The Dan Brown Enigma

by Graham A Thomas

  Brown denied that Doubleday were putting the pressure on him to provide a new Robert Langdon book: that pressure was coming mostly from himself. ‘They say, “Take the time that you need to write a terrific sequel to The Da Vinci Code… We’d rather wait for a great book than pressure you to write something that’s mediocre.”’

  Brown is a dedicated author and says that the process of writing can’t be pushed. ‘I work every single morning; I’m up at 4am every day, seven days a week, at my desk. I will work five, six hours sometimes straight.’[151]

  Inevitably interviewers asked Brown about his next novel and Doubleday advised him to drop a few little crumbs to keep people’s interest but not to say more. The best he could say was that the next book would be set in Washington and that it was another Robert Langdon book with a plot that revolved around Freemasons, but that was as far as he was able to go.

  At the same time other authors began asking him to pen a blurb or a foreword for their work, or to read their manuscripts or provide a positive recommendation so they could ride on the coat-tails of his success. He said that if he’d read every one of the manuscripts that were sent to him he wouldn’t have the time to write.[152]

  By mid 2005 the book had been published in 44 different languages as publishers all over the world clamoured to buy the rights for their countries. Had Brown ever thought that The Da Vinci Code would be such a massive hit? He admitted that he’d had his suspicions it could prove popular. ‘There were definitely moments in writing The Da Vinci Code that I got shivers and thought, “Wow, if this material is exciting me this much, and I’ve just spent a year-and-a-half with it, imagine how a fresh reader would react to this,”’ he said. ‘I never imagined in my wildest dreams that it would be this big a hit.’

  With such a massive success, Hollywood also took an interest and came knocking on Brown’s door. At first he was reluctant to sell the rights to the movie capital for a variety of reasons. ‘One of the beauties of the reading experience is that everybody pictures Langdon in his or her perfect way,’ Brown said. ‘The second you slap a character [in a script] – no matter how you describe Langdon or any other character – they picture Ben Affleck or Hugh Jackman or whoever it happens to be.’[153]

  Brown’s reluctance also stemmed from his experiences in Hollywood when he’d been trying to make it with his music. He’d learned the ins and outs of how the place worked so he understood the thought processes. ‘Hollywood has a way of taking a story like this and turning it into a car chase through Paris with machine guns and karate chops,’ was how he described it.

  Another difficulty was that in optioning the book for a film, Brown was essentially optioning the Langdon franchise, which was why he wouldn’t do it unless he had ‘exceptional amounts of control’.

  ‘The publishing industry, contrary to popular belief, is more lucrative than film, so you need to really protect yourself. Authors who have New York Times bestselling books make so much more in royalties than they do from optioning or selling screen rights, that, when they have series characters, they definitely need to be careful.’[154]

  Eventually Brown sold the rights to Ron Howard, with Tom Hanks playing the character of Robert Langdon.

  Along with the positive response, the phenomenal book sales, something else happened: the level of criticism and controversy began to grow. ‘When you are on top of the world, everybody is out to get you,’ Brown said. ‘People come after you and make all sorts of crazy claims or threats or whatever. But 99 per cent of the contact you have with people is adulation and it’s praise and it’s wonderful.’[155]

  He had certainly been nervous about the response he would get – especially from the Catholic Church. ‘The response from priests, nuns – all sorts of people in the church – for the most part, has been overwhelmingly positive,’ Brown said.

  But there were other people who took a different view and who would prove to be thorns in his side. Brown found himself embroiled in a court case after author Lewis Perdue wrote a letter to Doubleday claiming that Brown had plagiarised two of his novels, The Da Vinci Legacy and Daughter of God, published in 1983 and 2000 respectively. A writer of several novels and non-fiction books, Perdue alleged that Brown had liberally borrowed his themes and plots for the foundation of The Da Vinci Code.

