Bad writing

[cypher_lee]

Hi there, i'm fairly new to this board and have been browsing through a number of threads and i have a question. The DaVinci code seems to get slated mercilessly on this board for its bad writing. Being probably the only person left who has yet to read the damn book, i was wondering if anyone could explain what it is about the writing that makes it so bad.

[Mistook]

Compared to the other books on the bestseller rack, I'd say DVC is rather good writing, at least on the mechanical level. Descriptions, dialogue, pacing - all above par.

People complain that the characters are cardboard, the facts weren't researched very well, the plot is not nearly as plausible as it could've been. On those levels it's maybe not the greatest writing, but then again, it is a thriller, and it is fiction.

[Unimportant]

When a book sells as well as The DaVinci Code has, it's probably more educational to figure out what the author has done right, rather than what he's done wrong.
(my $0.02)

[Vomaxx]

When a book sells as well as The DaVinci Code has, it's probably more educational to figure out what the author has done right, rather than what he's done wrong.

An excellent point!

[James D. Macdonald]

I can tell you right now what Dan Brown did right in The DaVinci Code: He made readers want to turn the page to find out what happens next.

[Torgo]

It does get slated mercilessly for its bad writing, and deservedly so. In terms of its storytelling, it clearly does grip people and as Yog says makes you want to turn the page; myself, I get so annoyed with the clunky prose and Mary Sue-isms that I can't get past the third chapter.

[brainstrains]

I think also--it has been on the bestseller list since I was in diapers. I always look at it and say, Yeah, it was good. But it wasn't THAT good!

[pconsidine]

You will often hear of the debate between Plot and Character in a novel (you can do a search in this forum and find exactly such a thread). The DaVinci Code is an example of a story that has opted to focus on plot over character. It is also great evidence that, while both are clearly better, you can do very well with just one - if it's the right one.

[maestrowork]

I can tell you right now what Dan Brown did right in The DaVinci Code: He made readers want to turn the page to find out what happens next.

True. But he also fails in a sense that I don't want to read it again.

[Zane Curtis]

It doesn't hurt, either, that he taps into a body of mythology that lots of people are already interested in.

[ANNIE]

But the point is is doesn't really matter what we as writers think of it, the general public loved it and it was an entertaining read. Isn't that the whole idea?

[cattywampus]

I haven't read it, either, and probably won't. However, the public doesn't always judge a book by how good the writing is, or J. K. Rowling would still be poor. The fact that it has sold extremely well tells me that people are finding in it the answer to some compelling question they have. Could someone who has read it hazard a guess as to what this might be?

[HapiSofi]

It doesn't hurt, either, that he taps into a body of mythology that lots of people are already interested in.That's one way to put it. Here's the basic list of objections:

1. Bad history.
2. Bad art history, bad religious history, bad theology, bad textual scholarship, bad bad bad all over.
3. Stupid use of cryptology.
4. Extremely offensive religious bigotry.
5. Claiming a wholly unjustified degree of factuality.
6. Thanking respectable sources in the frontmatter while listing highly dubious sources in his website bibliography.
7. Knowing better and doing it anyway.
8. Making Sandra Miesel semi-famous.

Dan Brown didn't so much research as plunder Holy Blood, Holy Grail (Dell, 1982), a theoretically nonfictional book which combined clever but hardly ground-breaking research with some judicious speculation to put forward a theory which I doubt the book's own authors entirely believed.

What Holy Blood, Holy Grail actually demonstrated is that over the last century or so (it's hard to date this, because recent believers forged documentation and planted it in research libraries (http://www.cesnur.org/2005/mi_02_03d.htm)), some people in France have believed that the Merovingian dynasty was descended from Mary Magdalene and Jesus -- which is, you will note, a very far cry indeed from demonstrating that the Merovings were descended from JC and MM.

To put that claim in perspective, the earliest chroniclers of the Merovingians, who at the time they were writing were a millennium-plus closer to their subject, said that the supernatural ancestor claimed by the Merovingians was a sea-monster. Apparently it was a well-known anecdote at the time. There was this ruler named Chlodio or Cloio, the son of Faramond or Faramund. One day when Chlodio and his wife went swimming, she was molested by a "Quinotaur," a variety of sea-monster. She subsequently gave birth to a son named Merovech or Merovee or Meroveus, who founded the Merovingian dynasty. The story is obviously your basic heathen kingship cult claiming a god-like origin for their founder, like Romulus and Remus being fostered by a wolf, or the emperors of Japan being descended from the goddess Amaterasu.

I have nothing against ancient heathen kingship cults per se, but when you're talking about a dynasty that was supposedly Christian in every possible sense of the word, claiming descent from a sea-monster would be a very odd thing for them to do. It's also hard to believe that no one so much as hinted at the JC/MM aspect of the Merovingians' divine descent at the time that their dynasty was being deposed on grounds of obvious incapacity, and the Carolingians installed in their place.

Short version? The Priory of Sion/Holy Blood, Holy Grail claim is a load of codswallop. Furthermore, it's known to be a load of codswallop -- as in, the parties responsible have admitted to forging the documents and sneaking them into libraries. Anyone who does real research on the subject has to know that. Dan Brown absolutely has to know that.

I very much blame Dan Brown for making his story-boosting research and sources sound vastly more significant than they were, and for not mentioning the admissions of forgery. It was a piece of vanity on his part, unnecessary for the telling of the story, and it caused a great many people to conceive false impressions of the matter. In fact, his research leaned heavily on a bunch of newage woo-woos. You can find the whole thing discussed here (http://www.catholic.com/library/cracking_da_vinci_code.asp).

But that's only part of it. Dan Brown plundered two other related bodies of mythology. One is gnostic, pseudo-gnostic, semi-gnostic, neo-gnostic, and wishful-thinking-gnostic speculations. That's an ancient can of worms which has been repeatedly added to by worm enthusiasts. You can claim anything about gnosticism, because there's very little that some gnostic somewhere hasn't said or implied. In the meantime, it'll give your work that intoxicating whiff of ancient secret knowledge.

The third source, which many of you will have encountered without identifying it as a body of mythology, is anti-Catholicism. It exists. Not everything that gets called anti-Catholicism is part of that mythology, but there are definitely mythologies of anti-Catholicism. If you don't believe me, try typing isis nimrod babylon into Google and looking at what turns up (http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&safe=off&q=isis+nimrod+babylon&btnG=Search). That's only one branch of it. Here's another (http://www.catholic.com/library/sr_chick_tracts_p1.asp). There are lots more.

Traditional anti-Catholicism is where Dan Brown got all that crap about the church conducting a centuries-long campaign of systematically suppressing and altering scriptural texts. It's an old libel. If you're Jewish, it may help you understand some of the reactions to The Da Vinci Code if you imagine a bestselling thriller which assumes there's a factual basis to The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion. If you're Mormon, imagine a bestseller in which murders committed by a secret corps of Danites are casually sanctioned on an everyday basis by the LDS church hierarchy. If you're of Oriental descent, imagine Sax Rohmer got published.

Dan Brown doesn't care. If something sounded cool, he threw it in. I'd find it all much easier to forgive if he hadn't gone out of his way to give the impression that the novel had a factual basis.

Why do people like it? I thought the best summary of that was a line I ran across a while back in an Amazon review (http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member-reviews/A2WZ1B92F81LJJ/102-9551385-9211348?_encoding=UTF8&display=public&page=4) of the book: "Will make stupid people think they're clever." And why not? It worked for The Bridges of Madison County.

[maestrowork]

His cryptology is specially stupid. Fibonacci numbers? And it took an "expert" so long to figure it out? PLEASE. And the (spoiler...) flipped-around texts? It took me 3 seconds to figure it out...

His target audience must be 3rd graders. Apparently, there are a lot of them in the world...

p.s. yeah, I totally agree: it makes stupid people feel smart. that's why it's a best seller.

[arodriguez]

holy cow hapisofi...you sure nailed dan brown...you go! maybe hes a devil worshipper and wants to spread rumors about jesus? lol j/k!

[HapiSofi]

His cryptology is specially stupid. Fibonacci numbers? And it took an "expert" so long to figure it out? PLEASE. And the (spoiler...) flipped-around texts? It took me 3 seconds to figure it out...

His target audience must be 3rd graders. Apparently, there are a lot of them in the world...

p.s. yeah, I totally agree: it makes stupid people feel smart. that's why it's a best seller.When I'm riding the subway and just want to zone out, I work cryptograms. Of late, I've gotten a lot more people ask me about them. Of course, since they've learned their crypto from TDVC, they also ask me what key I'm using to break the code ...

13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5 is bloody obvious. I would spot it instantly. Even if you don't recognize it in that form straightaway, once you've got the two-digit numbers defined by spaces, all you have to do is put the digits in order to know what you've got. It's not well scrambled, either. You've got that telltale 1, 1; and though 3, 2 and 8, 5 are in reverse of their usual order, they're still grouped with their accustomed partners.

