Da Vanci Code - Cheap Writing

[theBruiser500]

Okay so everyone who has read this book has recommeneded it so I figured I'd give it a try. I was a little deterred when I read the back cover though, "Louvre has been brutally murdered... police have found a series of baffling codes... As Langdon and a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu..." and put the down book for a couple of weeks, read a couple of really great books and now just came back to read it. My instincts were of course right all along, this book sucks.

"brainy thriller" is probably written about 200 times in the reviews of this book on the inside pages but this book is brainy in only a very superficial sense. The same with "grand pere" who is supposedly so brillant. All his cool codes seem clever to me, but necessarily seem like the mark of a genius.

My main complaint of this book is that it sucks. It's really gimmicky cheap writing. Take for example the code they need to unluck the little cryptoplex or whatever the hell it's called, the code says he needs to find a giant orb this is missing from Newton's tomb. "Thus far, Jacques Sauniere had proven himself a meticulous code writer, and Langdon had to believe this his final password would prove to be not only symoblically fitting but also crystal clear. If this solution were anything like the others it would be painfully obvious when it dawned." NO [censored] [censored]. And it talks about how Langdon is looking outside at trees and can't think up what the answer to the riddle is, I get the feeling that Dan Brown is trying to make the reader figure out what the answer to this riddle is before he says just so the reader feels smart.

Or how about Sopheu Neveau. Her grandfater was like a father to her and they had a great relationship for 15 years and then she sees him doing something which makes her never speak to him again. What do you think that something is? I figured she saw him raping 20 little boys at once. No, all he was doing was having sex with someone. What the [censored]??

This book goes at the same "thriller" pace for the entire 600 pages. How can someone be excited for that entire time? I wasn't. In conclusion this book sucks . BTW if you haven't read this book yet and I ruined some of the "mysteries" in this book for you, thank me because this book is a waste of time.

[Lazymeatball]

[ QUOTE ]
My main complaint of this book is that it sucks.

[/ QUOTE ]
ha, i like it.

[daryn]

haha.. i like this post.

[slickpoppa]

I might be able to take your critique of his "cheap writing" a little more seriously if you didn't use the word sucks and expletives several times. Before you critizice other people's writing, how about you learn to be more eloquent yourself.

[daryn]

whoa.. same opinion, posted at the same time. nice.

[daryn]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In risposta di:</font><hr />
I might be able to take your critique of his "cheap writing" a little more seriously if you didn't use the word sucks and expletives several times. Before you critizice other people's writing, how about you learn to be more eloquent yourself.

[/ QUOTE ]

i hear you, but his point was clearly made.

[Lazymeatball]

One does not have to be held to the same standard as what they are criticizing.
That's like saying I can't tell Ashlee Simpson that she sucks just because I am a worse singer.

[Daliman]

I rarely read fiction, and I liked it alot. Yes, a lotta machinations strictly set up for "aren't I clever" value, but still, verygood. Was hard to put down. The Sophie leaving her gramps WAS pretty weak though.

P.S. I think Angelina Jolie would be perfect as Sophie. Kept envisioning her, but mebbe the French name did that.

[slickpoppa]

Daliman, shouldn't your location say heels over head?

[rgreenm90]

yeah its cheap, but so is most fiction you find. basically, you're supposed to be wowed by the research this guy did--writing, or eloquence, isn't the focus. the point is that he found out about all this priory of sion/jesus christ/merovingian business, then made a clever little book that everyone could feel clever about reading. its like interactive nonfiction.

[theBruiser500]

Another thing about the book is I found the actual information (which I did find interesting) fairly paltry in comparison to to other fiction of historical fiction books I've read, i.e. Michnear, Uris.

[Daliman]

[ QUOTE ]
Daliman, shouldn't your location say heels over head?

[/ QUOTE ]

Ever heard the term "heels over head"?

[slickpoppa]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Daliman, shouldn't your location say heels over head?

[/ QUOTE ]

Ever heard the term "heels over head"?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, but i have also never heard the term "head over heels" used to describe someone whose heels were over their their head.

[daryn]

</font><blockquote><font class="small">In risposta di:</font><hr />
</font><blockquote><font class="small">In risposta di:</font><hr />
</font><blockquote><font class="small">In risposta di:</font><hr />
Daliman, shouldn't your location say heels over head?

[/ QUOTE ]

Ever heard the term "heels over head"?

[/ QUOTE ]

No, but i have also never heard the term "head over heels" used to describe someone whose heels were over their their head.

