Find the literary howlers: Dan Brown's Angels and Demons
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Find the literary howlers: Dan Brown's Angels and Demons"Angels and Demons makes Da Vinci [Code] look like a lean, dramatically unified, intellectually cogent book!!
--- Thomas Hibbs, The National Review
"...talent ... but ridiculous! ... Angels & Demons is a ... breathless tangle!!!"
--- Amazon.com
"...far from clear! ... premises strain credulity!!"
"Dan Brown's writing is so clumsy and inept! ...enjoy the experience of poring over it!!"
--- Geoffrey Pullum, LanguageLog
"...takes longer to get going! ...too much character background is given for too many characters!! ...Dan Brown's writing style will never be called literary!!!"
"Each mistake by itself would be forgivable ... something wrong on every page!!!!
Based on the runaway success of my recent literary critique of Dan Brown's bestselling novel The Da Vinci Code - I got at least two e-mails about it, one of which was almost laudatory - I've decided it's time to steel myself for another wave of horrifyingly bad prose, by way of tackling Brown's 2000 bestseller, Angels and Demons. As before, it pays to start right at the get-go and head straight to the beginning of the outset - without further ado, let's roll up our sleeves, batten down the hatches in the trenches and dive in, shall we? Note that I've found that I can only manage reading (especially in the sense of close perusal) more than a few of Brown's sentences at a time (a phenomenon perhaps reminiscent of the fabled and highly toxic Funniest Joke in the World, as performed by Monty Python) without gagging unless I find some way to turn it into a humorous experience. Thus, what follows will consist of a blend of straight literary review - not so funny, especially when dealing with Dan Brown's dismal prose - and Mystery Science Theater 3000-style riffing. (That's right - Dan Brown, the John Agar of thriller writing.) I beg for my readers' indulgence if they find the resulting mix somewhat off-putting. (A polite way of saying "it's worth what you paid for it.")
Chapter One
Hey - looking pretty good so far. But you do realize it can't last much longer, don't you? As usual, when it comes to disappointing, Dan Brown does not disappoint, and he certainly doesn't keep us waiting very long:
High atop the steps of the Pyramid of Giza a young woman laughed and called down to him. "Robert, hurry up! I knew I should have married a younger man!" Her smile was magic.
Like I said - sustaining the kind of coherency that gave us brilliant stuff like "Chapter One" is too much to ask of any author, especially if his name is Dan Brown. Where to begin ... sentence #1 seems as good a place as any, I suppose: I wasn't aware that the pyramids at Giza (of which there are several, not just one) came with steps, at least not in any conventional sense. But it's a Dan Brown novel, so clearly nothing but the biggest and the best will do - he surely means the Great Pyramid of Cheops (The nearby Pyramid of Khafre is nearly as tall but even steeper and virtually unclimbable without artificial aids, due to it still having its original limestone dressing on the top portion). There's just one tiny problem with blithely trotting up the steps of the Great Pyramid, though, as this online tour guide explains: "The ascent of the pyramid (permitted only exceptionally and with the help of a guide) is hazardous and extremely strenuous, since it is necessary to climb steps more than 40inches/1m high." That must be one incredibly long-legged, aerobically fit young filly there - Mr. Him, you are the man, even if you aren't the younger man. But ... where is our guide? You didn't bring one? Tut, tut ... ha, ha, get it? Yes, a million laughs - the desert sun will that do that to you.
But fine, they somehow got the guide requirement waived by the Supreme Council for Antiquities and brought special elevator shoes for those three-and-a-half-foot-high steps. Moving on - Him? Him who? Oh, him Robert. You, Jane. And wouldn't it be more likely that her smile would be magical? (Perhaps even enchanting or intoxicating, but surely not magic).
He struggled to keep up, but his legs felt like stone. "Wait," he begged. "Please..."
Like stone? What do stony-feeling legs feel like, precisely? Are you sure they're not burning, possibly even feeling leaden? And would that be cut stone or field stone? Chiseled or unworked? Huge slabs, large rocks or small pebbles? Ah, the manifold dangers of the forced simile. No point in taking such pains to try to be original here, Dan (by way of channeling Him-Robert), especially when you've got nothing original to say.
