That Damn Book (And Film)

[poliphilo]

The Da Vinci Code comes too late for me. I did all this stuff in the 80s and 90s.

I'm not saying I was in the vanguard. As someone in the Observer pointed out this morning, people like Robert Graves and Margaret Murray were putting together theories involving the Great Goddess, the sex life of Jesus and centuries-old ecclesiastical conspiracies over fifty years ago.

And behind them lies Frazer's Golden Bough- one of the key texts of the early 20th century.

What was once the prattle of a few off-centre scholars and pseudo-scholars has finally gone mainstream.

There was a time when I hoped and half-believed it was all true.

But now I know it isn't.

There never was a Goddess worshipping Golden Age.
The Priory de Sion was the invention of a mid-20th century fascist hoaxer.
Opus Dei may be sinister- but it doesn't employ albino hit-men.

And so on...

That's what irritates me about Brown. If he'd done proper research- instead of cherrypicking the conspiracy websites- he'd have known that most of the ideas he's playing with here were shot to pieces ages ago.

Comments

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

Here's a website: http://catholicfire.blogspot.com/2006/04/meet-real-dan-brown.html

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

“Christian theology has survived the writings of Galileo and the writings of Darwin, surely it will survive the writings of some novelist from New Hampshire.”

I like that line, but at the same time I'd hesitate to even BEGIN to put a pulp writer in the same class as either Galileo or Darwin.

[red-girl-42.livejournal.com]

I think that's what they're saying. If it can survive geniuses like Galileo and Darwin, someone like Brown isn't going to be a threat.

It's not putting him in the same class, it's doing exactly the opposite.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Two years of research?

And there was I thinking he just got his wife to read the Holy Blood and The Holy Grail on his behalf...

If he really researched for two years and came out of it as a believer, then he's a bigger fool than I thought he was.

[karenkay.livejournal.com]

I listened to the "Da Vinci Code" a few years ago and liked it well enough that I listened to another one of his books, "Deception Point". OMG! I listened to the first 10 minutes and was so horrified, I had to set it aside. I ended up listening to the whole thing, and although it wasn't all as inaccurate as the first 10 minutes, it was just bad. So bad it makes the DVC look like a work of art.

So, I don't think there is any limit to his foolery.