The sequence would be easily crackable even if you didn't put in spaces at all. If you handed me 1332211185 to play with, I'd probably start by putting it in order: 1111223358. If I were having a reasonably clever day, I'd notice 1, 1 and 2, 3 and 5, 8. Heck, just noticing 5, 8 might be enough. From there it's only a step to checking whether those are the requisite digits for the Fibonacci sequence: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21. Not a tough problem.

Encryption via mirror reversal is just dumb. Spotting one flipped-over letter cracks the whole. Like Pepys' crude cipher, or Making Light's disemvowelling, Leonardo's mirror-writing hides nothing. It just makes it harder to read.

[Unimportant]

"His target audience must be 3rd graders."

From what I understand (and I may well be wrong) the biggest selling books are those that target the lowest common demoninator. In this case, not literally third graders, but the average adult reader who has the reading/comprehension abilities of a 12 year old*.

*based on what I was told by my local newspaper when I was writing a scientific column for the lay reader.

[scarletpeaches]

This will make me sound really evil, but here goes...

If nothing else, Dan Brown's writing reassures me. I have read DVC and I tell myself, "Well if THAT can get itself published..!"

:ROFL:

[HapiSofi]

"His target audience must be 3rd graders."

From what I understand (and I may well be wrong) the biggest selling books are those that target the lowest common demoninator. In this case, not literally third graders, but the average adult reader who has the reading/comprehension abilities of a 12 year old*.

*based on what I was told by my local newspaper when I was writing a scientific column for the lay reader.That's a standard newspaper thing. Their audience is geographically based, so they have to shoot for a general audience.

Novels don't work that way. A lot of perennial bestsellers are highest common denominator: books that are so good on all counts that everyone likes them.

[inexperiencedinker]

Sooo...(the minority raises a tentative hand) I liked the book....

Don't Shoot!!!

j/k. Seriously though it was a page turner. I don't really understand why people take offense to certain entertainment pieces (I am thinking Da Vinci and the Passion of the Christ) because it is just that, entertainment.

People talk about the anti-Semitic message in Passion...well not if you are intelligent enough to understand that it is a MOVIE. Or in this case, just book. It was d*mn good marketing that made Da Vinci what it is, a controversy...and that sells.

And yes, I have heard all the arguments on "What if someone is not smart enough to realize it is just fiction?" Well, quite frankly, there has never been a successful revolution by a band of idiots. So I am not so worried.

I understand not enjoying the book on a mechanical POV, or even a research POV, but it is still fiction, the story is untrue, and just that, a story. :Shrug:

[James D. Macdonald]

If you're Jewish, it may help you understand some of the reactions to The Da Vinci Code if you imagine a bestselling thriller which assumes there's a factual basis to The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion.

Interestingly enough, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, one of Brown's major sources, cites The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion as a legitimate and truthful historical source.

[HapiSofi]

Seriously though it was a page turner. I don't really understand why people take offense to certain entertainment pieces (I am thinking Da Vinci and the Passion of the Christ) because it is just that, entertainment.

People talk about the anti-Semitic message in Passion...well not if you are intelligent enough to understand that it is a MOVIE. Or in this case, just book. ... it is still fiction, the story is untrue, and just that, a story.Just a book? Just a story? Technically untrue, and therefore inconsequential?

What are you doing in a venue devoted to discussing fiction writing, if you think fiction doesn't matter? Do you truly believe that if something is entertaining, it has no further effect in the world?

[scarletpeaches]

HapiSofi I adore you.:Hail:


A novel needs to be a monumental lie that has the absolute ring of truth.:Lecture:

[reph]

People talk about the anti-Semitic message in Passion...well not if you are intelligent enough to understand that it is a MOVIE. Or in this case, just book.
Oh, so if something is a movie or a book, it can't embody any bigotry or spread any. Thanks so much for enlightening us on that point.

[Jamesaritchie]

I haven't read it, either, and probably won't. However, the public doesn't always judge a book by how good the writing is, or J. K. Rowling would still be poor. ?

I wouldn't go that far. I think Rowling is a very good writer in every sense of the word. Dan brown is a good storyteller who has tapped into something extremely conrtoversial, and I know far more peole who have read DaVinci Code because of the controversy than because of the story or the writing.

But J. K. Rowling is both a good writer and a good storyteller.

[Mistook]

I wouldn't go that far. I think Rowling is a very good writer in every sense of the word. Dan brown is a good storyteller who has tapped into something extremely conrtoversial, and I know far more peole who have read DaVinci Code because of the controversy than because of the story or the writing.

But J. K. Rowling is both a good writer and a good storyteller.

HP SPOILER BELOW - WARNING - WARNING!

The editor of my local city paper just dedicated a whole op ed peice to his take on the latest HP. He wasn't talking abou the writing style. He was worried about weather or not Harry is a living Horcrux or not. And this is a guy in his early 50's.

[inexperiencedinker]

Wow...and another can of worms is opened...

I didn't mean to offend anyone, that really wasn't my intent.



Reph:

I am not condoning bigotry, or saying it doesn't exist. I AM saying I am not stupid. I have opinions, fully formed, half researched, and whole-heartedly stuck to LONG before either Da Vinci code or Passions came out. NEITHER book influenced my opinion.

Which leads me to my next point:

HapiSofi:

They were works of fiction, to be admired or hated as such. They are not fact. They do not embody fact. And rarely does it closely imitate fact.

Merriam Webster defines fiction as: 1 a : something invented by the imagination or feigned; specifically : an invented story

I have read characters I loved and hated, stories I wished I lived or were glad I hadn't. I have NEVER at any point said fiction didn't matter, but that they should NOT be taken for the total and absolute truth. It is by definition 'made-up'.

Apparently I touched a nerve, fine. I didn't mean to trivialize anyone’s strong feelings one-way or the other. I just wanted to point out that they are not ALWAYS about the controversy and strong feelings. Sometimes they can just be enjoyed as stories.

[reph]

Inexperiencedinker, please excuse my previous sarcasm. I have a serious point: Writings and films become part of the culture in which they circulate, and they influence people. To think they don't would be naive. An extreme example is propaganda, deliberately constructed to control the public's attitudes. Anything in print or on celluloid may have an effect, too, however small. Small effects add up. The "Dick and Jane" reading primers promoted sexist ideas about how males and females should behave.

Subtle anti-Semitism in a movie can reinforce preexisting anti-Semitism in audience members who feel it legitimizes their attitudes: "I always thought Jews were treacherous, and these Hollywood big shots agree." Viewers may also not know to what extent a film is historically accurate and to what extent it's fictional.

[Mistook]

Subtle anti-Semitism in a movie can reinforce preexisting anti-Semitism in audience members who feel it legitimizes their attitudes: "I always thought Jews were treacherous, and these Hollywood big shots agree." Viewers may also not know to what extent a film is historically accurate and to what extent it's fictional.

Which flies in the face of the other well known propagandism that Hollywod is actually run by the Jews, and therefore would never let a movie like Passion get made."

And the government is run by the protestants.

In a weird way it's a kind of lonely feeling to be a Catholic. The only thing we're accused of running is our own church. This whole idea of Catholics running the world is so antiquated. DVC has all the scanal value of the British royal family. Yes they're highly visible, but everybody knows their relevance in world politics is next to zero.

Maybe in the big picture, that's all this book is saying. Jesus sired an irrelevant royal family, and that's a metaphore for the church being as irrelevant as the royal family.

[gp101]

His cryptology is specially stupid. Fibonacci numbers? And it took an "expert" so long to figure it out? PLEASE. And the (spoiler...) flipped-around texts? It took me 3 seconds to figure it out...

His target audience must be 3rd graders. Apparently, there are a lot of them in the world...

p.s. yeah, I totally agree: it makes stupid people feel smart. that's why it's a best seller.


Third-grader chiming in here. A 37-year-old, tri-lingual one. A very stupid one, my B.A. notwithstanding. I enjoy reading (when the words aren't too big), travelling, writing, and, apparently, recess and kickball.

C'mon, Maestro, you've posted too many insightful comments to come up with this. It was a best-seller because it makes stupid people feel smart? Of course it's disappointing to find out the "facts" Brown insinuated weren't that factual after all or were greatly exaggerated. But it was still a page-turner. That's why I read it a second time. That's why it appealed to a bunch of different people, stupid and not-so-stupid. Brown's allegations were fascinating to read, and factual or not, you still have to know how to spread all that information over the course of a novel without making it look like huge info-dump after info-dump, and bringing the narrative to a hault.

Along with a lot of facts not being fact at all, the other complaint about DVC regarded the under-developed characters. I agree. They're not the most well-rounded characters you'll ever encounter. The British guy was especially bad; just too over-the-top, cliche, and one-dimensional. And yet, with a cast of pourous characters, and all that conspiracy backstory, it was still a page-turner. It wasn't just the controversial subject matter that made it a huge seller (though it greatly helped of course), it was how the subject matter was presented intermittantly throughout the plot without slowing the story.

A lot of people are upset that Brown's facts aren't facts at all. I can understand that. A lot of others say DVC has nothing without the conspiracy and church angles. I agree with that too. Subject matter is extremely important. As I said somewhere else on this board, Silence of the Lambs isn't nearly as engaging without the cannibalism angle.