[/ QUOTE ]


what?? so you're saying that everyone just walking around normally can be referred to as head over heels?

[StevieG]

His descriptions of places read like the small plaques you find outside of them. His characters are flat and serve the plot exclusively - they are dumb or insightful as they need to be.

[ QUOTE ]
I rarely read fiction, and I liked it alot.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's practically a criterion for liking the book.

His biggest hook is that he is drawing on very bold themes that resonate deeply in the culture - art, religion, history. The fiction that goes along with it isn't worth reading.

If you want to get some insight into the past and get a good story, try "Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett and "Conspiracy of Paper" by David Liss.

[StevieG]

Dave Barry pwns Dan Brown (http://www.iht.com/articles/526590.html)

[beerbandit]

its the best nonpoker book ive read in a long time -- it is also the only book ive readd in long time


i received the illus. edition for xmas, i liked it better with those purdy pictures



cheers

[Paluka]

I have notread The Da Vinci Code, but I started reading Angels and Demons on a plane once. I thought the book was pretty stupid. I could see everythign coming 10 pages before it happened.

[thirddan]

i thought angels and demons was pretty entertaining read, i wasn't expecting anything earth shattering, but i was entertained...even though some of the twists are pretty obviousi got what i wanted out of the book, pretty fast paced easy entertaining book...

[dabluebery]

I read all of these books. I don't like this style of writing, the cliffhangers and all, especially since Dan Brown sticks to a formula whereby you can predict many of them in advance. However, if you're going to spend a few hours on a plane, it's OK stuff. Cheap entertainment when you can catch a paperback, occupies your mind for a few hours without much deep thought. It's like watching TV.

Rob

[astroglide]

my gf read it and would have to hold back vomit at the end of every chapter because it would end with some kind of gay cliffhanger type elipse thing: "did jack tie his shoes...or did the shoes...tie...JACK?????"

[jakethebake]

i don't often agree with bruiser, but i do on this. the only thing worse is his previous book, angels &amp; demans. horrendous. the dialog reads like it was written by a 4th grader.

[willie]

i didn't expect it to be the next fountainhead or atlas shrugged

it lived up to my expectations

a fun quick read.

[Macdaddy Warsaw]

He went to my school (Amherst College). I think he can come up with some novel ideas, but he's a mediocre writer at best. The word on the street is that the English teachers here told him he was a bad writer, too.

It's easy to see the mass appeal of his book, that said, I have read 2 of them and I would say I enjoyed both. I still think he can't write for his life, though.

[maryfield48]

[ QUOTE ]
I might be able to take your critique of his "cheap writing" a little more seriously if you didn't use the word sucks and expletives several times. Before you critizice other people's writing, how about you learn to be more eloquent yourself.

[/ QUOTE ]

What's wrong with "sucks"? And expletives (or as I heard them described once, "deletives")? The use of them is not de facto bad writing. That position is just linguistic snobbery.

And by the way, you should have put "sucks" in quotation marks in your post. Also, "why don't you" would be a little more elegant that "how about you" in your last sentence.

It's the fu[/i]cking internet, for God's sake. Lighten up.

[maryfield48]

[ QUOTE ]
i didn't expect it to be the next fountainhead or atlas shrugged

it lived up to my expectations

a fun quick read.

[/ QUOTE ]

With those criteria, I'd say it lived down to your expectations.

[slickpoppa]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I might be able to take your critique of his "cheap writing" a little more seriously if you didn't use the word sucks and expletives several times. Before you critizice other people's writing, how about you learn to be more eloquent yourself.

[/ QUOTE ]

What's wrong with "sucks"? And expletives (or as I heard them described once, "deletives")? The use of them is not de facto bad writing. That position is just linguistic snobbery.

And by the way, you should have put "sucks" in quotation marks in your post. Also, "why don't you" would be a little more elegant that "how about you" in your last sentence.

It's the fu[/i]cking internet, for God's sake. Lighten up.

[/ QUOTE ]

F*ck off you stupid f*ckin c*nt rag

[Paluka]

I think he is more of a storyteller than a writer. Maybe he should be coming up with the stories and having someone else turn them into a novel.

[AEKDBet]

If you think Da Vinci was bad read Angels and Demons. His style from Da Vinci codes becomes really clear from his earlier work, but in this earlier work its just much much much crappier. His plot revelations just piss me off. I stopped reading the book 70% through.

[jimdmcevoy]

lol

you've tried writing at "our level"

but it changes nothing

[istewart]

Good post. The book is complete trash, and it's the epitome of a book that people-who-can-barely-read would like.

