a history we can imagine to exist below the one we have generally agreed upon. Brown almost seems to argue that, if we have eyes to look properly, we might view the lessons and passages of history very differently. That taking a different approach to what we understand about our common past can drastically reorient our shared present.
The loss of the modern - frequently espoused by Langdon - is that we have forgotten that the knowledge of the present has not necessarily superseded the wisdom of the ancients. Rather than pit modern ways of knowing against past understandings, Brown constructs a world in which the forgotten messages of the past are crucial to a deeper perspective on the present. To this end he may be one of History's (as a discipline) most notable contemporary proponents. However, we are mistaken if we assume that Brown is little more than a history geek and conspiracy buff. If we take his writing to be indicative of his ethics, Brown believes that the ultimate service of historical understanding is the formation of the complete person. The historical message we read in his work, time and again, is that of a divided society replicated in divided people. Both the world and the people who strive within it can only be healed by reconciling the shared reality of reason and faith.The whole person, like the whole society, must necessarily contain and be amenable to the teachings of both.
Surely the fast-paced action and twisting intrigue of Brown's stories are the method for keeping the reader enraptured within his shade of a fiction that we imagine as possible. The hook is the hope that secrets, which we can imagine could be true, are revealed. Yet the moral is that the past is a rich field of meaning; one which the present remains connected to. If it seems that our modern condition is that of floating in a space of uncertainty, Brown reminds us to pay attention to the pathways which lead us to the past - they might point us towards the future.