But because most of us on these boards are writers or are trying to become writers, I think a lot of the distressed posters on this thread are mad that Brown broke a lot of rules we read about, and got away with it. We're told over and over about this rule and that rule, and though none of them are set in stone, it behooves us, we're told, to not break too many of them. We grill each other on SHARE YOUR WORK when we read a sample with loads of backstory or one-dimensional characters. Then this guy Brown comes in and has a best-seller that's littered with these broken rules. Of course a lot of us are frustrated that he can do that--but I think this is more testament to Brown's ability in that he still made the damn book a page-turner. He got past the shortcomings in his writing by focusing on his strengths. Maybe he'll never write a novel with breath-takingly developed characters, but as long as he continues to plot the way he does with pieces of interesting backstory, I say he's doing a fine job.

You don't like DVC? Fine, you don't like it. Doesn't follow your criteria for a well-written novel. Lots of people don't like DVC and we can't snicker them for failing to like it. It's just not their thing. If you hate it because the facts are all wrong or exaggerated, that's very understandable. But, questionable facts aside, it's just disingenuos to say the book was poorly written overall. And it's pretentious to question the intelligence of millions who did enjoy the book.

Where are all the other third-grade, adult stupid's on this thread? A few more of us and we can play stickball after school. In the street. During rush-hour.

[aadams73]

it makes stupid people feel smart. that's why it's a best seller.

Nobody who picks up a book and makes an effort to read is stupid. It's a bestseller because of the pace and the subject matter; people are always attracted to a religious mystery.

[Garpy]

There was a horror writer called Graham Masterton who wrote loads of books in the 70's (I think). One of them was called 'Devils of D-Day' and the premise was that the allies placed 12 demons inside 12 sherman tanks, and these tanks led the assault on D-day....and were singularly responsible for rolling the germans up as they were evil incarnate and thus indestructible.

Anyway....Masterton did what Dan Brown did, and claimed his story was factual. In fact, he did it in a rather hurmorous way, in the introduction he said 'the US state department refused to comment on this story when approached by the author'. Of course they didn't reply....coz it's a load of fiction, but, you know, it was kind of fun to have an opener like that.

Clearly DVC is a load of fiction....I don't suppose I blame him for claiming it's for real, that's just marketing...Hell, I'd do it too if I were him. However, what I don't forgive him for is writing like a complete amateur...which, frankly, he is. It doesn't take a lot of effort to make a reasonably decent character.....why his characters have to be 'beautiful and brilliant' is beyond me. The two dimensional albino bad guy is little more than a pantomime villain, a Bond baddie.

Frankly I think of DVC as poor YA material, with an intelligent plot ripped off from someone else.

[KTC]

It doesn't hurt, either, that he taps into a body of mythology that lots of people are already interested in.

BINGO! We have a winner. This is so true. People want to explore these theories...they are searching for a belief out of this fiction, I think. And he has tapped into good story telling too, as Jim said. He gets people to turn the page. This shows how integral story telling is...it's a component that can move a book like this into the stratosphere, despite possible questionable writing. I rushed through it myself.

[inexperiencedinker]

Inexperiencedinker, please excuse my previous sarcasm. I have a serious point: Writings and films become part of the culture in which they circulate, and they influence people. To think they don't would be naive. An extreme example is propaganda, deliberately constructed to control the public's attitudes. Anything in print or on celluloid may have an effect, too, however small. Small effects add up. The "Dick and Jane" reading primers promoted sexist ideas about how males and females should behave.
Subtle anti-Semitism in a movie can reinforce preexisting anti-Semitism in audience members who feel it legitimizes their attitudes: "I always thought Jews were treacherous, and these Hollywood big shots agree." Viewers may also not know to what extent a film is historically accurate and to what extent it's fictional.

reph:
I can agree with some of your points. And I can see where you are going, but I still have a hang up. I truly don't believe that someone 'tottering' on the edge of bigotry would be pushed over by one of these pieces. In my mind, you are either a bigot, or you aren't, and there really isn't any middle ground. I am not talking the small prejudices we all think of every day, which are human nature and unpleasant, but not intentional, and cruel. But, I am talking about someone who IS anti-Semitic. That opinion was formed long before Passions came out.
I guess I just feel like a lot of the people picketing and editorializing these pieces believe that most people are stupid. I saw the anti-catholic views in DVC, and I think they were necessary to construct his story, but not true.
I am not trying to contradict myself earlier, but they were built on half-truths. I feel like people expect me to slap my forehead and exclaim, "So that was what REALLY happened throughout history! Those wily Catholics, they had me going the whole time!" I'm just not that easily influenced. I am glad that someone is there to point out they are based in opinion and lies, because someone may need that insight. I don’t, and I hope most others don’t either.

[gp101]

...why his characters have to be 'beautiful and brilliant' is beyond me. The two dimensional albino bad guy is little more than a pantomime villain, a Bond baddie.

SPOLIER ALERT

ah, c'mon, what's the matter with a Bond baddie? They exist to be, well, bad. James Bond movies, like DVC, are escapism. Take a wild ride, get a few knots in the stomach. Not all JB baddies were created equal, but some (Jaws and Dr. No come to mind) were fun, if on the ridiculous side. And to play devil's advocate, the albino did have backstory, did feel betrayed, and had to re-think his actions and purpose. Certainly no Shakespearan candidate, but he did have his own little arc, and at one point I even felt bad for the bugger despite him being a misguided S.O.B. The British guy however was completely useless to me. Even when he was being portrayed as a good guy I hated him. The French detective and his assistant weren't much better. Maybe that was Brown's tradeoff in DVC; keep the action going at the expense of expanding most of his characters and slowing the pace. I'm not saying it's good thing. Just an observation. Given the number of characters in the story, he probably saved a hundred pages doing this, if that was a consideration.

And I'll have to politely (and in good fun) call you out on your "all his characters are brilliant and beautiful" comment, Garpy. Your very next line you mention the albino. Not the most beautiful character you'll find in literature. I don't recall any of the characters standing out as particularly attractive besides Langdon and his playmate, though I'll grant you that most of them were portrayed rather brilliant in their own ways. But don't you need characters dueling someone of their equal in order to make goals difficult and tension high? Wouldn't be much fun if Langdon dealt with a bunch of idiots; story would be over in a couple chap's. As for Langdon and the French hottie being eye-candy, most commercial fiction depends on it. As unfair as it may be, it's easier to root for an attractive person than an unattractive person even if they have the same exact personality and make the exact same decisions.

[gp101]

He gets people to turn the page. This shows how integral story telling is...it's a component that can move a book like this into the stratosphere, despite possible questionable writing.

Exactly! That's what I've been trying to express in my usually wordy manner. Glad someone found the best way to put it.

Finally, I can go to bed. Maybe start Angels and Demons again.

[brinkett]

In a weird way it's a kind of lonely feeling to be a Catholic. The only thing we're accused of running is our own church.

You might want to take a peek at the links Hapi provided.

[David McAfee]

You don't like DVC? Fine, you don't like it. Doesn't follow your criteria for a well-written novel. Lots of people don't like DVC and we can't snicker them for failing to like it. It's just not their thing. If you hate it because the facts are all wrong or exaggerated, that's very understandable. But, questionable facts aside, it's just disingenuos to say the book was poorly written overall. And it's pretentious to question the intelligence of millions who did enjoy the book.



VERY well said. Thank you!

[NicoleJLeBoeuf]

The editor of my local city paper just dedicated a whole op ed peice to his take on the latest HP. He wasn't talking abou the writing style. He was worried about weather or not Harry is....Mistook, it's generally a kind thing to put spoiler warnings on this sort of thing. Won't you please consider maybe editing your post? I think there's an HP spoiler thread in Take It Outside where this sort of thing wouldn't leap out and slap people in the face.

Hell, I've *read* the sixth book, and as this possibility had not yet occurred to me, your post was a bit of a spoiler for *me*. Which is why I *still* haven't read the HP Spoiler Thread.

[maestrowork]

Just because it's a page turner doesn't mean it's a good book. I still say it caters to a lower common denominator, people who don't ask: "Hey, this is ridiculous or infantile." Is there anything wrong with that? No. If you enjoy that kind of entertainment, more power to you. And more money and fame for him. I kept turning the pages, too. But it left me with an empty feeling afterwards, and I am not going to read it again. I might see the movie, and see what Ron Howard and Tom Hanks do with it...

Some people think Dodgeball is perfect entertainment, a great movie even. I am not going to argue with them. Just different taste, different views.

I can be high-brow sometimes, but I thoroughly enjoyed the movie Red-Eye, which has plenty of plot holes. But it's the structure, the pacing, the editing, the acting, etc. that held me at the edge of my seat. And given it's a thriller, I think it's a success. I also like Bond films, even though I never see a Bond film twice. Same with DVC. But I can't say DVC is great writing just because it does thriller well.


Just because you have a PhD and you love DVC or Dodgeball doesn't mean you are stupid. I know plenty of smart people who LOVE what we consider bad movies (Ed Wood stuff). However, you can't say Dan Brown isn't targeting a lower common denominator. And you can't disbute that a good number of his fans do not care how factual his "research" is or how moronic it is for a cryptoloy expert to not get Fibonacci numbers...