[Phat Mack]

"Thus far, Jacques Sauniere had proven himself a meticulous code writer, and Langdon had to believe this his final password would prove to be not only symoblically fitting but also crystal clear. If this solution were anything like the others it would be painfully obvious when it dawned."

I agree the book that the book is poorly written. A good writer doesn't stop the narative and point things out to the reader, he shows them to the reader though the characters words and actions. As I read this book--I made it half way through--I thought that the guy wanted to write an essay, but for some reason turned it into a novel.

[MrFeelNothin]

[ QUOTE ]
If you think Da Vinci was bad read Angels and Demons. His style from Da Vinci codes becomes really clear from his earlier work, but in this earlier work its just much much much crappier. His plot revelations just piss me off. I stopped reading the book 70% through.

[/ QUOTE ]

If you think Angels and Demons was bad, you should read Digital Fortress. His style from A+D becomes really clear, but in this work its just much much crappier.

[bholdr]

total garbage; poorly written, bad plot, implausable scenarios, predictable ending....


why did i waste three hours of my life on this trash?!

[Ulysses]

[ QUOTE ]
I think he is more of a storyteller than a writer. Maybe he should be coming up with the stories and having someone else turn them into a novel.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wasn't the story ripped off from some other book?

I haven't read this book, by the way, but my hunch based on reviews was that it would be Grisham-quality writing.

[thatpfunk]

[ QUOTE ]
my hunch based on reviews was that it would be Grisham-quality writing.

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly. I don't know why people are surprised this.

He writes stuff for entertainment, its like going to see Bad Boys II or something, you should know what you're getting in to.

That said its not a horrible read for an airplane, train, car, etc where you need a book you don't have to read closely and simply to pass the time.

[Dr. Strangelove]

I read half of it and agree, it sucks a$$. As for diablo: this is probably what he's talking about.

Salon Article (http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2004/12/29/da_vinci_code/print.html)

[ QUOTE ]
Dec. 29, 2004 | Recent history offers many examples of Americans' inability to tell fact from fiction, but none more tangled than the story of Dan Brown's "Da Vinci Code." The book is among the most popular novels of all time, with 8 million copies sold since its publication last year and what seems to be a permanent reserved slot on the bestseller list. You see people reading it on planes and trains, and if at a social event you happen to mention that you write about books for a living, someone is sure to pull you aside eagerly to discuss it. This baffles and annoys a lot of literary types, many of whom haven't read "The Da Vinci Code" or couldn't get past the first few hackneyed pages. Why is the public so preoccupied with this cheesy thriller? they wonder.

"The Da Vinci Code" is indeed a cheesy thriller, with all the familiar qualities of the genre at its worst: characters so thin they're practically transparent, ludicrous dialogue, and prose that's 100 percent cliché. Even by conventional thriller standards, the book isn't particularly good; the plot is simply one long chase sequence, and the "good guy who turns out to be evil" is obviously a ringer from the moment he's introduced. Dan Brown is no Robert Ludlum, so why has his thriller so outdistanced the work of his betters?

The answer is that what readers love about the novel has nothing to do with story, or character, or mood, or any of the qualities we admire in good fiction. They love it because of the nonfiction material the book supposedly contains, a complicated, centuries-spanning conspiracy theory. The people who buttonhole me at parties and barbecues to talk about "The Da Vinci Code" usually can't even remember the names of the novel's two main characters or anything that happens to them. What entrances these readers is the possibility that a secret society has protected a religious and historical secret for almost 2,000 years, a secret that could undermine Christianity as we know it. "It really makes you think," an earnest arts administrator told me last summer.

The story begins with the murder of a curator at the Louvre and follows his estranged granddaughter, a French cryptologist, as she and a handsome Harvard professor attempt to solve the crime while evading the police (who suspect them in the murder) and assorted bad guys. Little by little, various characters reveal to the cryptologist that her grandfather headed up a shadowy group called the Priory of Sion, whose past leaders included such luminaries as Isaac Newton and, of course, Leonardo da Vinci.

With the Knights Templar (an order of medieval crusaders), the Priory has guarded proof of the marriage of Jesus to Mary Magdalene. Furthermore, they have proof of the child produced by that marriage, who is said to have founded a dynasty of French kings. Clues to this secret can supposedly be found, among other places, in Leonardo's paintings (particularly "The Last Supper") and in early Christian scripture suppressed by the church. The legend of the Holy Grail really refers to Mary Magdalene (vessel of Jesus' blood), who also stands for the "sacred feminine," a principle Brown claims was purged from the faith by church fathers.

