freigeister

Maybe that's because, er, um... HE DID!

John A. Broussard

Well, I'll be darned. And he actually said, "Lay on MacDuff and damned be he who says hold, enough?"
I confused him with Hamlet (and I'm too lazy to check to see if there actually was a Hamlet)

Thanks for the correction, though, but I hope no one assumes Shakespeare is better than Brown because the former depicted historic characters more accurately.

freigeister

No, that was Shakespeare. But it's a fine maxim, one I try to live by

cognac

Concerning Dan Brown’s intentions when he wrote the novel. Here are some quotes off his website.

He only claims that:

Note, he's not saying the work as a whole is completely true (as some critics have claimed)* or that the events the characters discuss are factual, only that some story elements are based on existing entities.

Does he make the claim that the theories and statements of various characters in the book are true, historically accurate, statements? No, he doesn't. In fact, he states that they are not. This is where critics have gotten his intentions wrong.

These quotes are taken from here:

http://www.danbrown.com/novels/davinci_code/faqs.html

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

* For instance, a quote from here:
http://www.envoymagazine.com/planete...inci-Part1.htm

hinduwoman

I am going to burn my romance novels but keep my fantasy novels then

NOGO

You misrepresent me entirely.
You are again on your "freedom of speech" defence.
You have taken up a role and you want to pursue it no matter what, even if it simple does not fit the situation.

I do NOT want Dan Brown to remove the offensive words.
I, frankly, could not care less.
I am stating a fact.
He could have left these statements out without any loss to his story.

cognac

If I've misrepresented you, I apologize. That was not my intention. Thank you for clarifying your position.

Please don't misrepresent my position. All I have been stating is that Brown's book is a work of fiction, which people don't seem to get. It shouldn't be criticized as if it were non fiction. It shouldn't be criticized for being something that it's not. This is not a freedom of speech defense. Call it a defense of fiction if you want. It seems to me their needs to be some cooling off of the frenzy.

Let me try to clarify my position. If you read some of the critic websites, and some of the quotes they have made, the criticism goes way beyond just a few historical errors, which by the way is a much longer list than you previous posted. They make claims that Dan Brown is intentionally misleading people, that he's on a campaign to the attack the Catholic Church. I have a problem with that sort of attack on a work of fiction, and I believe it's necessary to point that out. I'm sorry that I conflated your postion with theirs.

Now whether or not my defense applies to Dan Brown and this situation. I think it does. Look, there's a difference between what Dan Brown intended to do when he wrote the book and how he's behaving now that it's become this cultural phenomenon. When he wrote it, he had no idea that it was going to be the center of attention and become a NYT best seller for two years. When he wrote it, he intended to write a thiller and he included elements to make the story the best he could given his limitation. He never claimed that it was historically accurate in all its elements. He's a writer of pop fiction, not a historian. I'm defending his right to create a work of fiction and have it be treated as fiction. If people actually understood that, I would back off.

--Ronald Keith

John A. Broussard

Right on!

To tell a fiction writer what he should have written is the height of absurdity. It can be bad fiction. It can be dull fiction. It can be historical fiction.

But it's still FICTION!!!

The problem only arises when fiction is presented as fact, e.g., the bible.

If Brown wants to now insist that there's a lot of truthful items in his fiction, then he certainly can be challenged on that point. But insisting that he shouldn't have written his fictional account because there are innacurate historical references in it is downright silly.

andrewcriddle

Purely personally there are works of historical fiction which are spoilt for me by carelessness about the facts even when the author is not pursuing any sort of agenda but is just being careless.

Eg having the modern Jesuits around in the medieval church or having accused witches in England burned rather than hanged or having cardinals exercising legatine authority at the time of the Vikings.

In Brown's particular case I also suspect that the clear errors are not just random carelessness; they more often than not have a tendency to undermine orthodox Christianity.

Andrew Criddle

cognac

I totally agree. Thanks.