[HapiSofi]

The enjoyment of a book is an inarguable fact. If you enjoyed it, you enjoyed it, period. There's no such thing as hallucinatory pleasure. And it's certainly possible to enjoy a book that has significant flaws, even if they're serious enough to keep other readers from enjoying it.

I'm sorry for inadvertently suggesting that people must stupid if simple crypto puzzles aren't intuitively obvious to them. My fault. I was clumsy. I don't think that. Maestro and I both have a turn of mind for cryptology. It's one of those things, like Reph catching typos. Other people can catch typos; Reph can catch them faster.

Clearly, many people enjoyed the cryptology used in the book. I acknowledge this. But it's just as inarguably true that everyone I know who's acquainted with the subject rants about TDVC. It's not just the Fibonacci numbers and the mirror writing, though those are bad enough. But encoding secret messages in anagrams? Mega-dumb. Long anagrams don't have unique solutions. I want to read the thriller where the clue the detectives go chasing after, the one formed by rearranging the letters in SO DARK THE CON OF MAN, is Fetch Dakar Monsoon. Or no, even better: Fathead Conks Moron. Or Hacker Moons Fantod. Et cetera. Many, many possible solutions.

And then, on top of that? I want to hear why the French-speaking message sender contrived English-language anagrams.

More comments to come.

[Mistook]

Mistook, it's generally a kind thing to put spoiler warnings on this sort of thing. Won't you please consider maybe editing your post? I think there's an HP spoiler thread in Take It Outside where this sort of thing wouldn't leap out and slap people in the face.

Hell, I've *read* the sixth book, and as this possibility had not yet occurred to me, your post was a bit of a spoiler for *me*. Which is why I *still* haven't read the HP Spoiler Thread.


I guess I didn't think of it as a spoiler because it was all speculation.

[James D. Macdonald]

And then, on top of that? I want to hear why the French-speaking message sender contrived English-language anagrams.

That's almost as bad as the guy who proved, using anagrams, that Lewis Carroll was Jack the Ripper. He never explained why Carroll would write his anagrammed confessions using American spellings.

[WannabeWriter]

I could be wrong on this, but maybe many readers of DVC are those who don't really read much fiction. In other words, they only read it because it's a trend right now, like Harry Potter. So they probably don't know what REALLY is a good book because they haven't read many other books.

[inexperiencedinker]

I could be wrong on this, but maybe many readers of DVC are those who don't really read much fiction. In other words, they only read it because it's a trend right now, like Harry Potter. So they probably don't know what REALLY is a good book because they haven't read many other books.

.....................I’m just going to say, I think you would be wrong. I believe many people read it because it was trendy....after they put down their other works of fiction. And "REALLY good book" is subjective............................

[scarletpeaches]

DVC - voted the book of the year by viewers of Richard and Judy.

The prosecution rests.

[aruna]

And then, on top of that? I want to hear why the French-speaking message sender contrived English-language anagrams.

More comments to come.

I personally would like to know why the protag's Bengali sister in Brick Lane chose to write letters to her (equally Bengali) sister in pidgin English!

[Torgo]

A friend once gave me a Clive Cussler novel, Atlantis something, which, I have to say, was beyond Dan Brown in badness. Rampant silliness, sunken civilisations, sub-Roger Moore Bondery, Nazis who Saved Hitler's Brain...

There always was a big market for this stuff, and Brown was pootling along happily in its midlist. Then he drops Da Vinci's name and some half-baked pseudohistory and takes off into the stratosphere, where Cussler's preposterous hero Dirk Pitt, late of the Office of Submarine Symbology (or something), cannot follow.

[HapiSofi]

There are lots of lesser rules for writing a successful book, but they're trumped by a handful of greater rules. The biggest one I know goes like this:If a book works, it works, no matter how many lesser rules it infracts. If a book doesn't work, it doesn't help to point out that it followed all the rules.
Here's another rule: You can get away with a high degree of bogosity if you get the reader hooked into a sufficiently fast-moving story. Consider the recent movie Mr. & Mrs. Smith. It's fluff of a high order. If it ever slowed down long enough for the viewer to think about it, its stupendous improbabilities would be obvious. Good thing it never slows down.

TDVC is a piece of reasonably slick writing. It feeds the reader exposition slowly enough to assimilate, but too rapidly to question or criticize. It's also got a strong central story that gets moving fast. You could say the same of J. K. Rowling's novels. You want to keep reading. Stephen King's term for that effect is "gotta," and it's pure gold.

I learned to respect gotta back when I was mechanically checking proofreading marks in first-pass galleys. In theory, you can do that without reading anything beyond the sentences in which the corrections occur. There were times, though, when I'd repeatedly find myself getting dragged into the text, reading several pages past the correction. This happened even when I was working on books that were not at all to my taste. It didn't matter. I still got sucked in. Part of my brain was saying "Cripes, this is ridiculous, what a waste of time," but another part was saying "Uh-huh, whatever, just lemme finish this page ..." In a couple of cases I wound up reading the whole book.

Do the lesser rules still matter? They do. I may have been snagged by gotta, but the dislikable aspects of those books were still present. They didn't digest well afterwards, and I didn't seek out other works by the same authors.

[maestrowork]

While I won't read DVC again, I did go ahead and buy Angels & Demons, which I think is a better book. It's very "Bondish." Fast-paced and everything. But I still put down the book when they flew to Geneva in an hour, or when Langdon parachuted down, unscathed, using a tarp...

Are thriller writers pardoned from observing simple laws of physics?

[aadams73]

Angels & Demons, which I think is a better book. It's very "Bondish." Fast-paced and everything. But I still put down the book when they flew to Geneva in an hour, or when Langdon parachuted down, unscathed, using a tarp...



That part was definitely beyond the realm of believability. An interesting question might be: why do such writers use funny science? Is it laziness on their part? Do they not want to put in the necessary research? Or is it that they don't think most of their readership will care?

In my own work I'm very careful to research even simple things. I don't want someone tossing my book aside for gross misuse of science(or anything else).

[HapiSofi]

Concerning the "it's just entertainment, so it doesn't matter" theory:

First, if that were true, wouldn't it be as true of songs as it is of stories? Yet we know that songs can have an impact that far exceeds their entertainment value. How is it that books don't do the same thing?

Next, let us consider some works that were fiction, and therefore of no consequence in terms of their real-world effects:
The Gulag Archipelago
The Jungle
La Nouvelle Heloise
The Satanic Verses
The Sorrows of Young Werther
Uncle Tom's Cabin
Here are a few more titles:
1984
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
The Aeneid
All Quiet on the Western Front
All the King's Men
An American Tragedy
Andersonville
Animal Farm
Atlas Shrugged
Babbit
The Bell Jar
Black Like Me
Brave New World
Candide
A Clockwork Orange
The Color Purple
The Diary of a Young Girl
The Dispossessed
Erewhon
Everyman
Fahrenheit 451
Finnegans Wake
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Fountainhead
Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
Gargantua and Pantagruel
Gone with the Wind
The Good Soldier Svejk
The Grapes of Wrath
The Great Gatsby
Gulliver's Travels
The Handmaid's Tale
Homage to Catalonia
Howl and Other Poems
I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings
In Dubious Battle
The Insidious Dr. Fu Manchu
The Invisible Man, (Ralph Ellison)
The Iron Heel
It Can't Happen Here
John Brown's Body
Johnny Got His Gun
Lady Chatterley's Lover
Leaves of Grass
the "Left Behind" series
Les Miserables
Lolita
Lord of the Flies
The Lords of Discipline
Lysistrata
Madame Bovary
Moll Flanders
Naked Lunch
Native Son
Neuromancer
No Bugles, No Drums
Of Mice and Men
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
One Hundrd Years of Solitude
Pamela; or, Virtue Rewarded
Paradise Lost
Peyton Place
Piers Ploughman
A Prayer for Owen Meany
The Red and the Black
The Red Badge of Courage
Slaughterhouse-Five
Sophie's Choice
The Stranger
To Kill a Mockingbird
Tom Jones
The Trial
Tropic of Cancer
Tropic of Capricorn
The Turner Diaries
Ulysses
Utopia
When we describe inhuman bureaucracies as "Kafkaesque," talk about overbearing government surveillance by saying "Big Brother is watching you," or use terms like newspeak doublethink, and thoughtcrime to describe the way the constant imposition of falsehood corrupts language, we're acknowledging the power of fiction to reshape the way we see the world.

I don't just mean politics. Works of fiction have changed the way people think about everything from sex, and language, to labor relations, gender politics, mental illness, causality, poverty, and what's probably going on behind the scenes in small towns. They change the way we think about each other. They give us a picture of the world, and how people behave in it. It's one of the biggest reasons people read them -- the other one, of course, being entertainment.

[Greer]

Thank you, Hapi. I had been reading this thread with increasing frustration. To think there are writers who believe fiction is inconsequential to the shaping of public opinion/ideology is terrifying.