  Originally, Perdue had no intention of suing. He wanted clarification and recognition. ‘In one novel the heroine is named Sophie, in the other a pivotal character is named Sophia. In both, a major figure in the art world is killed, leaving a mysterious last clue, and there ensues a headlong search for the dark secrets from the past that have been covered up by the Catholic Church – secrets so explosive they could destroy Christianity. And both claim to be based on fact.’[156]

  Indeed, Dan Burstein, in the Secrets of the Code, says that the head of the UK Forensic Linguistics Institute, John Olsson, claimed it was one of the most blatant examples of plagiarism he’d run across. Perdue claimed he was only convinced after he’d seen Olsson’s analysis of the three books. ‘He did this out of the goodness of his heart,’ Perdue said. ‘People can make their own judgement about this professional analysis. I still believe my characters and his were essentially the same people doing the same things with the same motivations.’[157]

  Doubleday’s reaction to the letter was that the claims were unfounded and that Perdue would find himself facing legal costs if he chose to pursue the issue. In fact they went even further and filed a lawsuit against him, asking the court to find that Perdue’s claims had no foundation at all and that there were no substantial similarities, nor could Perdue show any similarities between his books and Brown’s. They claimed that any similarities that did exist were ‘nothing more than abstract ideas, stock elements common to mysteries and thrillers, or the use of similar factual theories’.

  Perdue insisted all along that he wasn’t interested in money. What he wanted was recognition in The Da Vinci Code that Brown had used his work, and he maintained that the lawsuit could have been prevented if everyone had sat down and talked civilly with one another. ‘I maintain that The Da Vinci Code duplicates my specific expression in most of Daughter of God’s and The Da Vinci Legacy’s key elements – even the mistakes,’ Perdue said. ‘I said Leonardo wrote on parchment but the great artist never did. He wrote on linen. The Da Vinci Code repeats that mistake.’

  However, after the Doubleday lawsuit, Perdue countersued, claiming that there were enough similarities that Brown’s expression of the Divine Feminine and its suppression by the Catholic Church was the same as his. He also claimed there were many details common to both stories – ‘the physical evidence of the divine feminine … similarities between Opus Dei and my Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith … the fact that both novels incorporate the use of a gold key.’[158]

  Perdue lost the case. Judge George B. Daniels handed down a decision in favour of Random House, stating that the ‘feel, theme, characters, plot, sequence, pace and setting are not substantially similar.’ Judge Daniels said that Brown’s book was a hunt for treasure that focused on codes, clues and hidden messages and that it was an intellectual story, while Perdue’s was more violent and packed with action – ‘several gunfights and violent deaths and sex scenes’.[159]

  Perdue’s lawyers launched an appeal and Perdue vowed to take it to the Supreme Court if necessary. He pointed out that in The Da Vinci Legacy there is a secret sect calling themselves the Elect Brothers of St Peter, who are sworn to protect a secret that would destroy the Catholic Church. That secret is that the Brotherhood are the bloodline of St Peter and even hold his bones. Their sole purpose is to protect the secret and ensure the bloodline continues. ‘The only difference here, as far as I am concerned, is that in The Da Vinci Code, the Elect Brothers of St Peter have been replaced by the Priory of Sion.’[160]

  Does the premise sound similar? Perhaps. But Brown wasn’t amused by Perdue’s claims. ‘Apparently, this happens all the time to bestselling authors,’ Brown sighed. ‘I
actually got a lot of calls from bestselling authors, calls with congratulations, and also of warnings saying, “Well, get ready, because there are going to be people that you’ve never heard of coming out of the woodwork sort of wanting to ride on the coat-tails.” And all I can really tell you about Mr Perdue is I’ve never heard of him, I’ve never heard of his work.’[161]

  Brown calls this a dubious badge of honour for authors who hit the bestsellers list. But for him, this controversy was just the tip of the iceberg. Little did he know he would soon find himself embroiled in another court case, this time at the Old Bailey in London.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  * * *

  THE CHURCH ATTACKS

  But why all this pretence of fact and research without the more common authorial note – that fact, fiction, and speculation have been uniquely combined in the imagination of the novelist?[162]

  Even before the Perdue affair, Brown had found himself running the gauntlet of criticism from the Catholic Church and other religious and Christian organisations. The intensity of this criticism of The Da Vinci Code had grown until finally the Catholic Church, through the archbishop of Genoa, Cardinal Tarcisio Bertone, officially attacked it when he called the book a ‘sack full of lies’ two years after its publication. But why had it taken so long?