Fortunately for Brown, as the book has filtered into the awareness of people who are qualified to refute most of its claims, he's always been able to plead fiction; "The Da Vinci Code" is, after all, only a novel. Although he begins the book with a statement that it accurately describes real documents, and that the Priory of Sion really does exist, even this leaves him with plenty of wiggle room. The book's selling point is the impression that it contains large and provocative servings of historical fact; yet when challenged on the many fallacies in his novel, Brown can always assert that, as a work of fiction, "The Da Vinci Code" can't be held to any standard of accuracy.

A cozy situation for Brown, but it became somewhat less so recently when, in the U.K., a lawsuit was filed against him for "breach of copyright of ideas and research." The complainants, Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, are the coauthors, with Henry Lincoln, of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," a bestseller from the early 1980s. Virtually all the bogus history in "The Da Vinci Code" -- nearly everything, in other words, that today's readers' find so electrifying in Brown's novel -- is lifted from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail."

This puts both Brown and the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," in a tricky position. Baigent et al. have always maintained that the "facts" supporting their theories are available to any dedicated scholar and that the theories themselves, while unconventional, have been seriously entertained by other "experts," (including some, they claim, in the "upper echelons" of the Roman Catholic Church).

Since "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" presents itself as nonfiction, it has been in its authors' interest to downplay how much of it is invented. However, if the "research" and ideas in "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" are not the original creations of the book's authors, they become harder to copyright, and the possible infringement suit against Brown might be weakened. No one, after all, has a copyright on the facts surrounding Abraham Lincoln's assassination or the Treaty of Versailles.

For Brown's part, it's to his advantage to insist that the farrago of lies and misrepresentations used to prop up the conspiracy theory in "The Da Vinci Code" (and, originally, in "Holy Blood, Holy Grail") is part of the historical record or at least in general circulation. Perhaps that's why Brown, who has avoided talking to the press about the accuracy of his book since "The Da Vinci Code" became a hit and drew fire from historians, granted a lengthy interview to the makers of "Unlocking da Vinci's Code: The Full Story." The documentary recently aired on the National Geographic Channel and earned the 5-year-old cable network its highest rating ever.

"That information has been out there for a long time," Brown told the filmmakers when asked about the historical "underpinnings" of his novel, "and there have been a lot of books about this theory. The interesting thing is that they're all history tomes that sit in the back corner of bookstores. 'The Da Vinci Code' has taken a lot of that information and put it in a different genre, and there's an enormous part of the population now that's hearing this for the first time. And it feels brand new."

But what exactly is this "information"? The theories encompassed in "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and its derivative, "The Da Vinci Code," have a certain invincible panache. They are proof of the adage that the hardest lie to refute is the Big Lie. Unlike, say, speculation about the "real" author of Shakespeare's plays, these theories span so many historical specialties -- ancient Hebrew customs, early Christian texts, regional French folklore, ancient and contemporary church history, medieval dynastic minutiae, Renaissance and neoclassical art, esoteric movements of the early modern age, and so on -- that no one person has the expertise to refute all of the fabrications.

In fact, as enormous crocks of nonsense go, "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" is a kind of masterpiece, certainly more so than its pipsqueak descendant. In "The Da Vinci Code" Brown had one really good idea: to use a rudimentary thriller plot to spoon-feed readers the Grail theory concocted by Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln. You get the impression Brown never expected "The Da Vinci Code" to take the world by storm or that it would invite the kind of scrutiny his novel cannot withstand. As a result, Brown makes several dumb, careless mistakes that put the lie to his pretensions of extensive research, such as having a "Grail expert" describe the Dead Sea Scrolls as being "among the earliest Christian records," when the documents are Jewish and do not mention Jesus Christ at all.

The authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," who girded their loins against attacks from legitimate historians from the very start, knew better than this (although they do erroneously refer to the collection of largely Gnostic texts found in Nag Hammadi, Egypt, as "scrolls" rather than books, and they include the Gospel of Mary among the texts in that collection, though it was found elsewhere). When it comes to spinning a masterful line of bull, they have few equals, and if we cannot admire them, we can at least respect their peculiar genius, much as Sherlock Holmes respected the Napoleon of crime, Professor Moriarty.

Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln are the Moriartys of pseudohistory, and "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" is their great triumph. Their techniques include burying their readers in chin-high drifts of factoids -- some valid but irrelevant, some uncheckable (the untranslated diaries of obscure 17th century clerics, and so on), others, like the labyrinthine family trees of various medieval French noblemen, simply numbing, and if you trouble to figure them out, pretty inconclusive. A preposterous idea will first be floated as a guess (it is "not inconceivable" that the Knights Templar found documentation of Jesus and Mary Magdalene's marriage in Jerusalem), then later presented as a tentative hypothesis, then still later treated as a fact that must be accounted for (the knights had to take those documents somewhere, so it must have been the south of France!).

Each detail requires extensive effort to track down and verify, but anyone who succeeds in proving it false comes across as a mere nitpicker -- and still has a blizzard of other pseudofacts to contend with. The miasma of bogus authenticity that the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" create becomes impenetrable; you might as well use a rifle to fight off a thick fog.

Nevertheless, the Grail theory touted in "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and "The Da Vinci Code" can be broken down into two main parts: One concerns the historical details of Jesus' life and the establishment of orthodox Christian tenets in the three centuries after his death. The second part describes the survival of the suppressed, hidden and unorthodox "truth" about Jesus and his descendants via the Priory of Sion and its military arm, the Knights Templar. Clues to this truth are supposedly embedded in the art, architecture and literature produced by the intellectual superstars who, with the occasional aristocrat, are said to have run the Priory of Sion. (Why people who are sworn to keep this secret would go around planting all these clues is never explained.)

Almost all the furor "The Da Vinci Code" has caused in America surrounds the first part of this theory. In the past year, numerous books have been published refuting the novel's depiction of Jesus' life and Christianity's early years, but most of these have been written by defensive evangelicals. They aren't particularly interesting to a secular reader -- or reliable, since their authors are deeply invested in a particular view of Jesus. They don't apply standards of proof (or, to be precise, plausibility) of much use to nonbelievers.

Fortunately, Bart D. Ehrman, who chairs the department of religious studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, has just published "Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code" (Oxford University Press), a book-length expansion of his list of 10 errors in Brown's novel, first circulated widely on the Internet. Ehrman's specialty is the ancient history of the Christian church, and he is the author of two books, "Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew," and "Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It Into the New Testament" (both Oxford University Press), so he can hardly be accused of participating in a coverup of the unorthodox and heretical early Christian texts that the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" and Brown claim support their theories.

"Truth and Fiction in the Da Vinci Code" is written in eminently clear, basic English (a pleasant surprise, because Ehrman's previous books can be pretty heavy sledding), and its tolerant, "more in sorrow than in anger" tone is probably more effective than the annoyance to which most of the novel's critics (including this one) succumb. It's a little repetitive, but given the many relatively unsophisticated readers Ehrman is addressing, that's probably justified.

Ehrman methodically demolishes a sizable chunk of the conspiratorial claims in "The Da Vinci Code," which are mostly cribbed from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." To hit some of the high spots: Early Christian texts excluded from the New Testament did not depict Jesus as human rather than divine; in fact, quite the opposite. The emperor Constantine was not involved in establishing the New Testament's canonical texts; it was a process that began before his reign and continued after his death. Jesus' experiences and teachings were not recorded by "thousands" of his followers during his lifetime, as nearly all of them were almost certainly illiterate. It was not unheard-of for a Jewish man of Jesus' time to be either single or celibate, particularly if he was part of the apocalyptic prophetic movement of the day, as Jesus most likely was.

Some of Brown's mistakes are minor but telling. For example, his "Grail expert," Leigh Teabing, smugly declares that "any Aramaic scholar will tell you" that the word "companion" used in the uncanonical Gospel of Philip in describing Mary Magdalene's relationship to Jesus, "in those days, literally meant spouse." But, as Ehrman explains, the Gospel of Philip is written in Coptic, not Aramaic, and the word in question is borrowed from yet another language, which is also not Aramaic, but Greek. And it does not mean "spouse" or "lover," but "companion," and is "commonly used of friends and associates."

Brown picked up this bit of bogus "proof" from "Holy Blood, Holy Grail." (In a lumbering stab at playfulness, Leigh Teabing is named after the coauthors, "Teabing" being an anagram of "Baigent.") The authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" in turn got it from the Protestant theologian, William E. Phipps, who, in an admirable effort to liberalize church attitudes toward women and sex, made the claim in "Was Jesus Married?" a "theological potboiler" published in the early '70s. The mistranslation of the Gospel of Philip has been kicked around for a while (it turns up in the National Geographic documentary, for example), but not, seemingly, by anyone who can read the languages in question.