As he climbed, his vision began to blur. There was a thundering in his ears. I must reach her! But when he looked up again, the woman had disappeared. In her place stood an old man with rotting teeth. The man stared down, curling his lips into a lonely grimace. Then he let out a scream of anguish that resounded across the desert.
You mean as he continued climbing? It really wouldn't do to have stony legs right at the start. Of course we already know from our earlier review of The Da Vinci Code (let's just refer to it as DVC from here on) that "thundering" is one of Brown's favorite action words, although in that instance it was a thundering iron gate followed by a disembodied speaking voice in a renowned museum curator's ear which was at the same time chillingly close and fifteen feet away. The well-worn and physiologically accurate cliché "[the blood / his heartbeat / his pulse] pounded in his ears" apparently not being good enough for Brown, he takes pains to replace it with yet another less-accurate, forced-sounding pet cliché of his own. How very precious. Next, surely I must reach her! implies a desperate life-and-death urgency, not exactly what one would associate with the act of merely trying to keep up with a laughing young woman with the agility of a mountain goat and a magic smile. Then he let out a scream of anguish - again with the free-floating he/him/his pronouns here. He who? (The drunken rodeo cowboy thundered in his ear, chillingly close.) The curly-lipped grimacing old man with dental caries or the stony-legged older must-reach-her-er guy involved in the life-and-death Everest expedition on the recently-added staircase of the unspecified Gizan pyramid? (The SCA informs me that the handicap access ramp will be ready sometime in early 2008.) Right away, the reader is feeling confused. And how does one grimace in a lonely fashion? (Brown probably considered grimaced lonelily here, but - to his credit - thought better of it. Would sound great coming from Elmer Fudd, though: "...the wascawwy wabbit gwimaced wonewiwy as I pwepawed to bwast him with my warge-cawibuh wifle...") Sneeringly, derisively or even ironically, for sure, but a lonely grimace? Such an astonishing play of facial expression here.
Wobewt Wangdon awoke with a stawt fwom his nightmawe. The phone beside his bed was winging. Dazed, he picked up the weceivuh.
Whoops - heh, heh, forgot to turn off Elmer Fudd mode there. Sorry about that, folks. Pwease stand by - We awe expewiencing swight technicaw difficuwties. We expect this pwobwem to be mewewy tempowawy in natuwe and to be wesowved showtwy. Alright, let's try that again:
Robert Langdon awoke with a start from his nightmare. The phone beside his bed was ringing. Dazed, he picked up the receiver.
(I confess I liked Fudd-mode better - on a side note,
Another one of Brown's pet grammatical malfeasances here - the saying voice. As LanguageLog's Geoffrey Pullum succinctly notes in his critique of a similar gaffe in DVC: "A voice doesn't speak —a person speaks; a voice is what a person speaks with." Also, how is it possible to look for someone over the telephone? Wouldn't it be easier to try to contact someone (perhaps even resorting to the desperate "I'd like to speak with...") over the telephone and save the looking for a more visually oriented medium?
How can the bed be empty if Robert Langdon is still in it? (But what a relief - I was worried we weren't going to be reminded of the protagonist's name there for a second.) Once again, it's as if Brown carefully considered all the possibilities and deliberately chose the worst possible one. Here, in answering the telephone the much-abused he would in fact have been perfectly appropriate and non-ambiguous - "This is he" - very nice, easy to remember, even if one is sitting up in an empty bed with thundering ears at the ungodly hour of 5:18 a.m., after having just been awaked from a nightmare about a lonely-grimacing old man lacking adequate dental coverage.
"I told you my name is Robert Langdon - only my mother gets to call me Immediately, buster."
"Well, gosh, it's nice to know that there are particle physicists out there who can keep a secret, but I don't understand what that has to do with me, Robert Langdon ... oh, discrete particle physicist ... you mean, as opposed to continuum particle physicist? I didn't know there even was such a thing as a continuum particle ... but no matter. Tell me, might you happen to be renowned?"
Uh, I think that's your call, isn't it? (It would help if you repeated the last name a few more times, though.)
"No - I mean really, could you please tell me what time it is? I've been so busy repeating my name that I lost track ... but why on earth did you call me on the phone if you can't discuss whatever it is you want to discuss on the phone? How is that supposed to work, huh? Tell me that, mister überschmartyhosen Miss Crete article physician!"