[HapiSofi]

I personally would like to know why the protag's Bengali sister in Brick Lane chose to write letters to her (equally Bengali) sister in pidgin English!Good lord. Do they really?

[HapiSofi]

To finish my string of comments, here's why TDVC isn't eligible for the "it's just fiction, only an idiot would mistake it for fact" excuse. I'll start by filching a big chunk of explanation from the Catholic Answers (http://www.catholic.com/library/cracking_da_vinci_code.asp) webpage. It's a Catholic site, and a conservative one to boot, but their analysis is solid, and is given an evenhanded presentation:


What claims does the book make about the research that was done for it?

On the acknowledgements page of the novel, Brown issues extensive thanks designed to convey the impression that he has done thorough research:For their generous assistance in the research of this book, I would like to acknowledge the Louvre Museum, the French Ministry of Culture, Project Gutenberg, Bibliothèque Nationale, the Gnostic Society Library, the Department of Paintings Study and Documentation Service at the Louvre, Catholic World News, Royal Observatory Greenwich, London Record Society, the Muniment Collection at Westminster Abbey, John Pike and the Federation of American Scientists, and the five members of Opus Dei (three active, two former) who recounted their stories, both positive and negative, regarding their experiences inside Opus Dei. He also thanks a bookstore for "tracking down so many of my research books" as well as a long list of specific individuals.

It is not clear how many of these acknowledgements represent Brown padding the list to make it sound more impressive and enhance his credibility. For example, Project Gutenberg is an online library of public domain texts, and Brown's "acknowledgement" may signify no more than that he looked at a text on one of the Project Gutenberg web sites. The same may well be true of others included in the list. The acknowledgements of museums, libraries, and similar institutions may mean no more than that he used their facilities and that they did nothing special to assist his research.

This, in fact, appears to be the case regarding his acknowledgement of Catholic World News. When contacted by Catholic Answers, the editor of Catholic World News, Phil Lawler, stated: We were surprised and bemused to learn that Catholic World News had been listed in the acknowledgments of this book.

We cannot recall any contact whatsoever with Dan Brown. He is not listed among our past or present subscribers.

Since many of our stories are free and available to anyone who visits our web site, it is possible that he received some information from Catholic World News--just as anyone can receive information from any public news service. Certainly we never did any research for him or answered any questions from him.
There's a difference between receiving individual help from an institution, and using reference materials they've published. Frontmatter acknowledgements are normally there to give thanks for specific individual assistance. That's why you don't usually see the author's branch post office mentioned.

Making a parade of one's acknowledgements, as Dan Brown has done in TDVC, is an assertion that one has received extraordinary help from a long string of extraordinary institutions. It implies that the writer and/or the book is significant enough to command that kind of assistance, which is usually a signal of "serious scholarship." In this context, it's an implicit claim of factuality for some portion of the information in the novel.

It may also be a shameless piece of name-dropping. According to Catholic World News, they never gave Brown any particular assistance; certainly not enough to warrant the mention. This casts doubt on the rest of the acknowledgements.

There's a great deal more that could be said here. I'm not going to say it as well as the Catholic Answers page does. If you go there, pay particular attention to the discussion of Brown's sources, some of which are into stuff like "...revealing truths encoded in symbolic numbers in the Gospels."

Here's the point: Like the Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, all this Priory of Sion stuff can only be believed by someone who wants to believe it. No one was ever convinced of it against his will by the sheer force of the evidence. If Brown's done even a fraction of the research he claims, he knows this stuff is false. He never says so. Instead, he does everything he can to pump up the appearance of factuality. And the stories to which he chooses to give this treatment are old and highly offensive anti-Catholic libels.

I'll end here, lest I become grumpy.

[MitchJ]

I read TDVC quite a while ago, and labeled it a pot boiler. Several friends and family have since read it and really liked it (none of them writers), so I decided that I would read it again someday--maybe after seeing the movie. I like Ron Howard and Tom Hanks.

Anyway, here are my thoughts:

I found the concept--the history, both religious and art-related--interesting. I don't know enough about the "real" facts to offer any opinions on Brown's accuracy, so his version of history didn't bother me. What did bother me was that the novel felt like it was written solely to be optioned into a screenplay. The characters, other than the historical ones, were very 2 dimensional, and they were in the middle of a plot filled with one cliché after another. If I were going to write a story with as much controversial material as this, I'd want to have a surrounding story worthy of its inevitable repercussions.

My 2 cents.

[scarletpeaches]

In the acknowledgements for Angels & Demons, at least in the UK printing, Brown claims to have had an audience with the Pope...Given everything else he has said regarding research and the like, I question his truthfulness. Could it be that he visited the Vatican, or perhaps was blessed by the Pope as one in a crowd (the Pontiff may have placed his hand briefly on Brown's head, as he does with many in a crowd).

But...an audience? With the Holy Father?

[Sarashay]

If nothing else, Dan Brown's writing reassures me. I have read DVC and I tell myself, "Well if THAT can get itself published..!"

I know of someone who takes the same consolation from The Celestine Prophecy.

Edit to add: Um, Hapi, at least two of the books you rattled off in that rather long list of 'fiction books that didn't change anything' are nonfiction. (There may be more--it got a little tl;dr for me.)

[James D. Macdonald]

Perhaps for The Gulag Archipelago Hapi meant One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?

[HapiSofi]

Perhaps for The Gulag Archipelago Hapi meant One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich?She did indeed, O telepathic one.

[aruna]

Good lord. Do they really?

Yep! Read the reviews for that book. Almost all of them - eventhe ones who like the book - complain about those letters. That was a huge oversight on the editor's part.

[aruna]

One of my favourite writing quotes is the following:

"The importance of novels and short stories in our society is great. Fiction supplies the only philosophy that many readers know; it establishes their ethical, social and material standards; it confirms them in their prejudices or opens their minds to a wider world. The influence of any widely read book can hardly be overestimated. If it is sentimental, shoddy or vulgar our lives are the poorer for the cheap ideals which it sets in circulation; if, as so rarely happens, it is a thoroughly good book, honestly conceived and honestly executed, we are all indebted to it."

Dorothea Brande, Becoming a Writer

[Mistook]

I won't discount the power of fiction, but I think it's an odd way to evaluate things when you start saying that good fiction is good for the public and bad fiction is bad for the public.

1984 and Farenheight 451 have value today because they broke through the prevailing morays of their times. They dared to challenge the status quo, and we are grateful in retrospect.

What kind of catch 22 do you set up, when you use this argument as your premise for denouncing DVC? I mean... to say that fiction changes the world, and therefore, one certain book should be ignored before it changes it for the worse... (?)

Well, once you do that you're just like the guy who opposed Orwell. And at the same time you give Orwell's legitimacy to Brown. And that calls Orwell into question and...

You can see it all spirals into a black hole.

[scarletpeaches]

But Orwell was a good writer. :)

[aruna]

Good writing challenges.

[aadams73]

Good writing also entertains.

[aruna]

Good writing challenges, entertains and enlightens.

[KTC]

Good writing puts you there.

[aruna]

Good writing makes you FEEL

[HapiSofi]

Did you never, as a teenager, read novels to find out how the world works?

[Aconite]

If you doubt that fiction can change the world, spend time wondering why certain groups fight so hard to keep Harry Potter out of school libraries.

[MacAllister]

I still read novels to figure out how the world works. Or rather, to reaffirm for myself what I've come to believe about how the world works.

When I encounter a book that contradicts that understanding, a variety of things can happen: I'm challenged to reassess what I held to be true; I'm angered and baffled; or sometimes, I'm disbelieving and disengage from the text with an almost audible snap.

[WriteRead]

What makes it a very good bk, is its subject, which is a gripper, and so, it succeeds in making the bk a keeper, and its very well documented and paced writing, but that's all in terms of good literature. It's not even a com lit and from my knowledge of the subject, which is quite extensive, I have the distinct feeling that the writer didn't intend it to be that. My strong feeling is that the bk was intended to be a catalyzing back burner to the highly controversial subject of JC and His bloodline, in being a strong proponent of this thesis.

As for a concise critique of the bk, I'd say that the characters are flat, the dialogues are shallow, w/o any pretense whatsoever, b/c it's so obvious, to make them more than a springboard to yet another development in the plot and to feed the uneducated reader (in the subject) w a big spoon. The "show, don't tell" kind of descriptions is totally absent and while I don't exactly mind it, it's so apparent to a trained eye that it starts to annoy at some pt.

I'd say that the bk is a well researched and paced documentary and not more.

Note - W/o an initial prior knowledge of the sub to understand it better, the bk is a bit of a shock to the uninitiated, so before reading the DVC, one has to read at least the first bk on the subject, "Holy Blood, HolyGrail", by Michael Paigent et al. Another exceptional bk on the sub is "Bloodline of the Holy Grail", by Laurence Gardner. The two bks are complementary, IMHO. The second bk is very esoteric.

Dan

[scarletpeaches]

That book is not well researched at all. Dan Brown lies about the research he claims to do, his books are based on untruths and religious groups that never existed, he makes things up and labels them as 'fact'...oh, and he's an absolute PANTS writer. I mean, he says the Priory of Sion really existed. It was made up for goodness' sake! The hoaxers said as much after HBHG was published! Brown merely remixed a book that was trickery from start to finish and called it 'DVC'. How much more of Brown's book is woven around 'makey-up stuff' to use a Scottishism?

