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08/11/2004: "You do know The Da Vinci Code is drivel, right?"

I think Lucy Magnon has missed the point in this column in today's online edition of the UK's Guardian newspaper:

And so the backlash against The Da Vinci Code begins. The main charges against Dan Brown's bestselling thriller appear to be that while the Parisian monuments and buildings he describes do exist, the routes taken by the protagonists between them do not make sense, that Harvard has no professor of symbology (the status ascribed to Brown's hero), and that the ultra-traditional Catholic group Opus Dei does not, in fact, harbour albino assassin monks for deployment against renegade cryptographers and art historians.

Actually, the main charges against The Da Vinci Code are that it mangles history, religion, and art in the pursuit of a good story, all the while claiming that it is based in fact. The book comes complete with footnotes for source material (not your standard accoutrement in a novel), and in an introductory note Brown writes that "all descriptions of documents and secret rituals are accurate," a claim he has reiterated ad nauseum, to the point where even the most skeptical reader would be convinced that he thinks it's true.

It is of course an unfortunate fact of life that if thousands upon thousands read a book written by an established thriller writer, described as a thriller and sold as a thriller, some of them will persist in believing instead that the author is speaking sooth. These people should ideally be herded into the middle of the nearest crop circle and beaten with their own copies of The Bible Code until they see reason, but thanks to a statutory oversight, this is illegal.

It would be nice if Ms. Magnon were correct that only the Tinfoil Hat Brigade takes The Da Vinci Code for an accurate depiction of the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene, or the nature of Opus Dei, or the history of Christian doctrine (Brown claims, among other fictions, that the doctrine of the Trinity was an whole-cloth invention of the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD). Such is not the case, however. A total of 41% of respondents to a poll by Chicago Business Online said of the book that it either "contains at least a small kernel of truth" or "has finally exposed the truth." (Yeah, I know all about the reliability of Internet polls, but thousands responded to this, and as popular as it is I can't help but think that a fair percentage of people who aren't from the black helicopter crowd are at least somewhat taken in by the book.)

Much of Ms. Magnon's complaint has to do with the British literary elites turning their noses up at the popularity of a thriller, and I agree with her there. And if Brown had not been claiming historicity as the basis for his story, I'd have no problem with it. But we live in an age of historical as well as theological ignorance, and if only for that reason his blithe claims about the veracity of his mythology grate.

Replies: 3 Comments

on Thursday, August 12th, J.A. Scott said

Dan Brown has an allergy to fact - even the simple details that he could have checked with a five-minute web search. Personally, I was taken aback by the assertion that the heroine of "The DaVinci Code" has a postgrad degree (he doesn't say what kind) in "cryptology" (is that a word? I thought the discipline was cryptography) from "the Royal Holloway". She further mentions that she was glad to get back to her grandfather's house in Normandy because it allowed her to escape the grime of central London.

I can only assume Mr. Brown was thinking of Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, my alma mater. NO ONE who had ever set foot on campus would ever call Royal Holloway "THE Royal Holloway." That nonsense about the grime of London is just sloppy research. Royal Holloway is located in the COUNTRYSIDE, on the edge of the Great Park, about three miles from Windsor Castle. It's beautiful.

Of course, as a Christian I take exception to Mr. Brown's theological (?) musings. But they're hardly the only idiotic details in his book. The whole thing has the feel of being jotted off in the course of an afternoon. One of the endorsements on the dust jacket is from Clive Cussler, possibly the worst fiction novelist working today. Enough said.

on Sunday, August 15th, Marion R. said

Yes, there's such a word. Writing in code is "cryptography". Breaking codes is "cryptology."

You don't do your colleagues any favors by criticizing Dan Brown for not making a "five minute web search" when you yourself won't take 20 seconds to visit dictionary.com

on Sunday, August 15th, Antonio said

Personally, I don't know if "cryptology" or "cryptography" are really words, but I know one which is actually real: "masonry".
As usual, they are behind all this "historical- philosophycal-philantropical lie".
And that's why it has too much press and too much people speaking about it.