The shroud of Tulsa, a ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha - hilarious! So funny, in fact, that I almost forgot to quibble with the writing here. Almost. Now, as interesting a plot twist as the magical appearance on the Tulsa stripper's bedsheets of a colon-cleansing vegetable from the Broccoli family might be, is it really crucial to advancing the plot (what little there is of it) at this stage? Less tactful folks than ourselves might further be inclined to quip that that's probably not the only thing that magically appeared on her bedsheets, either, once the suave and renowned religious iconologist and noted symbologist Robert Langdon came onto the scene, woo hoo -- see, Brown's sense of humor here is so catching, it's almost infectious, ha ha!
Oh, I think we've had your number for a while, pal - probably at least since that shining turd of a novel called Digital Fortress was inflicted upon the world a second time (oh, please let it stay dead, Mr. publisher - we beg you) by way of reprinting in the wake of (or was it "the wake of riding the coattails of"?) the success of DVC.
Frowned lonelily, or just frownily? With curled lips or not? Details ... we need details.
Not just sure - damn sure. (Roget's suggests gosh darn positive, by way of possible alternatives here.)
...really -- what? Really don't have well-paid sexual trysts with unsolicited early-morning disgraced particular physical phone-lookers anymore? Did you really think you could just leave all that behind when you became a renowned professor of religious iconology at Harvard University, Bob? How shockingly naïve you are. As the saying goes - once a hooker, always a hooker. Now take the damn money and give us some sugar."
From Fictional-Conversation Writing for Dummies by Pulitzer-Prize-winning playwright (and famed fictional-conversational sentence-interrupter) Donald Margulies (p.308): To impart a sense of realism and urgency, consider interrupting every sentence of a fictional conversation with "..." or " -- ". There it is, in black and white. (Or blue and green on a black background, if you share my web browser settings).
Twenty minutes after five, in fact.
Would it have been so hard to come up with a more evocative description of an exasperated sleep-deprived person ending an unsolicited telephone conversation here? "Hung up?" How about the kind of action verbs you seem to so like to use for non-action sequences, Dan, say "slammed the receiver down"? (Perhaps with a thundering crash, no less.) And wouldn't it be better to collapse back into bed? (Perhaps even back into the bed.) I don't mean to be pedantic - well, I guess I do, actually - I'm just concerned that you get the best sleep possible.
Ah, the ever-present danger of a thesaurus falling into unskilled hands - the dream may well have been etched into his consciousness or mayhap even seared into his brain, but methinks it would have been emblazoned on his mind, were there any emblazoning of minds to be performed. As with the aforementioned stony-legged simile, another example of what is sometimes derisively referred to as the elegant variation:
"Elegant Variation: Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."
Without getting back out of the empty bed? That must've required some skill.
Robert who? The name is somehow unfamiliar to me. And yet again the existential issues - first the bed is empty even though its owner is sitting up in it, now the house is deserted even though he's wandering barefoot through it. It's like the conjugate-invisible man - we can see him, but he's not really there. On a separate note, I wonder how much NestléTM paid for that gratuitous little product placement?
Let's see - it's at least six in the morning in April, so it must be fairly light out by now - how can the moon possibly be filtering through the windows? And even if you somehow managed to put on your robe, dash downstairs, whip up a cup of NestléTM Quik® (mmm - delicious!) and start wandering around downstairs in world-record time, wouldn't it be the light of the moon filtering through the windows and playing on the rugs? Lastly, what exactly is an "April" moon? Aren't moonphases usually described by way of the, um ... moon's phase, any stage of which could occur not just once but twice in April? Returning to the desertedness issue, the house is also apparently not too deserted to have oriental carpets for our nonexistent owner to wander barefoot on. Fine - perhaps it's deserted except for its insomnia-nursing owner wandering about lonelily on a few oriental rugs. I'm sure the next few sentences will clear that up for us - except for its owner, some rugs and a playing moon the house is deserted...
...a deserted anthropology museum, mind you...
...a deserted anthropology museum crammed to the rafters with oriental carpets, illegally obtained religious artifacts, playing April moons...