Has anyone managed to find out whether or not he really did have an audience with the Pope, as he claims in the preface to A&D?

Nothing like claiming to be buddy-buddy with the Pontiff to lend your tales an air of authority, huh?

[WriteRead]

scarletpeach, I'm curious to know how do you know that "religious groups (that) never existed' and where did you read that "I mean, he says the Priory of Sion really existed. It was made up for goodness' sake! The hoaxers said as much after HBHG was published!"

Dan

[aadams73]

scarletpeach, I'm curious to know how do you know that "religious groups (that) never existed' and where did you read that "I mean, he says the Priory of Sion really existed. It was made up for goodness' sake! The hoaxers said as much after HBHG was published!"

Dan


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priory_of_Sion

This may shed some light on the subject for you. It's a good starting point.

[WriteRead]

On what subject? Being it a hoax, or the Priory? On both, I'm more than savvy. Pls, note that the Wiki mentions that "it is generally (emphasis mine, D.) believed that the Priory of Sion is in large part an elaborate hoax (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoax).", thus leaving it in limbo, really.

Dan

[HapiSofi]

Note - W/o an initial prior knowledge of the sub to understand it better, the bk is a bit of a shock to the uninitiated, so before reading the DVC, one has to read at least the first bk on the subject, "Holy Blood, HolyGrail", by Michael Paigent et al. Another exceptional bk on the sub is "Bloodline of the Holy Grail", by Laurence Gardner. The two bks are complementary, IMHO. The second bk is very esoteric.Is "esoteric" another word for "malarkey"?

[WriteRead]

Hapi, is such kind of q another form of showing knowledge, or was it something else you wanted to show, which I miss? Enlighten me, pls!

Dan

[Mistook]

Did you never, as a teenager, read novels to find out how the world works?

Yeah. I mean... I see what you mean. DVC is a rehash of a bunch of sensational B.S. that amounts to anti-Catholic libel. And I don't doubt that it is going to mess with more than a few impressionable minds, but at the same time, who, as a teenager, didn't fall under the spell of Ayn Rand and turn into a die hard existentialist for about three weeks?

I really remember thinking that Rand had all the answers, and feeling like people who couldn't see that were fools. But her philosophy wore thin, and I went on to the next thing.

And I highly doubt that Brown is going to end up with the same prestige as Rand when it's all said and done.

[aadams73]

On what subject? Being it a hoax, or the Priory? On both, I'm more than savvy. Pls, note that the Wiki mentions that "it is generally (emphasis mine, D.) believed that the Priory of Sion is in large part an elaborate hoax (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoax).", thus leaving it in limbo, really.

Dan

On the priory. You're certainly welcome to believe what you like, the link is just a little extra reading.

[reph]

...who, as a teenager, didn't fall under the spell of Ayn Rand and turn into a die hard existentialist for about three weeks?
That particular spell turns teenagers into Libertarians, not existentialists, but your main point stands.

[scarletpeaches]

aadams73 - thanks for posting that link. If someone's curious enough about testing the veracity of DVC, there's plenty there to be going on with.

Interesting snippet I copied while wandering through the Wikipedia maze myself:

Author Dan Brown, in his bestseller The Da Vinci Code, makes reference to this book, and uses several of the above claims as key plot elements; indeed, Baigent and Leigh have attempted to sue Dan Brown for plagiarism, on the grounds that his book makes extensive use of their research and that one of the characters is named Leigh, has a surname (Teabing) which is an anagram of Baigent, and has a physical description strongly resembling Henry Lincoln

Rather amusing, I thought.

[WriteRead]

As Priory of Sion body looks at face value as a hoax, there are two issues here, in this book: JC's bloodline and its guardians, if any, which Priory of Sion would want to be the main one.

Even if the Priory of Sion is a hoax, we are still left w the highly explosive and controversial issue of JC's bloodline, which includes the Desposyni/Rex Deus claimants.

So let's differentiate between the two. In doing so, it will be much easier to deal w the book as the catalyst I mentioned as Dan Brown's intention in propagating those notions.

In the end it really should not matter who and if is guarding the bloodline, as far as it is solely concerned. The real fact and the one that matters is that there were such bodies which thought it to be real enough to consider themselves its guardians and to take upon themselves this task, the Temple Knights and the Cathars, Priory of Sion or not.

Dan

[Mistook]

If Jesus really sired a blood line, you'd think we'd be seeing people walking on water, healing the sick, and that kind of stuff.

Really, the whole idea of christianity is that it transcends the physical. There very much is a family of Christ, but it's a spiritual one, into which any human can be reborn through the Holy Spirit.

And so... there were descendants of Jesus, namely the apostles, who did carry on with his miracles, and perhaps there are even faith healers among us today, but that power doesn't come to them through DNA.

[WriteRead]

Apart from the spiritual descendacy to JC, which is of absolute value, as you mention, Mistook, His physical one is equally, if not more imp, b/c then, the patriarchy would've been entirely different and not the one who built the church as it was. Witness to that are the quarrels between the Paulists and the church in Jerusalem, w James at its head.

Dan

[Mistook]

I'm not sure exactly what you're getting at. Are you saying that the Apostle James is one in the same with the James referred to as the brother of Jesus? I know there's some debate on that, but even if he were Jesus' brother, that doesn't seem to give him any special claim to lead the church.

For one thing, Jesus chose Peter (no relation) to lead the church. For another thing, Jesus was supposedly conceived of the Holy Spirit, and one would tend to doubt that his brothers would've been conceived the same way. A third point is that the gospel writers had no word for "cousin" as we understand it, and would have referred to cousins as either brothers or sisters.

[WriteRead]

What I meant is that if He was married and He is from the House of David, then His children would have to be High Priests and all. The whole pt in the Holy Blood Linesaga and the guardianship of His bloodline, whoever took this task, is that His family was supressed to prevent it from taking over the church as the linear descendants of the House of David, to which were given the hereditary two high posts in the Jewish nation, the High Priesthood and the Kingship.

The fact is that on many church doors in France, elsewhere, and in Israel, too, as I saw w my own eyes in Nazareth, there is a pic or bas relief depicting a boat, to witness the flee of His wife, Mary the Magadalene and the gr surrounding her, which was led by Joseph the Ramati (Ha-rimathea), from Israel of then to the French Riviera, a place inhabited heavily w Jews as early as before those times.

As for cousin, BTW, I don't know what you mean by the lack of this word in the gospels, but in Hebrew (I'm from Isr, a Jewish guy) there is a word for it (transliterated): "ben-dod" (male), "bat-dodah" (female), literally, "son of uncle" and "girl of uncle" (w a female suffix).

For a good hereditary tree of His family, see this (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/tree.html). Note therein the James the Righteous, His brother, who was the head of the church in Jerusalem, the first bishop of Israel of then.
The heavy and inflamed debates between Paul, and eventually the Paulists, and the church of Jerusalem are well known.

The mysogonism which Paul and Peter introduced in the church and reflected for the first time in the famous gospel in which Peter asks JC why he loves, apparently, Mary (the Magadalene, considered by many to be the greatest disciple of Jesus), more than them, and which Mary is protesting, is another pt which (can) point(s) to the endless length to which the church went to prevent the family from taking over, as rightfully under the Jewish law.

Dan

[James D. Macdonald]

Are you 100% sure the boat didn't represent the "fishers of men" theme?

[HapiSofi]

WriteRead, there's no "if" about the Priory of Sion story being a hoax. It's been demonstrated six ways from Sunday, and the perpetrators have confessed that they made up the whole thing, forged the documentation, et cetera.

I don't see how you imagine the story about the JC/MM "bloodline" can survive the demolition of the Priory of Sion hoax. But just for the sake of the conversation, let's imagine that it's still in play.

It's commonly observed that we're all descended from Charlemagne. The same can be said about anyone that far back who didn't die childless. The Merovingians were the dynasty before the one which produced Charlemagne. They were a fecund and exogamous lot. If the JC/MM bloodline existed, and if it ran through the Merovingians, we're all descended from it.

[WriteRead]

Yes, I'm sure, James, as far as anyone can be about it.

For a good hereditary tree of His family, see this (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/religion/jesus/tree.html). Note there the James the Rgihteous, His brother, who was the head of the church in Jerusalem the first bishop of Israel of then.
The heavy and inflamed debates between Paul, and eventually the Paulists, and the church of Jerusalem, are well known.

The mysogonism which Paul and Peter introduced in the church and reflected for the first time in the famous gospel in which Peter asks JC why he loves, apparently, Mary (the Magadalene, considered by many to be the greatest disciple of Jesus), more than them, and which Mary is protesting, is another pt which (can) points to the endless length to which the church went to prevent the family from taking over, as rightfully under the Jewish law.

Dan

[WriteRead]

You said:

I don't see how you imagine the story about the JC/MM "bloodline" can survive the demolition of the Prior of Sion hoax. But just for the sake of the conversation, let's imagine that it's still in play.

