Langdon is back, having survived sure death at the hands of assassins in Angels & Demons in 2000 and The Da Vinci Code in 2003, as well as in the movies, where he is portrayed by Tom Hanks. Langdon is a bit wiser and more modest, and we, the reader, learn somewhat more about him. But in The Lost Symbol, Langdon still always knows things a few minutes or a few chapters before he tells us.
Langdon is a forty-six-year-old professor of religious symbology at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The Harvard website lists no such professor, no such discipline, and no personal webpage. So Langdon created his own. This personal webpage for a character in a novel, along with a photograph of his masked fictitious editor, J. Faukman (an anagram for Brown’s actual editor Jason Kaufman), was all part of a virtual reality support system for fiction. Created for The Da Vinci Code, Robert’s homepage is a twenty-first-century hoax. A similar sleight of hand is an actual webpage for the nonexistent Depository Bank of Zurich in that novel. The fictional bank comes with its own fictional history. There is even a possibility to log in if you have the account name and number (try the Fibonacci sequence). All of this is great fun for some, but it runs the risk of calling into question the boundary between reality and virtual reality that has become a trademark of Robert Langdon and Dan Brown.
Langdon may now be famous for his exploits in Rome and Paris, for in the opening pages of this novel Pam from Passenger Services at Dulles Airport recognizes him. But fame has not altered his clothing that is far less fashionable than Tom Hank’s custom-made Brioni suit for Angels & Demons. His “uniform” is a charcoal turtleneck, Harris tweed jacket, khakis, and loafers. Dan Brown and Robert Langdon have at least this much in common if one is to judge by a widely used publicity photo available from their publisher. Langdon attended Philip Exeter Academy, where Brown both studied and later taught English. Langdon is a Princeton University graduate, where he also competed in water polo, which explains why he is an avid swimmer, who enjoys early morning workouts. Because of a childhood accident that left him at the bottom of a well for a night, he is terribly claustrophobic, and so confined spaces give him and the reader serious heart palpations. Langdon first appears in his own dream of a claustrophobic ride in an elevator on the Eiffel Tower. The Parisian landmark is not only the structure that surpassed the Washington Monument when it was opened in 1889, but it also serves as a reminder of the city setting for The Da Vinci Code. Langdon’s need for light in his nightmare is also a perfect introduction to the theme of Masonry and the Masonic rituals that offer enlightenment.
The name Langdon is taken from John Langdon, the artist who provided the stunning ambigrams for Angels & Demons, those words which when rotated 180 degrees are the same upside down as right side up. Brown acknowledged his debt to John Langdon for the ambigrams and the name in his London court appearance, where he was being sued for alleged plagiarism.
As a tribute to John Langdon, I named the protagonist Robert Langdon. I thought it was a fantastic name. It sounds very “New England” and I like last names with two syllables (Becker, Langdon, Sexton, Vetra, et al). Every character has his purpose, and with Langdon I wanted to create a teacher.
There was also a famous John Langdon (1741–1819) from New Hampshire, Brown’s home state, one of the first United States senators and later its governor.
Langdon is indeed a teacher, and his classes at Harvard are well attended as he mesmerizes students with his command of the esoteric and occult theories. But he is also careful to dismiss many claims and statements on the Internet as having no foundation. As a professor he has recognized, as has Brown, the added responsibility when one is held by the general public to higher standards. Some reviewers of The Lost Symbol remarked that Langdon is nowhere as critical of the institution of Freemasonry as he had been of the Catholic Church, which felt misrepresented by Brown’s earlier blends of fact and fiction. This new, more objective, thoughtful, and balanced approach may simply be the result of a heightened self-awareness that Brown himself remarked on:
I was already writing The Lost Symbol when I started to realize The Da Vinci Code would be big. The thing that happened to me, and must happen to any writer who’s had success, is that I temporarily became very self-aware. Instead of writing and saying, “This is what the character does,” you say, “Wait, millions of people are going to read this.” It’s sort of like a tennis player who thinks too hard about a stroke—you’re temporarily crippled.
The concept of teaching is a recurring theme for The Lost Symbol, for the secret wisdom is passed from generation to generation. Brown in the same trial statement underlined the aspect of father as educator, the one who leads us. He humbly recognized his debt to his father: “Many of the people I admire most are teachers—my father is the obvious figure from my own life.... John Langdon is also a teacher.” In the novel Langdon will be both teacher and student, who in trying to save Peter Solomon’s “soul” will undergo his own transformation.
ROBERT LANGDON WEBSITE
www.randomhouse.com/doubleday/davinci/robertlangdon
DEPOSITORY BANK OF ZURICH
www.randomhouse.com/cgi-bin/robertlangdon/dbz.cgi
JOHN LANGDON
www.johnlangdon.net/ambigrams