...and priceless brass chests for its owner to sit on and engage in product placement. What better place to sit and enjoy a steaming mug of delicious NestléTM Quik® -- mmm, that's what I call chocolatey goodness!
A youthful spirit filled with delicious NestléTM chocolate, wrapped in a candy-coated mortal shell - look, Mom, no more sticky fingers!
Hmm, I'm picturing the studly Mr. Mighty Erudite as perhaps looking something like this. (I admit I added the cute cleft chin myself - there's just something about a guy with a dashing chin-butt that really does it for me - oh gosh, look at me, I'm blushing.) As for the arrestingly deep voice, I'm imagining the various female colleagues lucky enough to be spoken to by the seductive basso profundo of the vigilantly maintained Robert Langdon (more specifically, spoken to by the voice of same) as getting all weak-kneed at arresting banter like "You have the right to remain silent, babycakes. If you choose not to exercise this right (preferably by way of fifty laps a day in the university pool), I may hold my toned, six-foot physique against you..."
How dare you refer to his one-eighth African-American ancestry in those terms? As for the caught-between-centuries thing, I hear you there: that happened to me, too - a couple years ago, on New Year's eve. I seem to have gotten over it OK, though.
...And when he's feeling really naughty, sometimes he even wears both his Harris tweed *and* his blue jeans - Dan, whoops, I mean of course Robert Landon - you multiethnic enigmatic Rudite tweed-and-jeans-wearing, lap-swimming devil, you. I wonder if a Harris tweed and paisley vest are the most comfortable things to wear when you're suffering an outbreak of spotted fever, though. And how does one get oneself photographed in the pages of a magazines? Wouldn't it be easier to do the phtographing in a properly equipped studio and then reproduce the resulting images in the upscale art magazines? Must be this newfangled digital photography all the quad-loungers are buzzing about.
As opposed to the lost art of good clean writing, which truly appears to be a lost art, at least near the top of contemporary bestseller lists.
Yo Bob, you goin' to kegger at the Phi Delts' tonight, dude? Party on! But ... I told you that spotted fever was not something to be taken lightly - first it spreads from your arresting voice to your sensuous toned fingers, then to the recreational relish you put on that hot dog, and now it's about to to leap from your fanaticism to your paisley vest, and from there to the entire Phi Delt pledge class - a veritable panhellenic pandemic, ha, ha!
He's a varsity diver; he's a fifty-lap-a-day-swimmerer; he's a champion one-man-team water-polo player. And he's clearly an embracer of the porpoise-driven life.
After all that beverage preparation, wandering around barefoot on the rugs and sitting on chests, lugubriously looking at one's reflection, it's *still* dark? That must surely be the slowest sunrise in temperate-zone history.
Wouldn't that be the ringing of his fax?
...or five thousand years or fourteen hundred years or three and a half thousand years, depending on faith. Your actual mileage may vary.
Was the "instantly" really necessary? Perhaps he means "Instantly - just like a delicious mug of steaming NestléTM Quik®!"
...or maybe it was that broccoli-in-bed-eating chick from Tulsa again, wearing her favorite outfit.
Extreme Yoga claims it latest victim.
Well, it seems it wasn't the gal from Oklahoma after all - my bad.
Thundering? Or perhaps renowned? Enigmatic? Erudite? Porpoisey? Toned? Tough? Affable? Arresting? Carefree?
"Very well" is two words - just thought I'd point that out.
Illuminati® - the revolutionary brand of long-life light bulbs from GETM. Available at Walgreens, Ace Hardware and other fine home products stores everywhere.
"Upside down" is two ... ah, what's the point? Let's forget even trying to teach this guy to count.
Afraid of what he was about to witness? Why would you be terrified of something you're about to witness if you already know what it is you're about to witness? And if it's so awful that the prospect of seeing it is terrifying even though you already know what it is, why not save yourself the terror and just *not* rotate the fax, Mr. Fraidy cat? (And on a technical level, wouldn't it be easier to just rotate the page from the fax rather than rotating the whole apparatus?) Anyway, I can tell you that the thing Robert Langdon was so terrified to look at is in fact not very scary at all. Don't believe me? Well, I tried it - I wrote "Illuminati" on a piece of standard office paper and then rotated it 180 degress. All I saw was the blank reverse side of the page. Big deal. The terrifying, awful emptiness of the back side of the page held him speechless. It was ... more terrifyingly terrible than the terror of a thousand terrifically deep paper cuts.