Ehrman does not concern himself with the modern component of the Grail conspiracy theory. In fact, the Priory of Sion element of the theory has received little attention in America, which is surprising when you consider that this organization is supposedly still extant, possesses proof positive of Jesus' bloodline, and could settle the matter once and for all. The fundamentalist vein in American culture makes a fetish out of scriptural legitimacy and, as a result, quarrels over the exact nature of Jesus and his ministry attract all the heat.

But the latter-day aspects of this conspiracy theory are important. After all, both "The Da Vinci Code" and "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" begin with a contemporary puzzle that leads investigators down a long, twisted path to the biblical past and the "truth" about Jesus and Mary Magdalene. In Brown's novel, the murder of a Priory of Sion master draws his granddaughter and the hero, Robert Langdon (a professor of "symbology" -- a nonexistent discipline -- at Harvard), into the story. In "Holy Blood, Holy Grail," the question of how a priest in a provincial French town suddenly acquired a lot of cash and posh social connections sets the authors on the trail.

So, in both the novel and the "nonfiction" work, there is a mystery that, when pursued, leads to evidence of a secret society dedicated to protecting yet another secret. Unless the secret society actually does exist, the persuasive litany of "clues" ostensibly alluding to its existence and the nature of its closely guarded secret is meaningless. If Leonard da Vinci had not been privy to the secret that Mary Magdalene stood foremost among Jesus' disciples and bore his child, he would not have planted "codes" in his paintings intimating as much. And then there would be no reason to read great significance into the fact that the figure Leonardo painted to right of Jesus in "The Last Supper" is pretty and beardless with long flowing hair and that this figure's left arm, with Jesus' right arm, forms a V shape, symbol of "the sacred feminine"!

If you point out to a "Da Vinci Code" buff that there's plenty of artistic precedent for depicting the disciple John as young and beardless, he will talk about the Gnostic gospels that supposedly hint at intimate relations between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. And if you point out that other suppressed scripture suggests exactly the opposite, he can point to the weird and ominous carvings in a church in a tiny town in southern France, which surely support the idea that a terrible secret was buried there. This is how conspiracy theory works: Build a big enough pile of suggestions and to some people it will look like truth. "Evidence" of a secret society in turn becomes "evidence" of a secret that the society protects; each phony scenario props up the next.

The Priory of Sion did exist -- sort of -- but not in any form even remotely resembling the fantastical claims of the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" or Brown. (In one of his few unqualified claims to nonfiction, Brown includes the sentence "The Priory of Sion -- a European secret society founded in 1099 -- is a real organization" on a page labeled "Fact" placed before the prologue of "The Da Vinci Code.") In reality, the Priory of Sion was the invention, in the 1950s, of a man named Pierre Plantard who had a history of fraud, embezzlement and membership in ultra-conservative, quasi-mystical and virulently anti-Semitic Catholic groups. These tiny extremist groups sought the reunification of Europe under the dual leadership of an orthodox Roman Catholic Church and a divinely ordained monarch, somewhat like the Holy Roman Emperor and preferably French.

Plantard learned of rumors surrounding a town in southern France, where the late priest's unexplained affluence led to talk of buried treasure in the local church. (The priest's wealth actually came from charging superstitious Catholics to have Mass said on their behalf, and he was censured for it by the church.) Plantard capitalized on the "mystery" of Rennes-le-Château by insinuating into the grapevine further rumors: that the priest had discovered evidence of an explosive secret and was being bribed to keep it under wraps.

Plantard wanted to pass himself off as the descendant of the Merovingian dynasty, a family of medieval French kings and, ultimately, of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. (In reality, he was the son of a butler and a cook.) With his accomplice, a genuine but dissolute aristocrat and expert forger, Phillipe de Chérisey, he produced a set of fabricated parchments full of encoded and suggestively prophetic verse alluding to this Merovingian fantasy. With a restaurateur interested in drumming up tourist business for his establishment (located in the priest's former villa), they disseminated a story that the priest had discovered these parchments in the church, inside a hollowed-out pillar of Visigoth origins. (The pillar was later determined to be solid.)

The parchments and a variety of other faked documents pertaining to the Priory of Sion and the Merovingians -- including that list of past Grand Masters, featuring Leonardo and Newton -- were planted in the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris. This institution, alas, cannot be said to run a tight ship, and there are apparently no records indicating who exactly deposited the infamous "dossiers secrets" in their collection. However, investigators eventually determined that the printing press used to produce them was the same press used by Plantard to print his right-wing newsletters and broadsides.

