The Dan Brown Enigma

by Graham A Thomas

  Brown’s first two books had been commercial duds. The sales of Deception Point would prove to be no better. The next one had to be good if he was to survive as a novelist. It was his last hope.

  PART TWO

  * * *

  THE BIG TIME

  The hard part of writing a novel is not the ideas but rather the nuts and bolts of the plot and language and making it all work.

  CHAPTER TEN

  * * *

  THE LAST HOPE

  Rumours of this conspiracy have been whispered for centuries in countless languages, including the languages of art, music, and literature [113]

  Brown had fulfilled his two-book deal with Simon & Schuster and to say he was disappointed with the publisher is an understatement. ‘My lone advocate at Simon & Schuster seemed to be my editor, Jason Kaufman, with whom I had developed a friendship and level of trust,’ Brown said. ‘He too had become deeply frustrated with the lack of publisher support I was receiving at Simon & Schuster.’

  As with Angels & Demons the promise for Deception Point was high but never materialised. The book was published in August 2001 fifteen months after Angels & Demons and a month later the unthinkable happened. The terrorist attacks of 11 September scuppered the sales of his third novel. No books of fiction or non-fiction did well that autumn – people’s minds were elsewhere. As Lisa Rogak noted in her book on Brown, ‘Many details of the typical thriller novel suddenly seemed too frivolous.’ [114]

  Broke and disheartened in the months after sending Deception Point to the publishers, Brown realised that something needed to be done if he was to remain a full-time author. He had to have success.

  The pressure was intense. The first thing he did was to change his agent. He left Jake Ellwell at Wieser and Wieser and found a friendly face at Sanford J. Greenburger Associates. Based in New York, the agency represented authors of commercial and literary fiction as well as non-fiction, and the friendly face was Heidi Lange.

  Dan and Blythe Brown met with Heidi to look at the first two novels (Deception Point hadn’t been published yet) with a critical eye. Digital Fortress had received a lot of attention from the press because it was a topic that was prominent in the news in those days. Email was relatively new at the time but most people used it at some point in their day and the revelation that the government read everyone’s email was a shocking one.

  Brown needed locations he could travel to fairly easily, so the day after he submitted the manuscript for Deception Point, he and Blythe went on holiday to Mexico. ‘It was there on the Yucatan Peninsula, exploring the ancient Mayan pyramids and archaeological ruins of Chichen-Itza and Tulum, that I was (at last) able to leave behind the high tech world of Deception Point,’ he recalled. In Mexico Brown was immersed in ancient ruins, myths and legends, ‘and this intriguing history was tickling my imagination again. I began to muster the sense that I might be able to write another novel. At that point, I had no doubt who my hero would be – I would return to the world of Robert Langdon.’[115]

  According to Rogak, Dan, Blythe and Heidi continued their analysis, and Brown went back to the research for Angels & Demons that he hadn’t been able to use. Was there anything he could use that would shock people or even offend them? ‘He remembered that, after Angels & Demons had been published, he’d got a lot of grief for describing the face on Bernini’s statue of St Teresa as looking like she was in the midst of a ‘toe-curling orgasm.’[116]

  What he was looking for was something controversial. ‘This particular story kept knocking on my door until I answered,’ he said.

  In his witness statement Brown says he had first learned of the mysteries hidden in Da Vinci’s paintings while studying art history at the university in Seville. He came across Da Vinci again while researching Angels & Demons. ‘I arranged a trip to the Louvre Museum where I was fortunate enough to view the originals of some of Da Vinci’s most famous works as well as discuss them with an art historian who helped me better understand the mystery behind their surprising anomalies. From then on, I was captivated.’

  The trio’s analysis had shown three things: that he needed a topic people knew and used in their daily lives, that he needed to present it in a way that would knock people’s understanding of that topic on its head, and that he had to reveal something that was shocking, even upsetting. By combining sex with religion he was almost guaranteed a certain level of push back and when he remembered his art class in Seville where the professor had pointed out the secrets in Da Vinci’s painting of the Last Supper, he realised he had the foundation upon which he could build the book.[117] With his wife Blythe being a Da Vinci fan as well, it made sense to bring Da Vinci into the story.

  Bringing Langdon back was also perfect for the plot because Langdon is a professor of religious history and symbolism. He is also an art historian. ‘In choosing what characters to include in a novel, I select characters who have sets of skills that help move the plot along and also permit me to introduce information,’ Brown said in his witness statement. ‘His expertise in symbology and iconography affords him the luxury of potentially limitless adventures in exotic locales.’

  Langdon is also close to Brown in personality. Indeed, Brown has said that he wishes he was Langdon, largely because his character takes chances that he (Brown) wouldn’t to uncover the truth about some ancient mystery. He has the same interests as Brown does, which makes sense because Brown takes so long to research and write his books that the subject matter has to keep his attention. He also feels more comfortable writing about Langdon.