  Looking at the Vatican history, two years isn’t so long. ‘It took the Church more than 350 years to reverse its condemnation of Galileo.’[163] It wasn’t until Pope John Paul II’s time in office that the Vatican finally apologised for the crimes of the Crusaders. But the Vatican itself had remained silent for almost two years after the release of the book. These were senior people within the Church in predominantly Catholic countries who were not speaking out against the book.

  On the other hand, religious groups, local priests, theologians and religious leaders at grass roots level couldn’t stop talking about The Da Vinci Code. In the US, for example, ‘from California to Connecticut, some priests urged their parishioners to read the book, join church-sponsored book discussion groups, and even go to the weekend retreats devoted to the issues raised by it.’[164]

  At the time, most Catholic leaders were critical of the novel because of its treatment of Christian history and theological issues. But some were more interested in the debate around the book humanising Jesus and elevating Mary Magdalene as one of Christ’s more prominent followers.

  There was widespread condemnation of the book in Catholic magazines and articles but the central theme was engaging in debate and open discussion. The idea of banning the book came from Cardinal Bertone. The 70-year-old archbishop called for banning the novel on the Italian radio show Il Giornale and his comments made global headlines. He said that the Church couldn’t and shouldn’t keep quiet about the truth when ‘faced with all the lies and all the inventions in this book.’ Bertone went on to say that he was shocked that such a book full of so many errors and lies ‘could have such success.’[165]

  What was he talking about? Brown asserts that almost everything in the book is factual and true. David A. Shugarts, author of The Dan Brown Revelations, suggests that Brown mixes fact and fiction very well. ‘Did he not know when he was writing Angels & Demons and later The Da Vinci Code what kind of fishbowl he would be in, and therefore thought there would be no problem mixing established fact with speculation and imagination?’[166]

  Indeed, Shugarts suggests that Brown creates his own ‘home-cooked stew of fact and fiction’. He also states that the biggest sources of annoyance and anxiety about The Da Vinci Code are not just the technical errors but the versions of religious history and theology he provides in the novel. ‘There is no obvious winner in the question of who is more factual in their rendering of the life of Jesus,’ Shugarts writes. ‘Those who believe the Bible is entirely factual, or Dan Brown who says he believes his rendering is entirely factual.’

  The irate cardinal was afraid that people who read Brown’s novel would believe the theories he was espousing in the book were the truth rather than what the Church had to say about Jesus and what the Scriptures say about Christ. He went on to say that Brown had perverted the Holy Grail story, saying that it did not in any way refer to the bloodline of the union between Mary and Jesus, adding: ‘It astounds and worries me that so many people believe these lies.’ Maureen Dowd’s chapter in Secrets of the Code, The Vatican Code suggests Cardinal Bertone urged people not to buy the book and not to read it because it was ‘rotten food’.

  Banning books is certainly nothing new to the Church: it has been banning books it deemed heretical for more than five centuries. Dowd tells us that they would use just about any means necessary to rid themselves of works that they felt were unacceptable for their followers to read, resulting in a dreadful bloody and painful history – ‘from the Inquisition, to burning the philosopher-scientist Giordano Bruno at the stake, to the trial and house arrest of Galileo.’

  In the 1960s the Church became a little more open and enlightened and the practice of banning books was stopped, which makes Bertone’s comments strange. Was he suggesting, Dowd asks, that the Church should return to the days when they felt ‘they could win intellectual and philosophical arguments by simply banning or suppressing certain ideas’?

