Californian

Only 16%?
NOGO, I can understand your frustation with the mix of fact, fiction and outright conspiracy theory in the Da Vinci Code, but for me, the book started a fascinating path of discovery. First, I bought Dan Bernstein's "Secret of the Code", and then Elaine Plagels "Gnostic Gospels." After 2 years, I'm still finding books and internet sites that interest me.

All my research goes back to reading "The Da Vinci Code," which had me howling with laughter because of my background of 17 years of RCC education. Brown took on the most sacred of sacred cows to intentionally make a fuss and start discussion.

jonesg

I found "Cracking the DaVinci Code" to be a good read, Dan Brown looks like a bit of a kook at this point.

cognac

I still maintain that fiction authors are not responsible for false "expectations." To assert otherwise is simply untenable based on definition alone. FICTION. Sure, not all fictions are the same, but they have the same property of being fiction.

It would be interesting to see a cross study. How many people who read DVC and believe it also saw Indiana Jones and believe the government has a secret warehouse where they're hiding the Ark. Or maybe what the correlation is between those who believe DVC and those who also believe that aliens landed in Roswell.

Amaleq13

If they have nothing whatsoever to do with those expectations or, even better, make an attempt to disabuse folks of their misconception, I fully agree. That does not, however, appear to be the case with regard to Mr. Brown. He appears to me to be, at the very least, intentionally encouraging the perception that there is truth in his novel if not deliberately creating the perception himself.

cognac

I'm making general arguments here, because some of the assertions in the thread as a whole have broader implications than just one novel and seem to me to be just plain wrong. For instance, is a fiction author obligated to place historically accurate statements in the mouths of characters? To assert that they should strikes me as a kind of HC -- historical correctness that is an undue burden on a writer. As long as characters are being true to themselves, a writer is not required to make them say things that line up with accepted history from a scientific point of view.

About Brown specifically. I have no idea what he intended when he wrote this novel. The only thing I'm defending is his right to write what he wants.

NOGO

I never suggested that Dan Brown should be censured.
I feel that given the subject at hand he could have omitted some of the statements without any loss to his story.
You seem to be on a "freedom of speech" campaign and to me this is completely off base.
I am not suggesting that fiction writers should follow any kind of rules.

I am simply saying this.

I did not like some statements because
a) they added nothing to the story
b) they are totally false
c) given the story some people may believe them to be true.

Writers do not get instantaneously absolved of all criticism just because they call their work FICTION.

I hope that this clarifies my position.

Amaleq13

Your "general argument" appears to be entirely irrelevant to Brown since he clearly is at least partially responsible for the beliefs of his readers that they are learning something true from his story.

Do you also defend NOGO's right to criticize Brown for claiming his fictional story to contain truth?

cognac

If you read back through the entire thread, you'll see that when NOGO first posted, he clearly stated that he liked fiction that is speculative but that gets the facts right. He initially criticized Brown based on his personal expectation for the story. I have absolutely no problem with that. If you have an expectation for something and the author/creator fails, then you say you didn't like the story or the work or the movie. For instance, I hated Matrix II and III after loving Matrix I. I also used an analogy of baseball vs opera. Should you criticize a baseball game because you went to an event expecting high culture? I find culture snobs who dis pop sports for their banality equally stupid as those who criticise pop fiction for not living up to the expectations of literature. That's where my comments started. And then we got into this whole thing about the specific statements in the book that are historically wrong. They're all statements from the mouths of characters. It's not like Brown stopped the book and gave us a whole section of footnotes where he's trying to prove some dumb theory. It's all dialog. And some of these characters are shifty. And if you look at NOGO's comments to this last post of mine, you see that he clearly wants Brown to omit the statements because they are historically wrong -- as if characters need to speak like New York Public Librarian science desk fact checkers. Thus my question about what a writer's obligation is.

I don't think the line at the beginning of DVC "that this contains truth" is anything other than a story device. If Brown is doing interviews where he says "Yes, all that church history is absolutely true," then he's an idiot, but he's probably doing that to maximize his profit. That's the point of pop fiction. Make money by entertaining. IMO, he's done his job. If he were creating expectations in the book itself that he's an historian, or he was trying to be James Michener, then that's a completely different issue -- but he's not, so I think the criticism based on those expectations is way overblown.

cognac

But this thread has not been about "all" criticism. I have no problem critiquing a work based on what it's supposed to be. DVC is a work of pop fiction. I read it, liked it for what it was. The characters were cardboard in comparison to other works of pop fiction, but that didn't keep me from being entertained and I wasn't expecting it to be Michener. However, we're talking about criticisms where there seems to be some moral standard that Brown has violated and so people are up in arms. As I said before, if you didn't like the book, that's perfectly fine. What I have a problem with is moral outrage over historical errors in a work of pop fiction. I think that's way overblown.

John A. Broussard

I've felt the same way about Shakespeare's treatment of historic figures. Terrible the things he did to King Lear. I even know some people who think MacBeth actually existed.