What is exactly the logical connection you see between the JC bloodline and the guardians?

First of all, by any logic, both issues can exist absolutely separately from each other:

- Theoretically, the bloodline doesn't need a guardian to be born (and even thrive, eventually), and the guardians don't need the factual existence of it to claim the task and function as such.

- Factually, the bloodline was existent if only b/c for any Jew, and more so, for a rabbi, as was the case w JC, celibacy was not an option. As for guardians, anyone can claim to be guardian, w the guarded person wanting it or not.
In the case of the JC BL, there was a specific and necessary need for guardians, as the church did all it could to prevent the bloodline from taking over the church, even elimination, maybe. Now, if this guardian was the Priory of Sion, or not, does it really matter? So it was a hoax, okay, so let's discard it and go on w the acknowledgment of the JC continuous line.

Doing so, the church as we know it, becomes irrelevant, and even more, guilty of many bad things, at least in Judaic hereditary terms (preventing JC's line from taking the high posts of the jewish nation, as deemed lawfully). If the church wants to be a discipled institution, then she proved this more than needed, w JC's bloodline.

Dan

[reph]

for any Jew,...celibacy was not an option.
What about St. Paul?

[WriteRead]

What about St. Paul? Well, if they discarded the Kosher basics (as in the famous dream of Peter while sleeping on the roof of the Simeon the Bursi, in Jaffa, waiting for the meal to be served), a fundamental tenet of Judaism, and Paul tried to convince the church in Jerusalem, w James at its head, that circumcision is to be discarded, too, as described in Acts, then the church deviated from the Judaism which was known to everyone, to something that was not Judaism, but a diff thing, a diff religion.

This is not new, of course, many others "made" new religions, to witness the Amon one in Egypt, in Amarna, a very short and temporary new religion, an apostasy, for which the heretic was punished. This was the earliest new religion documented, right? Then, we have Islam, a modification of Judaism w Christian themes in it, we have the Sikhs, in Hinduism of about a 1k yrs ago, and so on and so forth.

BTW, Ain Rand was not a Libertarian (as you mentioned in one of your posts here, if I understood you correctly). She promoted the philosophy of Objectivism, something entirely diff than Libertarianism. Coincidentally, I read now, after reading many, many yrs ago "The Fountainhead", the "Atlas Shrugged".

Dan

[HapiSofi]

What about St. Paul? Well, if they discarded the Kosher basics (as in the famous dream of Peter while sleeping on the roof of the Simeon the Bursi, in Jaffa, waiting for the meal to be served), a fundamental tenet of Judaism, and Paul tried to convince the church in Jerusalem, w James at its head, that circumcision is to be discarded, too, as described in Acts, then the church deviated from the Judaism which was known to everyone, to something that was not Judaism, but a diff thing, a diff religion.

This is not new, of course, many others "made" new religions, to witness the Amon one in Egypt, in Amarna, a very short and temporary new religion, an apostasy, for which the heretic was punished. This was the earliest new religion documented, right? Then, we have Islam, a modification of Judaism w Christian themes in it, we have the Sikhs, in Hinduism of about a 1k yrs ago, and so on and so forth.

BTW, Ain Rand was not a Libertarian (as you mentioned in one of your posts here, if I understood you correctly). She promoted the philosophy of Objectivism, something entirely diff than Libertarianism. Coincidentally, I read now, after reading many, many yrs ago "The Fountainhead", the "Atlas Shrugged".Neurochemical disorder.

[aadams73]

All this, of course, is a moot point if there is no God and Jesus was just a man. (Have they ever found any solid proof that he ever existed?)

[WriteRead]

For Adams:

Yes, true, a mute pt in your terms.

As facts that can support your idea about the originality of JC, consider this (I won't go into the notion of God):

- There's a dispute about the originality of the JC story, in the following sense: in all of the Rome archives, there's no mention of such an occurence, when every crucifixion had to be authorized from the central pt of authority.

- There's no such place as Nazareth of that time: the place is not mentioned in the Talmud, nor in the Roman censuses of the time and place.

BUT, the story is concurred by a referrence in the Talmud about such a man at the same time and a certain death of his, similar to a crucifixion, that is that he was tied in a crucifixion fashion on a fence, like a tau (the greek letter) shape, essentially a T. The story is very accusative of him and the manner of his birth.

Considering all those facts, the appellation "from Nazareth" is apparently a confusion derived from the fact that "from" can be another meaning of the prefix "ha", which in Hebrew can also be "the" : "Jesus Ha-Natsrati", which can be understood thusly as "(Jesus) the Natsrati" or "from Natseret" (I won't go into the diffs between the words spellings, which stem from the language conjugation of the word, as a noun or adjectival).

If "from" is substituted w "the", then it makes more sense. In this way, "the" can be understood as an allusion to the fact that he belonged to a sect/gr/cult, which had as its main goal the preservation of something, in this case, the true and original meaning of the Judaic religion. This is b/c "Natsrati" can then be changed into Notsri, "the keeper, the guardian". If one bears in mind that the Hebrew word for Christian is Notsri, then the appellation "ha-Natsrati" makes much more sense. Incidentally, at the time, there were two such grs in Isr, named w a word having the common root "notser", meaning, "he keeps, guards".

Dan

[WriteRead]

Reph said:
What about St. Paul?

In my re to you, I extended beyond the celibacy of the Catholic creed, w/o touching on it, but indeed, there's no referrence to the fact that Paul was or was not married.

But as the God's commandment says "go and multiply", a regular male in Judaism is expected to fulfill it, more so a rabbi. I can think of no such occurrence in which a rabbi is not married, even in the modern days and I, personally, know of no such person among my religious acquaintances in Isr. Marriage is considered a fundamental corner stone in the Judaic social precepts.
Just to make a pt, there's a very well known Judaic religious saying, which I'm not sure where it appears, that (free translation) "It's not good for a human being to be alone", implying that marriage is a must.

Now, the fact is that the Catholic church made it mandatory for priests to be celibate, so this is another fundamental of the new religion that Paul and Peter founded.

Dan

[reph]

Dan, my source for Paul's celibacy is I Corinthians 7, especially verses 7-9.

[WriteRead]

I won't argue w that, of course, but the fact that he was not married when he started his Christian life, doesn't say anything about the marriage norm in Judaism, which, again, is a must, almost. It's just that he was unmarried and being engrossed in the new life, he also didn't pursue it further.

In all honesty, though, I have to admit that as far as JC is concerned, the celibacy pt is not a major one, only circumstantial. But from all the other things described in all the bks about the JCBL, it is taken as a real, normal thing. To this, I subscribe by believing in it.

Dan

[scarletpeaches]

The apostle Peter was married - Matthew 8:14
Celibacy is not a requirement for Christian ministers - 1Timothy 4:1-4

Of course it was expected for men to marry during the Jewish era, but there are two important points here: Jesus was no ordinary Jewish man. (Depending on your beliefs, you may or may not think he was the Messiah). He knew he was going to die so it would have been cruel of him to marry already knowing his wife would soon be a widow. Plus, he brought the Jewish system of things to an end, instituted a 'new religion', if you like, Christianity, and a new way of life came into being then. So the old ways no longer applied, and even the apostle Paul recommended singleness for those who had the will to live that way. But there was no right or wrong way when it came to singleness/marrying, only the 'forbidding to marry' (1Tim 4:4) would be wrong as it's up to the individual to decide for themselves, and the early Christian leaders - except Jesus, as I've already said - were married themselves.

[Danger Jane]

I'm pretty sure the celibacy thing in the Catholic Church was done in the middle ages, during the really corrupt time in the Church, so that priests' land possessions would go back to te Church, rather than being left to wives or children...I don't think this was a fundamental on which the Church was founded.

[James D. Macdonald]

Nancy's essentially correct. There are saints who were both married and priests.

The last time the question was seriously debated was at the Council of Trent, where sacerdotal celibacy was left in place as a way to differentiate the Catholic church from the various protestants. It was not, however, made a defined doctrine.

[WriteRead]

Nancy's remark: Though very tempting to think so, nowhere I checked is property given as a practical reason for celibacy in the church.
The Essenes, to which by some, Jesus belonged, were celibate, so it appears that he was unmarried, but b/c He was from the House of David, and so, elligible to Kingship and High Priesthood, He, in all probability, was married, to ensure the line, and so, by implication, may have had offspring.

In this regard, among many others, I highly recommend Laurence Gardner's bk, "Bloodline of the Holy Grail", more than "HBHG" by Baigent et al.

Dan

[brinkett]

I'm pretty sure the celibacy thing in the Catholic Church was done in the middle ages, during the really corrupt time in the Church, so that priests' land possessions would go back to te Church, rather than being left to wives or children...
I'm not sure that's true. I googled "catholic celibacy origin" to see what would come up and among the hits was this (see the last question):

http://www.christendom-awake.org/pages/mcgovern/ncrinterview.htm

After reading a few of the hits, my impression is that the answer to "what's the origin of celibate priests?" will depend on who you ask and how they view celibate priests (or the Catholic Church).