  According to Dowd few people actually took any notice of Bertone’s call and some high-ranking officials within the Vatican distanced themselves from the outspoken archbishop. One such was Monsignor Jose Maria Pinheiro, Bishop of Sao Paulo, who urged people to try to separate the fact from the fiction in Brown’s novel. He suggested that there was no reason at all for people not to buy or read the book. [167]

  So what was Bertone up to? Scholars have pointed out that the Pope John Paul II had two years to come out against the novel. In the past he’d commented on popular culture and had, in his younger days, written some poetry and even a few plays. But he said nothing. At the time of Bertone’s comments the Pope’s health was poor and he was going rapidly downhill. Waiting in the wings was a conclave to elect the next Pope and Bertone was in the running. There are some who believe that his outburst was a thinly veiled attempt at electioneering. ‘Cardinal Bertone was calling attention to the need to strengthen the purity of church doctrine by selecting the new pope from among those in his conservative faction.’[168]

  For all of Bertone’s vitriol, if he’d bothered to read the end of the book or if some Vatican lackey had briefed him on it, he would have found there was no need to call for a ban. Because even though the story is about the Sacred Feminine and the Holy Grail is the Jesus/Mary bloodline, at the end the main female character, Sophie, says that there is no need for the truth to come out, ‘that women should stay silent and submissive, letting the men who run the church continue to run it with men.’[169]

  Why does this character do this? According to the novel, the story is being told in a quiet way through music, art, and books, which is helping to bring about a change for women. So like the book itself, the motivations of people may not be what they seem. Shugarts said that Brown had created his own version of religious history and theology that was ‘interesting, speculative, plausible, but not necessarily fact.’

  Still, the controversy continued and someone must have heard Bertone, because the book was banned in Lebanon in 2004 and the government ordered that any books that were on the shelves were to be removed.

  In the US the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops set up a website, Jesus Decoded, to debunk the claims Brown makes within the book. On 28 April 2006 the then secretary of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Archbishop Angelo Amato, called for a boycott on the film of The Da Vinci Code which had recently been released. He said the film was full of mistakes and ‘calumnies, offences and historical and theological errors.’ [170]

  ‘What this novel does to Leonardo’s Last Supper, it does to Christianity as such,’ said the Conference’s website. ‘It asks people to consider equivalent to the mainstream Christian tradition quite a few odd claims. Some are merely dis
tortions of hypotheses advanced by serious scholars who do serious research. Others, however, are inaccurate or false.’[171]

  The main criticism of the book stems from the accusations that the novel contains so many mistakes and inaccuracies that Brown says are true. Most of his critics felt that if he could not get the little things right, then it stands to reason that the big themes of the book – such as the fact Brown puts forward that Jesus and Mary were married and had a child – must also be wrong. ‘In The Da Vinci Code he failed to depict simple elements like routes to the Louvre and the American Embassy correctly,’ says Shugarts in The Dan Brown Revelations.

  This could be because Brown doesn’t know French particularly well and can’t read a guidebook written in French. But he spends considerable time and energy researching his books so you would have thought that he would be very careful to get the route to the American Embassy correct. ‘It seems as though the in-depth, meticulous research claimed by Brown and praised so highly by some of the initial rave reviewers of his books is rather deeply flawed,’ Shugarts says. [172]

  According to the website Jesus Decoded, ‘One false claim in the book is that the Emperor Constantine, for political reasons of his own, decided to make a god out of Jesus Christ who was solely a Jewish rabbi for whom neither he nor his first followers ever asserted a divine origin. This claim cannot be sustained on the basis of the existing evidence, which demonstrates that Constantine did no such thing.’[173]

  Shugarts says that one of the crucial plot elements of the novel is the scene with the tracking dot embedded in a bar of soap in the Louvre’s bathroom. This segment with Robert and Sophie takes up several pages, but the bathroom doesn’t have bars of soap, just liquid soap. Nor does it have a window, so that tracking dot ‘could not have been embedded in a nonexistent bar of soap, nor could it have been hurled out the nonexistent window.’