  With all of these ingredients in place, Brown got to work researching and writing The Da Vinci Code. ‘His fourth novel would be a culmination of every interest and influence he’d ever had in his life: religion, codes, art and secret societies.’[118]

  Sifting through the research left over from Angels & Demons, he made notes on areas where he still required more research and got busy. What happened if this book didn’t work? It just didn’t bear thinking about. He would have to change again, perhaps return to teaching full time.

  At the heart of the book is a battle between two secret societies, the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei over the possibility that Jesus Christ of Nazareth had been married to Mary Magdalene and that the bloodline from their union is the Holy Grail. ‘It’s been chronicled for centuries,’ Brown explained, ‘so there are thousands of sources to draw from. In addition, I was surprised how eager historians were to share their expertise with me. One academic told me her enthusiasm for The Da Vinci Code was based in part on her hope that this ancient mystery would be unveiled to a wider audience.’[119]

  ‘The secret I reveal is one that has been whispered for centuries,’ Brown told one interviewer. ‘It is not my own. Admittedly, this may be the first time the secret has been unveiled within the format of a popular thriller, but the information is anything but new.’

  Recalling his art history classes 15 years earlier in Seville, Brown said, ‘One morning our professor began a lecture in a very strange way. He showed us a slide of Da Vinci’s famous painting The Last Supper, which depicts Jesus and his disciples sharing a glass of wine on their last night together. I’d seen this painting many times but somehow I’d never seen the anomalies that the professor began pointing out – a hand clutching a dagger, a disciple making a threatening gesture across the neck of another, the strange arrangement and architecture of individuals at the table and much to my surprise a rather obvious omission – the apparent absence on the table of the holy cup of Christ.’

  Brown is referring to the cup that Christ used to share the wine with the disciples. For some reason Da Vinci chose not to put this into the painting and Brown was intrigued. ‘So all of us in class are scratching our heads as if we are seeing the painting for the first time and the professor said to us that these oddities that he’d just revealed to us were really the tip of the iceberg.

  ‘I was instantly fascinated. The further I progressed in my research the more troublesome it b
ecame to me,’ Brown added. ‘I don’t see much truth in the stories of UFOs, crop circles or the Bermuda triangle or any other conspiracy theories you might have in pop culture.’[120]

  However, a strange thing happened as Brown immersed himself in the research. His ideas on religion and spirituality began to change. ‘I began writing this book as a sceptic and I expected as I was researching it to dispute it.’ Instead, after two years of research and numerous trips to Europe, Brown became a believer. ‘It’s important to remember that this is a novel about a theory that has been out there for a long time and this theory makes more sense to me than what I was taught as a child.’[121]

  Much of the information he was researching Brown found hard to accept. The theories he was looking at didn’t match the dogma he’d been taught at school and in the church. ‘Troubled by these findings I asked a historian friend of mine, “How do historians balance contrary accounts of the same event?” This man responded in what I thought was a brilliant way.’ His friend made two big points, which most people don’t take into account. ‘When we read and interpret history we are not interpreting the events themselves but written accounts of the events. In essence we are interpreting people’s interpretations. Second, since the beginning of recorded time history has always been written by the winners.’[122]

  The mountain of research was daunting. Brown wanted to cram as much of it into the book as he could because there was so much to say. From the art history and the religious theories to the locations in Paris and London to the description of the Louvre and Da Vinci’s paintings, the amount of information was staggering. ‘Writing an informative yet compact thriller is a lot like making maple sugar candy. You have to tap hundreds of trees… boil vats and vats of raw sap… evaporate the water… and keep boiling until you’ve distilled a tiny nugget that encapsulates the essence,’ he said.[123]

  Brown found himself using the delete key a lot as he pared down the text. ‘In many ways, editing yourself is the most important part of being a novelist… carving away superfluous text until your story stands crystal clear before your reader. For every page in The Da Vinci Code, I wrote ten that ended up in the trash.’[124]

  Having written three novels about secret societies, Brown had built up several contacts around the world in the circles he talks about in his books. Through them he was able to gain access to areas of the Louvre that the public doesn’t see – including ones he didn’t know existed, such as the restoration labs – which, Rogak tells us, Brown describes in the book. Despite the trips, according to Lisa Rogak, Brown spent most of his research reading books by noted and respected historians and academics.

  The Sacred Feminine figures prominently in The Da Vinci Code, and this came as a result of his research. ‘Two thousand years ago we lived in a world of gods and goddesses,’ Brown said. ‘Today we live in a world solely of gods. Women in most cultures have been stripped of their spiritual power. The novel touches on the question of how and why this shift occurred.’

