I was sitting in the terminal at the Nashville airport waiting for my flight home. CNN was on in the background. I heard the news anchor announce that the Forbes top 100 list had just been released. This is that nauseating list where you learn how filthy rich Oprah Winfrey and Tiger Woods really are.
One name on the list caught my attention. Dan Brown. The author of The Da Vinci Code. He grossed a cool $77 million last year. My jaw hit the floor. That guy is cleaning up.
Maybe with all that money, Dan Brown can afford to buy some books on tape from the Teaching Company and learn about real church history. I finished the Da Vinci Code last week. Brown sure knows how to spin a tale … and how to revise history. I enjoyed all the code breaking, crypto thriller, cloak and dagger stuff. It was the bogus history he smuggled into this novel that was hard to stomach. Who was his source for the creative version of early church history … the Jesus Seminar?
I can see why the book sold so many copies. Dan Brown pushed every button he possibly could in this novel. It is a perfect product for our relativistic, authority hating, conspiracy theorist culture.
I am sure many naive souls out there probably think Brown's version of history is the truth. It ain't.
Look for more Da Vinci blogging on the Dawn Treader when the movie comes out later this year. I will link to the many others who have already debunked Brown's revisionist nonsense.
"I am sure many naive souls out there probably think Brown's version of history is the truth. It ain't."
I like alt history, and I think that it can say interestig things about today. Kim Stanley Robinson's Years of Rice and Salt is a brilliant look at today through alt history, for example, and I swear I am going to write the "what if Marx hadn't been an aethist" story :), but I think Brown and his publishers have been far too coy about the fact that the history is largely made up.
And did you like it? I tried it once, and could only get a couple of chapters in. I like thrillers 9Elizabeth George is a favorite of mone, for example) but there is something about his style that just turned me off.
Posted by: kevin | June 18, 2005 at 12:32
K,
I liked it. I like puzzles ... Da Vinci Code is one puzzle after another. I like Brown's writing style. I felt drawn into the story quickly, and I like lots and lots of short chapters. I was prepared to encounter Brown's bizarre historical perspective, so it did not ruin the book for me.
I am disappointed to hear that Ian McKellan (Gandalf) is playing the role of historian and Grail enthusiast Sir Leigh Teabing. I would have preferred either Anthony Hopkins or Michael Caine in that role.
The scary thing for me is that Time magazine listed Dan Brown as one of the 100 most influential people on the planet. If it is true, that just ain't right. The guy is a novelist writing fiction. In what way should he be influential? Perhaps to influence us to go look at art ... but hopefully, no one finds him an influential historian.
Posted by: Jeff | June 18, 2005 at 12:55
Re: Robinson's alternate history approach.
I picked this up off Amazon's review...
"At the heart of the story are fundamental questions: what is the purpose of life and death? Are we eternal? Do our choices matter? The particular achievement of this book is that it weaves these threads into a story that is both intellectually and emotionally engaging."
That right there is enuf to pique my interest.
Talk about worldview... :-)
At the basis of it all is your fundamental belief about God. Is God sitting back and letting history unfold willy nilly ... or is He actively involved in the history of the world.
I subscribe to the latter perspective. In fact, I believe God is timeless ... which means that He exists in a reality that is eternally now ... simultaneously the past, the present and the future ... a multidimensional view of time.
In other words, from our perspective, time is a line ... from God's perspective, time is a sphere ...
I'll let you wrap your mind around that thot :-)
Posted by: Jeff | June 18, 2005 at 13:03