Again, not just at normal terror-speed, but instantly. And of course like he'd been punched in the gut or as though he'd been broadsided by a Mercedes® 300 SeriesTM sedan isn't good enough for the iron-stomached Robert Langdon - no, I'm afraid that nothing less than hit by a truck will do. Heck, why stop there? Why not run over by an aircraft carrier or perhaps even walloped by the terrific blast from a multi-megaton thermonuclear device detonated at point-blank range next to his vigilantly toned forty-five-year-old porpoising midsection?
Hmmm ... even holding the 180-degree-rotated page up to the light of the filtered April moon I get ITANIMULLI. (Or IΓΓ∩WIN∀⊥I, if I flip the page about its horizontal rather than its vertical midline.) Am I doing it wrong?
You mean perhaps "...sat for a moment, utterly bewildered? How does one sit in bewilderment - is that a brand of lounge chair?
Or perhaps they're waiting to look. And by of completing our review of this nauseating opening of Angels and Demons, our sponsors at Warner BrothersTM have asked for a small and extremely subtle (you probably won't even notice it, but we're required by law to mention it) product placement to be inserted into our review of the final bit of the opening sequence of the novel:
To be fair, it seems inconceivable that this kind of stylistic sludge, this sheer novelistic nincompoopery, could ever have seen the light of day without the cooperation of an editor, perhaps even of an entire editorial board. Which begs the question: who is responsible for editing this grammatical goop -- the second-grade class of the local elementary school? (In which case I fear for its accreditation status). Missing a typo here and there happens to the best of editors, but this - this is simply breathtaking in the scope and sheer audacity of its badness.
"We go over every plot point and twist," Mr. Kaufman said. "I function as a sounding board for him."
Jason, Jason, Jason - if there were an analog of the British Navy's Articles of War which applied to copy editors, I would be recommending that you be flogged around the fleet for your "work" with Dan Brown. I like the bit about being a sounding board, though - recalls the "burn the witch" scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail: "Why do we burn copy editors who act as sounding boards for terrible writers?" Um, because they're made of wood?
Another precious quote from the above article:
"Why would I ever put pressure on Dan Brown?" he asked.
Um, because his writing is utterly abysmal? Nah, that couldn't be it...
"Hello?"
"I'm looking for Robert Langdon," a man's voice said.Langdon sat up in his empty bed and tried to clear his mind. "This...is Robert Langdon." He squinted at his digital clock. It was 5:18 A.M.
"I must see you immediately."
"Who is this?"
"My name is Maximilian Kohler. I'm a discrete particle physicist.""A what?" Langdon could barely focus. "Are you sure you've got the right Langdon?"
"You're a professor of religious iconology at Harvard University. You've written three books on symbology and -- "
"Do you know what time it is?"
"I apologize. I have something you need to see. I can't discuss it on the phone."
A knowing groan escaped Langdon's lips. This had happened before. One of the perils of writing books about religious symbology was the calls from religious zealots who wanted him to confirm their latest sign from God. Last month a stripper from Oklahoma had promised Langdon the best sex of his life if he would fly down and verify the authenticity of a cruciform that had magically appeared on her bed sheets. The Shroud of Tulsa, Langdon had called it.
"How did you get my number?" Langdon tried to be polite, despite the hour.
"On the Worldwide Web. The site for your book."
Langdon frowned.
He was damn sure his book's site did not include his home phone number. The man was obviously lying.
"I need to see you," the caller insisted. "I'll pay you well."
Now Langdon was getting mad. "I'm sorry, but I really -- ""If you leave immediately, you can be here by -- "
"I'm not going anywhere! It's five o'clock in the morning!"
Langdon hung up and collapsed back in bed.
He closed his eyes and tried to fall back asleep. It was no use. The dream was emblazoned in his mind.
Reluctantly, he put on his robe and went downstairs.
Robert Langdon wandered barefoot through his deserted Massachusetts Victorian home and nursed his ritual insomnia remedy -- a mug of steaming Nestlé's Quik.