  It wasn’t just the research that inspired him to write about the Sacred Feminine. Brown says it was also partly because of his mother, who has a strong spiritual and religious conviction but is also open to change. It was also partly due to falling in love with Blythe as well as studying religions that were not Christianity, such as paganism and the concept of Mother Earth. ‘And some of it came from looking at the destructive force of man and saying, “What if we embraced our feminine side – the more creative, passive, loving side?” It’s a gross generalisation, but all those things added up to my celebrating the Sacred Feminine.’[125]

  For the more obscure facts Brown turned to the Ohio University research librarian Stan Planton, who had helped him on Angels & Demons and Deception Point. While Brown used his own extensive research on religion, spiritualism, art history and symbology, he used Planton and other researchers to help him with the more obscure facts on Da Vinci’s paintings and the hidden codes within them, and on the secret sects of the Priory of Sion and Opus Dei.[126]

  Brown claims that in The Da Vinci Code he worked very hard to ensure there was a balanced and fair view of Opus Dei. ‘While [it] is a very positive force in the lives of many people, for others affiliation with Opus Dei has been a profoundly negative experience.’ Brown states his view of the organisation comes from reading more than a dozen books on it and through his own interviews with former and current members of this secretive society.[127]

  But while Brown was beavering away every day, there was no guarantee that any resulting book would ever be published. In the 1990s large conglomerates had started to buy up as many independent publishers as they could because they saw there was money to be made, especially when a book could be tied into a film or other media channels that the corporation might happen to own. The days of nurturing talent quickly disappeared and that meant if an author’s first couple of books didn’t have a readership that was rising all the time then no further contract would be issued. This was all about money and Brown’s record so far was poor. Despite any critical acclaim, sales had been low on all three novels. Deception Point had had the poorest figures of the lot, so Brown’s prospects weren’t good.

  In addition, Jason Kaufman, Brown’s editor at Simon & Schuster, had jumped ship in search of another publisher but he and Brown had developed a friendship and Kaufman wasn’t about to abandon Brown. Kaufman stipulated that the next position he took would be on the condition that Dan Brown came on board as well.

  The publisher that Kaufman signed on with was Doubleday. Initially they said no to Kaufman’s condition but when Doubleday president Stephen Rubin read Brown’s outline for The Da Vinci Code it made him read Angels & Demons. From that point Kaufman came on board and Brown came with him. Brown’s new agent Heidi Lange negotiated an advance that for Brown must have been startling: $400,000 for a two-book contract.[128]

  Had Simon & Schuster offered Brown a new contract for The Da Vinci Code one has to wonder if they would have publicised it the way they did his second and third novels: a few review copies distributed to the press and a small print run of a few thousand. With hindsight they must have been kicking themselves as they had lost the chance to have the biggest-selling novel of all time. It sounds similar to the time when the Decca record company turned down The Beatles only to find that the band became the most popular group on the planet.

  Finally Brown had some backing and this time it was big money, but that also meant the book had to be good, so he and Blythe continued working hard on it.

  There are many strands running through The Da Vinci Code and Brown spent many days researching them. ‘The novel’s themes include: the Sacred Feminine; goddess worship; the Holy Grail; symbology; paganism; the history of the Bible and its accuracy, including the lost Gnostic Gospels; Templar history; the suppression of information by the church; the genealogy of Jesus; religious zealotry; and nature’s grand design as evidence for the existence of God,’ Brown wrote in his witness statement.

  According to the author, these themes have been explored for centuries in literature, art and music. They are the themes of man’s past that seem to have been lost, become legend, muddied in the waters of time. ‘Of course, it is impossible when looking at secret history to know how much is truth, and how much is myth or fanciful invention,’ Brown said. ‘By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious – that is, that we are all trying to decipher life’s big mysteries, and we’re each following our own paths of enlightenment.’[129]

  He was also intrigued by the way Da Vinci blended fact and myth. ‘It’s one of the reasons why I love Leonardo da Vinci. Some of the most dramatic hints to possible lost “secret history” can be found in the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, which seem to overflow with mystifying symbolism, anomalies, and codes.’[130]

  But beyond all the codes and secret societies Brown is quick to point out that The Da Vinci Code is ‘at its core, a treasu
re hunt through Paris, London, and Edinburgh. The story is a blend of historical fact, legend, myth, and fiction.’ He also says ‘the paintings, locations, historical documents, and organisations described in the novel all exist.’[131]

  After he’d sent the manuscript in to Doubleday, Brown waited. The pressure was still there. He’d had an amazing advance but if the book suffered the fate of the first three, he would have to think of something else to do.

  However, Doubleday did not treat the book the way Simon & Schuster had handled his second and third novels. The publicity department sent out 10,000 advance copies months before the book was due to be published. They also did something his other publishers hadn’t done, which was to listen to his ideas about the book’s front and back covers.

  Brown suggested that both have codes about the story for readers to spot and to work out, giving them an all-round experience of the book. Brown also had a say in designing the inside cover. ‘In my previous novels I hid codes in the text just for fun,’ he said. ‘I discovered that Leonardo da Vinci hid codes in his artwork and decided wouldn’t it be fun to hide codes right on the jacket of this book in plain view? Shortly after this book was published there were just a few readers who stepped forward and said, “Am I seeing this correctly? Have I found a code?” Of course they had.’ [132]

  Brown has said there are at least four codes visible to the naked eye on the cover of his book, explaining: ‘What Doubleday has done is rather than blurting out where the code is, they’ve said, “Let’s make it fun.”’ Doubleday set up a website, thedavincicode.com, where readers of the book could go to look at clues or work out riddles that would give them the location of the codes.