Faramond wrote:Yesterday I took a walk and while out I popped into the bookstore and squizzed a paperback copy of the DVC. I checked out the "fact sheet" and as people have said it is after the half title page thing. However, I have to say that my impression, even knowing better, was that these were meant as actual real life facts, not fictional facts. Yes, I now know better ... I accept the explanation about the title page and everything. But I also believe that this distiction will be lost on almost all readers and they will come away thinking that Dan Brown is claiming these are facts, not fiction.
Just an observation.
"What do you fear, lady?" Aragorn asked.
"A cage," Éowyn said. "To stay behind bars, until use and old age accept them, and all chance of doing great deeds is gone beyond recall or desire.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Despite its location, there is no doubt that Dan Brown expects the following to be considered as facts:
FACT:
The Priory of Sion—a European secret society founded in 1099—is a real organization. In 1975 Paris's Bibliothèque Nationale discovered parchments known as Les Dossiers Secrets, identifying numerous members of the Priory of Sion, including Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Leonardo da Vinci.
The Vatican prelature known as Opus Dei is a deeply devout Catholic sect that has been the topic of recent controversy due to reports of brainwashing, coercion, and a dangerous practice known as "corporal mortification." Opus Dei has just completed construction of a $47 million World Headquarters at 243 Lexington Avenue in New York City.
All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.
Whether its fact or not is another issue. Mr Brown certainly seems to believe that it is fact, or did when he wrote the novel.
All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.
Alatar, the Europeans on B77 were discussing this claim about a year ago after reading the book. (Hobby gave a link on an earlier page.) They all said that one of the most irritating things about the book was that none of the descriptions of architecture or where things were located was correct. The book is so systematically inaccurate that they were wondering if this was deliberate. Ber said that the description of the artwork was accurate, but you can see from the pic of the Mona Lisa that I posted a few pages back that the 'discontinuity' which looms so large in his plot is really in the eye of the beholder. His website claim that there is some big discussion among art historians regarding the secret symbolism of da Vinci seems to be manufactured as well.
In light of this, it's not clear to me that Dan Brown intended anything at all to be received as factual. It is too easy to verify that the Mona Lisa is not in a room by itself, for example. Distortions of this sort should alert us to the nature of the 'conceit' the author is trying to establish. He has reimagined the map of Paris as well as the history of Europe.
It ought to be fun, a game really, to go through the book looking for such inaccuracies, and perhaps Brown hoped that this is how readers would approach it? Perhaps the inaccuracies were placed there with a wink, originally? It stops being fun, of course, if Doubleday insists that he participate in the marketing and give interviews as if his intention were something quite different.
It made $77 million in North America over the weekend, which is very solid and right in with the predictions I saw. The test will be how well it holds up on its second weekend. If word of mouth is bad, it will drop a lot. If not, it might drop by only 50% or less.
I have trouble believing it's not going to drop. Those reviews were abysmal, and while I don't always agree with reviewers, when they're practically unanimous either way, that's kind of a hint.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
I, too, have liked some universally panned films. And hated some universally raved ones.
This makes us both weird, you realize.
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
"Crtics nearly uninamously panned my film. Word of mouth after the opening weekend ranged from barely audible praise to explosive decrying as 'the worst movie ever'.
I comforted myself with the fact that it had one of the largest opening weekends in history and began pre-production on 'Da Vinci Code II: Leonardo Reloaded'..."
Actually they are working on both sequels at the same time: Leonardo Reloadedand Leonardo Revolution.
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
"Spirits in the shape of hawks and eagles flew ever to and from his halls; and their eyes could see to the depths of the seas, and pierce the hidden caverns beneath the world."
“There, peeping among the cloud-wrack above a dark tor high up in the mountains, Sam saw a white star twinkle for a while. The beauty of it smote his heart, as he looked up out of the forsaken land, and hope returned to him. For like a shaft, clear and cold, the thought pierced him that in the end the Shadow was only a small and passing thing: there was light and high beauty for ever beyond its reach.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Return of the King
Next time the codebreaker discovers secret symbols in Mah Jongg tiles, leading him by obscure ways to the discovery of an ancient secret society, whose members include Kublai Khan and Chairman Mao, a society whose task it is to guard the secret that Confucius was an alcoholic.
Parmamaite wrote:Next time the codebreaker discovers secret symbols in Mah Jongg tiles, leading him by obscure ways to the discovery of an ancient secret society, whose members include Kublai Khan and Chairman Mao, a society whose task it is to guard the secret that Confucius was an alcoholic.
This is good, Parma, but it doesn't go far enough.
Confucius should be an alcoholic cross-dresser whose secret passion was knitting pithy sayings into scarves using size 0 circular needles. Dickens actually got the idea for Madame Dufarge from a hidden manuscript detailing this knitting obsession. Meantime, the different factions race against time and each other to discover the secret, secret, secret saying encoded in the scarf buried in Xanadu with Kublai Khan and his many maidens and merry men.
Or...something.
"Live! Live! Live! Life is a banquet, and most poor suckers are starving to death!" - Auntie Mame
JewelSong wrote:Confucius should be an alcoholic cross-dresser whose secret passion was knitting pithy sayings into scarves using size 0 circular needles. Dickens actually got the idea for Madame Dufarge from a hidden manuscript detailing this knitting obsession. Meantime, the different factions race against time and each other to discover the secret, secret, secret saying encoded in the scarf buried in Xanadu with Kublai Khan and his many maidens and merry men.
Or...something.
I think you've got a blockbuster on your hands!
And I read your last sentence as manLy maidens.
If there was anything that depressed him more than his own cynicism, it was that quite often it still wasn't as cynical as real life.