The April moon filtered through the bay windows and played on the oriental carpets.
Langdon's colleagues often joked that his place looked more like an anthropology museum than a home.
His shelves were packed with religious artifacts from around the world -- an ekuaba from Ghana, a gold cross from Spain, a cycladic idol from the Aegean, and even a rare woven boccus from Borneo, a young warrior's symbol of perpetual youth.
As Langdon sat on his brass Maharishi's chest and savored the warmth of the chocolate
the bay window caught his reflection. The image was distorted and pale...like a ghost. An aging ghost, he thought, cruelly reminded that his youthful spirit was living in a mortal shell.
Although not overly handsome in a classical sense, the forty-five-year-old Langdon had what his female colleagues referred to as an "erudite" appeal -- wisps of gray in his thick brown hair, probing blue eyes, an arrestingly deep voice, and the strong, carefree smile of a collegiate athlete. A varsity diver in prep school and college, Langdon still had the body of a swimmer, a toned, six-foot physique that he vigilantly maintained with fifty laps a day in the university pool.
Langdon's friends had always viewed him as a bit of an enigma -- a man caught between centuries.
On weekends he could be seen lounging on the quad in blue jeans, discussing computer graphics or religious history with students; other times he could be spotted in his Harris tweed and paisley vest, photographed in the pages of upscale art magazines or at museum openings where he had been asked to lecture.
Although a tough teacher and strict disciplinarian, Langdon was the first to embrace what he hailed as the "lost art of good clean fun."
He relished recreation with an infectious fanaticism that had earned him a fraternal acceptance among his students.
His campus nickname -- "The Dolphin" -- was a reference both to his affable nature and his legendary ability to dive into a pool and outmaneuver the entire opposing squad in a water polo match.
As Langdon sat alone, absently gazing into the darkness,
the silence of his home was shattered again, this time by the ring of his fax machine. Too exhausted to be annoyed, Langdon forced a tired chuckle.
God's people, he thought. Two thousand years of waiting for their Messiah, and they're still persistent as hell.
Wearily, he returned his empty mug to the kitchen and walked slowly to his oak-paneled study. The incoming fax lay in the tray. Sighing, he scooped up the paper and looked at it.
Instantly, a wave of nausea hit him.
The image on the page was that of a human corpse. The body had been stripped naked,
and its head had been twisted, facing completely backward.
On the victim's chest was a terrible burn. The man had been branded...
...imprinted with a single word. It was a word Langdon knew well...
...Very well.
He stared at the ornate lettering in disbelief.
"Illuminati," he stammered, his heart pounding. It can't be...In slow motion, afraid of what he was about to witness, Langdon rotated the fax 180 degrees. He looked at the word upside down.
Instantly, the breath went out of him. It was like he had been hit by a truck.
Barely able to believe his eyes, he rotated the fax again, reading the brand right-side up and then upside down.
"Illuminati," he whispered.Stunned, Langdon collapsed in a chair. He sat a moment in utter bewilderment.
Gradually, his eyes were drawn to the blinking red light on his fax machine. Whoever had sent this fax was still on the line...waiting to talk.
\begin{FuddMode}
Wangdon gazed at the bwinking wight a wong time.
Then, twembwing, he picked up the weceivuh.
\end{FuddMode}
And that's the few first paragraphs of Angels and Demons. I'm not even going to get into the fictional and factual ridiculousness of the ensuing plot (and I use the term very loosely), for instance its bungling of so many of the most fundamental aspects of modern particle physics. I expect there may be an entirely separate piece to be written about that, and perhaps another about the stupid ambigrams gimmick Brown uses in AAD (e.g. the much-rotated Illuminati of the first few paragraphs above - ambigram being a neologism about as attractive as metrosexual).
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Long an author who worked in private, Mr. Brown now talks with his editor, Jason Kaufman, often once a day, sometimes twice - far more often, Mr. Kaufman said, than when the pair worked together on Mr. Brown's three most recent novels, including "Deception Point" and "Angels & Demons."
Stephen Rubin, the publisher of Doubleday, part of Random House Inc., said he was not at all concerned about when Mr. Brown will finish his next book.
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