The entire case for the existence of the Priory of Sion and the bloodline of Jesus extending into the French monarchy rests on this cache of bogus documents. There is no other "proof" anywhere that the Priory of Sion ever existed. A third confederate of Plantard and de Chérisey's, Gérard de Sède, who seems to have bought the story initially, published a lurid bestseller about the "mystery" of Rennes-le-Château. At this point, once a truly interesting sum of money entered the picture following the book's success, the three men fell out, quarreling over who deserved how much of the proceeds.

They began to tell outsiders of the scheme and eventually, de Chérisey confessed on camera, displaying the forged parchments and explaining the methods used to produce them to the French journalist Jean-Luc Chaumeil, who has devoted himself to exposing the hoax. Plantard tried intermittently to sustain the fable, but in the 1980s, he got into trouble with French authorities when a financier who Plantard had claimed was a member of the Priory of Sion committed suicide. In the subsequent police investigation, Plantard was forced to admit he'd invented the whole thing.

Although the Priory of Sion hoax had been debunked within France, the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" were still able to pass it off as authentic in their book and in subsequent media appearances. (Insiders swear the authors knew all along that the story was phony.) Even today, with "The Da Vinci Code" and its preposterous conspiracy theories on the lips of 8 million American readers (and more worldwide, now that translations are appearing), the truth about the Priory of Sion -- a major component of the novel -- isn't widely known. (An excellent summary of the case by Amy Bernstein, based on French sources, can be found in "Secrets of the Code," a collection of writings of varying degrees of gullibility, edited by Dan Burstein. Exhaustive documentation of the multifarious frauds of Pierre Plantard can be found at the Web site maintained by Paul Smith.)

Without the Priory of Sion to hold the Grail conspiracy theory together, most of the provocative "evidence" Brown presents in "The Da Vinci Code" crumbles. Take that supposedly ambiguous figure to the right of Jesus in Leonardo's "Last Supper." If there's no real reason to suspect Leonardo of believing in a special relationship between Mary Magdalene and Jesus Christ, why should we see that figure as a woman? Yes, the figure looks somewhat feminine but, in addition to following established conventions in representing the disciple John, Leonardo was quite fond of painting androgynous-looking young men. His reason for doing this was the same one that Michelangelo had for painting lots of muscular male nudes and Botticelli had for depicting long-limbed, ivory-skinned lovelies. You don't need a degree in symbology to figure that one out.

This emphasis on Leonardo is one of the few original additions Brown has made to the Grail conspiracy theory. (Plantard and the authors of "Holy Blood, Holy Grail" focused on Nicolas Poussin, an important French painter who is relatively little known to Americans, but whose "Bergers d'Arcadie" is a node of significant kook fascination elsewhere.) Brown's other contribution is the introduction of the idea that the Priory of Sion is a champion of "the sacred feminine," a foggy spiritual principle with roots in "paganism," supposedly purged from early Christianity by the dastardly Constantine.

Although this notion is so vaguely conceived that it approaches stupidity -- What "pagans"? People who have worshipped multiple gods range from the ancient Greeks to Hindus to the Norse and the Aztecs, and their religions have little in common and are certainly not free from patriarchal values -- the intention is hard to argue with. A significant portion of the fan base for "The Da Vinci Code" consists of women who are uncomfortable with the male-dominated, slightly to very misogynistic nature of the Christianities they were raised in and who see Brown's version of early Christian history as a corrective.

As Ehrman points out, it does appear that women had a more prominent role in Jesus' ministry than might be expected of a religious movement at that time and place. Some of that status is apparent in the canonical texts. The New Testament, most notably, holds that women, particularly Mary Magdalene, were the first witnesses to the Resurrection. Yet Ehrman also concludes that while some of the early Christian texts excluded from the New Testament honor Mary Magdalene and Jesus' women followers, others emphatically do not.

The early Christian scriptures -- the earliest having been transcribed from oral accounts 30 years after Jesus' death, and some a century or more later -- were written by people who were the product of a patriarchal culture that subscribed to many values we abhor today -- slavery, for one. Most of Jesus' followers assumed the world as they knew it was about to end very soon, to be replaced by an earthly kingdom of heaven. They were wrong about that and a lot of other things. To try to recast them as people with egalitarian attitudes about the sexes is to imply that we can't improve our own society without some kind of precedent from them. This idea could be even sillier than anything in "The Da Vinci Code."