[WriteRead]

Wiki for celibacy (I prefer to bring the whole quote, instead of just the link). Note the lack of property as a practical reason for it.

quote:

Celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church
The given reasons for clerical celibacy in the Catholic Church are both theological and practical. Foremost in the theological realm are the desire to follow the teachings of Jesus with regard to chastity and the sacrifice of married life for the "sake of the Kingdom" (Luke 18:28-30, Matthew 19:27-30; Mark 10:20-21), and to follow the example of Jesus Christ in being "married" to the Church, which is seen in Catholic theology as the "Bride of Christ". Also of import are the teachings of Paul of Tarsus that chastity is the superior state of life, and his desire expressed in I Corinthians 7:7-8, "I would that all men were even as myself- but every one has his proper gift from God; one after this manner, and another after that. But I say to the unmarried and the widows. It is good for them if they so continue, even as I."

On a more practical level, the reasons for celibacy are given by the Apostle Paul in I Corinthians 7:7-8, 32-35: "But I would have you to be without solicitude. He that is without a wife is solicitous for the things that belong to the Lord, how he may please God. But he that is with a wife, is solicitous for the things of the world, how he may please his wife: and he is divided. And the unmarried woman and the virgin thinketh on the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and spirit. But she that is married thinketh on the things of this world how she may please her husband. And this I speak for your profit, not to cast a snare upon you, but for that which is decent and which may give you power to attend upon the Lord without impediment."

Roman Catholics allege that, from the Church's beginnings, Christian priests were to abstain from sexual contact, even from sexual contact with their wives. On the other hand, no such teaching or historical claim appears among the Eastern Orthodox or Oriental Orthodox. Catholics see their doctrine as foreshadowed by the periodic abstinence of the Old Testament Levites before they approached their altars. What Catholics see as the perfect priesthood of Jesus Christ, and in the examples of the Apostles, called for a much greater sacrifice. Their belief is that what the Old Testament priests offered at their altars was not salvific, but the bread and wine that is offered by New Testament priests becomes the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Jesus Christ Himself, Who is then "offered to the Father" as the perfect oblation.

It is further claimed that many married priests failed, though, to remain sexually continent from their wives, so celibacy was introduced, although this does not explain why celibacy is not imposed upon priests of those Catholic churches that follow the Eastern Rite but are still in communion with the Pope.

Among the early Church statements on the topic of sexual continence and celibacy are "Decreta" and "Cum in unum" of Pope Siricius c. 385, which claimed that clerical sexual abstinence was the apostolic practice that must be followed by ministers of the Church. However, this claim was never given credence at any Ecumenical Council, even in the 4th century. Two Canons from the following Councils also help us understand the Roman Catholic position regarding continence and celibacy of the early Church's priests:

Council of Elvira (300-306)
Canon 33: It is decided that marriage be altogether prohibited to bishops, priests, and deacons, or to all clerics placed in the ministry, and that they keep away from their wives and not beget children; whoever does this, shall be deprived of the honor of the clerical office.
Council of Carthage (390)
Canon 3: It is fitting that the holy bishops and priests of God as well as the Levites, i.e. those who are in the service of the divine sacraments, observe perfect continence, so that they may obtain in all simplicity what they are asking from God; what the Apostles taught and what antiquity itself observed, let us also endeavour to keep... It pleases us all that bishop, priest and deacon, guardians of purity, abstain from conjugal intercourse with their wives, so that those who serve at the altar may keep a perfect chastity.
These canons are purely local to Latin-rite Roman Catholics, as the prohibitions are not even extended to the Eastern-Rite Catholics in communion with Rome.

end of quote

Dan

[Danger Jane]

Interesting.

Although I am Catholic, I'm not a theologian...it's hard to be a theologian in high school, lol. I haven't really researched the topic specifically.

But since Wikipedia can be edited or put about by pretty much anyone, doesn't that render it a little less credible than other sources? I mean--the internet is the riskiest resource available, even though it's great.

[reph]

Nancy, mistakes on Wikipedia get corrected quickly because so many people contribute.

[WriteRead]

In my post 100 I wrote:
"In all honesty, though, I have to admit that as far as JC is concerned, the celibacy pt is not a major one, only circumstantial. But from all the other things described in all the bks about the JCBL, it is taken as a real, normal thing. To this, I subscribe by believing in it."

Contrary to what can be understood, I meant the lack thereoff of celibacy, that is, JC was married and had children.

BTW, this alone, beside the threat to an apostolic church and not a hereditary one, to which 'mistook' hinted rightly as a perfectly normal kind of church, is a bombshell for the all-imp feature of resurrection in the Christian creed. But then, a Messiah can be a human alright, methinks.

Dan

[WriteRead]

I truly pondered about the encyclopedic value of Wiki vs the conventional others. But reph points to something really nice: It's, or can be, very quickly corrected in case of a mistake b/c of the sheer no of contributors. And to be frank, the info for "celibacy", frex, was more complete than in other sources.

Dan

[Danger Jane]

That's good to know.

Although--wouldn't it make sense to root a decision made to preserve the Church's hold on land in the Bible? It's harder for the priests to argue with the Bible than it is with a rather corrupt ruling...

Ah, not to sound like a Church dissenter...at all...

[Kitsch]

When a book sells as well as The DaVinci Code has, it's probably more educational to figure out what the author has done right, rather than what he's done wrong.
(my $0.02)

Yes, I agree. Remember, he's managing to make a living from writing. I should be so lucky.

[WriteRead]

There are some who look at it not as a business, but as an art. For them, as far as good writing is concerned, the bk is a very bad ex of it.

Dan

[scribbler1382]

If they're so interested in art, perhaps they should spend their time creating something that is art instead of spending all their time traveling the globe and pointing out what isn't art.

[Medievalist]

The boat over the portal is standard iconography; it refers to Noah, and the ark -- the ark is a "type", an OT pre-figuration of the christian church -- just as Noah saved humanity in his ark, so the church saves humanity.

This is really really standard -- the Princeton Index of Christian Art has hundreds of examples, in sculpture and mss. It's even referred to in medieval sermons and hand books. There are references to the ark as a type of the church in medieval drama.

[Medievalist]

Celibacy (or rather the lack of it) amongst Irish monastics and priests was an issue at Whitby, though Easter calculation and tonsure are the ones you mostly read about.

[FolkloreFanatic]

And I don't doubt that it is going to mess with more than a few impressionable minds, but at the same time, who, as a teenager, didn't fall under the spell of Ayn Rand and turn into a die hard existentialist for about three weeks?

I didn't. Eugh. :)

I really remember thinking that Rand had all the answers, and feeling like people who couldn't see that were fools. But her philosophy wore thin, and I went on to the next thing.

The question is, how much damage did you do during that time? ;) Kidding.

And I highly doubt that Brown is going to end up with the same prestige as Rand when it's all said and done.

3rd and final bashing of existentialism:

Ayn Rand? Prestige? *chokes on tea*

[Tippy]

It doesn't hurt, either, that he taps into a body of mythology that lots of people are already interested in.


I think that's it.

Dan Brown had a story to tell - one that has never been told before, and he tried to put it in a form people would read and enjoy.

As I was reading it, I remember thinking the author must have badly wanted to get his point across to a large number of people - hence the standard mystery/romance format.

His research was fascinating - his writing lackluster, but it didn't really matter. I didn't care what happened to the characters, that was secondary to discovering what he had uncovered.

[pianoman5]

His research was fascinating - his writing lackluster, but it didn't really matter. I didn't care what happened to the characters, that was secondary to discovering what he had uncovered.

Fascinating research indeed. But it wasn't Dan Brown's. The credit for this interesting mélange of fact, supposition and fabrication goes to Messrs Baigent, Leigh and Lincoln who published Holy Blood, Holy Grail (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0440136482/104-2652464-6057529?v=glance)in 1983.

They are, perhaps, rightly aggrieved that he appears to have lifted the entire structure from their book and are pursuing their claim through the courts. Strangely enough, he didn't even try to disguise the fact. He even named one of his characters Saunière, who appears in another role in their 'tale', and they couldn't help noticing that another character is named Leigh Teabing, a name that no sensible human would have, and could conceivably have been derived from the name of one of the authors, Leigh, and an anagram of another, Baigent.

This is not to detract from the fact that Dan Brown took the idea and ran with it, with a success that needs no further comment, but to attribute to Mr Brown any lengthily pursued scholarship is possibly drawing a long bow.

[Flapdoodle]

A friend once gave me a Clive Cussler novel, Atlantis something, which, I have to say, was beyond Dan Brown in badness. Rampant silliness, sunken civilisations, sub-Roger Moore Bondery, Nazis who Saved Hitler's Brain...

There always was a big market for this stuff, and Brown was pootling along happily in its midlist. Then he drops Da Vinci's name and some half-baked pseudohistory and takes off into the stratosphere, where Cussler's preposterous hero Dirk Pitt, late of the Office of Submarine Symbology (or something), cannot follow.

Clive Cussler's books are so bad they're good. I read a couple once on holiday, and the obligatory scene where Cussler appears in his own novel and saves the hero had me rolling round the floor.