cognac

Yep. Pretty much drives 'em crazy. Blasphemous, even.

I place it on a par with believing aliens landed at Roswell, and are now going around doing butt probes on abductees.

But debunking gives them another way to make money. I mean, they have to save us from something don't they?

Lets pit Indiana Jones against Lee Teabing.

John A. Broussard

I am more and more mystified by this thread. Homer's Illiad can be ripped to pieces as a big fat fraud. So where do we go from there?

Why can't fiction be fictional? Why does Tolstoy's War and Peace have to be an accurate description of the French/Russian war? Would it be a better piece of literature if it had left out the many inaccuracies it contained about that struggle?

Is Brown now saying that his book is historically accurate? If so, what difference does that make to the value or lack of value of the novel? Would it be either more or less valuable if he said (and says) absolutely nothing about it? Does it affect its literary merit or lack of merit?

I guess I must be weird since I spotted the book as being fiction right from the get go.

Catholics, fundies, raelians, atheists--all can attack the literary merits of the book to their hearts content but saying it lacks merit because its historically inaccurate, opens the way to dismissing some of the greatest pieces of fictional literature. Shall we start working over Dante's Divine Comedy?

cognac

I've been trying to make this sort of point since page 2 of this thread. So I'm totally in agreement. Even when I opened the book and read the "fact" page, first thing I thought was "story device." At no time did I ever think Brown was trying to say any theory in his book was real.

What I have a hard time understanding -- and I was called naive -- is why people won't treat DVC for what it was meant to be, a pop fiction thriller.

NOGO

Take Star Trek for example.
In this fictional story there is an alien called Spock. We are told that he is a Vulcan. The author can do whatever he wants to this character because the audience understands that his nature is ficational.

In that same fictional story is another character named Kirk, captain Kirk.
We are told that he is human. The audience therefore expects that his capabilities and limitations are those of a human. The author therefore does not have infinite liberty with Kirk as he does with Spock.

Kirk cannot leap tall buildings because he is human. You cannot simply say "this is fiction" therefore humans do not need to be humans. It is all in the expectations of the audience. You either respect it or you don't.

Dan Brown does not.

The "Dead Sea Scrolls" are not a fictional item which the author is at liberty to redefine as he wishes. He could have created another name for these documents and make it fictional. By calling them Dead Sea Scroll the expectation of the audience is that he refering to a real non-fictional set of documents that we know.
There are many "gospels" of Jesus which did not make it in the NT canon.
None of them come from the Dead Sea Scrolls. The author could have gotten his facts straight or create a fictional set of documents of his own.

He could have created a Spock and do whatever he wanted with it instead he chose to mock around with human Kirk.

No fictional work is entirely fictional.

John A. Broussard

How Jesus came into this discussion is beyond me. And if the Star Trek author wanted Kirk to jump tall buildings or hump elephants, that's entirely his business.

In fact, he could have brought in Napoleon or the Wizard of Oz. So what?

I'm completely mystified by your attitude toward fiction.

I hope some third party can chime in here and explain to me why you and I are on such different wave lengths.

GakuseiDon

Imagine that someone wrote a fiction book which included a character called "John A. Broussard" who posted on the Internet Infidels. That character is represented as someone dishonest. Also imagine that the author writes in the forward that "characters in this book are based on actual people".

Now, if readers started thinking that the character was an accurate reflection of you, would you be happy if the author just said "this is fiction, so don't worry about it"?

John A. Broussard

Ah. Now we have a point. There are laws of libel. The book might turn out to be a best seller and have extraordinary literary value.

The libel suit which followed would have absolutely nothing to do with any of the above.

You might want to take a look at Dante's Inferno, by the way. He put all of his enemies in hell. What in the world does that have to do with the literary merit of that epic?

NOGO

I actually intentionally avoided getting into personal cases and libel.
But I don't understand why you now consider this to a valid point.
Fiction is no longer fiction because we have a law against libel?

Why is there a law against libel even in fictional work?

Let see...
Some people may read this stuff and actually believe that so and so did this and that. And the fact that it is in a fictional work does not excuse the impression that people will get. Interesting!

I am surprized John A.
You are actually saying that people reading fiction may get wrong information or wrong impressions and that is why there are libel laws to protect individuals.

So you will have no problem admitting then that some people reading The DaVinci Code will get the impression that the Dead Sea Scrolls actually contain Gospels of Jesus which did not make into the NT. (among other things). Whether intentional or not I call this misinformation.

I do not wish to go to court over this. I simply think that it is unfortunate and avoidable.

GakuseiDon

Yep. It lacks merit precisely at the point that you think is libelous, regardless of its overall literary value. Now I think we are on the same wavelength.

NOGO

Actually the libel suit may point out that the book is a best seller. The more people read it the more it can be claimed that reputation is tarnished.

I don't believe you can call Dante's Inferno libelous. At any rate libel only means something to people of the time. Today nobody cares about who Dante disliked.