- - - - - - - - - - - -

[/ QUOTE ]

[daryn]

i'll give $1,000 to the man who actually reads that
<font color="white"> the above statement is false </font>

[tbach24]

Okay, you can transfer it to my PS account. I'm tbach24

<font color="white"> Yes I saw the writing in white </font>

[daryn]

done.
<font color="white"> not actually done</font>

[Gallopin Gael]

[ QUOTE ]
the only thing worse is his previous book, angels &amp; demans. horrendous. the dialog reads like it was written by a 4th grader.

[/ QUOTE ]

Then I can safely assume that you haven't read his first two books.

[theBruiser500]

stevieg, I just bought "pillars of heaven" recently, read the introduction by the author seems like he's a good writer, and it will be real historical fiction and be good. Also the characters in the Da Vanci Code are really bad, they're not real people, they are mystery solving robots. How long were they awake in that book btw, like 90 hours straight?

Daryn you can transfer me 1k, cause I just read that article.

[3rdEye]

I think all of Dan Brown's books are great. They're no Les Miserables, but they're fun, easy reading, and they did make me think. I can't ask for much more from popular novels.

[theBruiser500]

"they did make me think."

What could this book possibly make you think about besides barphing because it's so bad?

[3rdEye]

[ QUOTE ]
"they did make me think."

What could this book possibly make you think about besides barphing because it's so bad?

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, suppose I rephrase, and say that the books piqued my interest in fringe opinions on religious questions, which in turn "made me think." Is that acceptable?

[theBruiser500]

My question is serious, what did this book make you think about? Be more specific please.

[3rdEye]

[ QUOTE ]
My question is serious, what did this book make you think about? Be more specific please.

[/ QUOTE ]

It made me think about the extent to which religion is based on myth, and the prospect of alternative, yet plausible myths was interesting to me. In addition, the Rennes-Le Chateau connections were interesting.

I'm not saying that The DaVinci Code is a masterpiece of intellectual fiction or anything, only that, as someone who takes an interest in that sort of thing, I found it intriguing. At the very least, it poses some interesting questions about Christianity.

In any case, Dan Brown writes far better books than the overwhelming majority of contemporary novelists.

[thatpfunk]

[ QUOTE ]
Dan Brown writes far better books than the overwhelming majority of contemporary novelists.


[/ QUOTE ]

That is a fascist lie.

[Daliman]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Dan Brown writes far better books than the overwhelming majority of contemporary novelists.


[/ QUOTE ]

That is a fascist lie.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, try this.

Dan Brown writes far more interesting books for the average person than the majority of contemporary novelists.

[ThaSaltCracka]

[ QUOTE ]
My question is serious, what did this book make you think about? Be more specific please.

[/ QUOTE ]are you Catholic?

[3rdEye]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Dan Brown writes far better books than the overwhelming majority of contemporary novelists.


[/ QUOTE ]

That is a fascist lie.

[/ QUOTE ]

Of course it is.

[3rdEye]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Dan Brown writes far better books than the overwhelming majority of contemporary novelists.


[/ QUOTE ]

That is a fascist lie.

[/ QUOTE ]

Ok, try this.

Dan Brown writes far more interesting books for the average person than the majority of contemporary novelists.

[/ QUOTE ]

Even better: Dan Brown writes in such a manner that he is more appealing to 24 year-old poker-playing wanna-be atheist intellectuals with M.S. degrees in Economics and pretentions in re:philosophy than the majority of contemporary novelists.

Perhaps that will be specific enough.

[3rdEye]

[ QUOTE ]
Good post. The book is complete trash, and it's the epitome of a book that people-who-can-barely-read would like.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't understand this. I'm a very smart guy. Am I less intelligent because I found The DaVinci Code enthralling?

I will accept that perhaps I am either less jaded or more naive than one should be at my stage in life, and that one of these explains my enjoyment of Dan Brown, but it is inane to claim that there is a negative correlation between one's appreciation of The DaVinci Code and one's literacy.

[Daliman]

[ QUOTE ]
Good post. The book is complete trash, and it's the epitome of a book that people-who-can-barely-read would like.

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, but obviously way beneath the $.01-.02 crowd.

See, I like reading poker books usually, and even though by your estimation I can barely read, I have never played anything less than 200x the level yer location states. But yes, Hemingway is lost on me.

Hopefully, I'll get by.

[jakethebake]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
the only thing worse is his previous book, angels &amp; demans. horrendous. the dialog reads like it was written by a 4th grader.

[/ QUOTE ]
Then I can safely assume that you haven't read his first two books.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm not a masochist.