Dan Brown found the The Holy Grail when he published the Da Vinci Code. The book with its barely tolerable secret has been crafted by a sheer genius. And it is a book that made history in publishing. The book has earned Brown an estimated 140 million pounds and a film based on it starring Tom Hanks will be released soon by Sony Pictures who bought the film rights for 3.1 million pounds.
That he possesses the rare kind of genius to corner a mass market is beyond dispute: all his four novels are among the 10 best sellers.
The Da Vinci Code starts with a standard plot - the murder of the highly respected curator at the Louvre in Paris. In his dying moments, he leaves cryptic clues, which force the police to bring in an expert on symbolism, Robert Langdon, who just happens to be in Paris lecturing on the topic that evening, and just happens to have had an appointment with the dead curator that very evening, which makes him a prime murder suspect. And drawn into the plot is the French cryptologist Sophie Neveu, who also happens to be the estranged granddaughter of the murdered curator.
However, what sets this book apart from a conventional thriller or a murder mystery are its implications on who-done-it.
In this review I am assuming that you are the 1 among the 2 out of 4 people who have read The Da Vinci Code.
The Da Vinci Code is by no means a great work of fiction. As the plot unfolds we learn of the symbolism in Da Vinci's paintings, including the Mona Lisa and The Last Supper.
Lot of people have accepted the convincing and skillfully crafted work as FACT. Doesn't Dan Brown himself have a declaration at the beginning of the book saying that all descriptions, rituals and architecture described in the book are authentic?
There is something exhilarating about discovering something that was hidden, something rare, an inside look, a covert meaning, a new voice testifying to supposedly new facts of newly unearthed evidence.
There is just enough truth contained in the story to whet the palate, and the rest is sugar and spice. And there's lots of sugar on every page to make the book hard to put down.
Da Vinci Code is a thrilling page-turner. It has become a bestseller. In such a masterfully crafted story, then, it can be difficult to discern where the fiction lies within this fiction. Are all the rocks being overturned? Is Dan Brown relating all the facts, or just the ones he needs to in order to put together a bestseller? For instance, can we know whether the Bible is reliable.
Fiction weaves in just enough truth to make it believable ? as though it spoke of things as they actually were. On the other hand, it can't be the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It would then be called a documentary. Having laid out a credible plot that the reader will accept as plausible, the author soars with his pen creatively into the realm of conspiracy and weaves together an enticing mixture of fact and fiction.
But when I finally put the book down, do I actually believe that Sherlock Homes existed?
Read on for some analysis that I have pieced together. Being a keen fan of Dan Brown and having gotten my hands into it now, I have tried to study the subject and read up on the 'truth'.
WARNING: In case you haven't read the book this may be a good point to rate my review. read further when you are though with the book, I will be having a feast for you waiting - shall we call it um, the last supper till you've had the actual supper?
Let me summarize the story: Langdon is implicated in the murder of the curator of the Louvre, who was the head an ultra-secret sect called the Priory of Sion, which has schemed away centuries trying to protect the truth of the Holy Grail, a 'cup' which was not the chalice depicted in the Last Supper, but Mary Magdalene herself, who was Jesus Christ's wife (no less!). Apparently Leonardo Da Vinci knew this as a former head of the Priory and covertly inserted clues in paintings like The Last Supper & the Mona Lisa. Langdon, the know-all on this subject discovers the truth, but chooses to keep it a secret that Jesus was really a human being and not a god, and that Mary Magdalene's tomb lies under the Louvre.
However many academic sources reveal otherwise and contradict Brown on all aspects - Da Vinci, Jesus' marriage, the sacred feminine and the Holy Grail):
The Mona Lisa is not a Leonardo self-portrait, nor is it a merging of the feminine and masculine as the book says - it is a portrait of a real client named Lisa del Giocondo, wife of Francesco di Bartolomeo del Giocondo and Leonardo did several versions of it. The name Mona Lisa is certainly not a mocking anagram of two Egyptian fertility deities Amon and L'Isa!
The Brownian stuff about Grail clues in Disney films, the Priory's being ancient when it's a 20th Century sect, Fibonacci numbers, are so easily debunked that the real joy of your book comes from finding tiny little fragments which are perfectly truthful? shall I say, er, the gospel truth (grin) ?
Brown lays all facts before us erroneously (perhaps purposefully):
the Church burned five million women as witches. Hmmm... The latest figures for deaths during the European witch craze are between 30,000 to 50,000 victims. Not all were executed by the Church, not all were women.
He claims that the motions of the planet Venus trace a pentacle symbolizing the goddess. However it has nothing to do with the length of the Olympiad and the ancient Olympic games, which were celebrated in honor of Zeus Olympias, not Aphrodite, and occurred every four years, not five.
The Priory - an actual organization officially registered with the French government in 1956 - makes extraordinary claims of antiquity as the 'real' power behind the Knights Templar.
It most likely originated after World War II and was first brought to public notice in 1962. Its illustrious list of Grand Masters which include Leonardo da Vinci, Issac Newton, and Victor Hugo is not credible, although it's presented as true by Brown. There are numerous websites - try a google search on Priory of Sion.
However the most unforgivable error (or deliberate misinterpretation) is that Brown takes a negative view of the Bible and a grossly distorted image of Jesus. For Brown he's neither the Messiah nor a humble carpenter but a wealthy, trained religious teacher just bent on regaining the throne of David.
Almost everything our fathers taught us about Christ is false. Huh? Even if I accept that it may not imply that everything Brown taught us is true.
Brown's interpretations of Da Vinci are as distorted as the rest of his information.
Leonardo Da Vinci was a genius - an engineer, a very talented inventor. To the most people, and especially the art world, he was a very talented artist, the man who created the Mona Lisa, the world's best known painting. In many ways, Brown's half-truths on Da Vinci serve to tear up the real man - he painted purely to earn a living to pursue his other interests.
People have bought the novel's premise as if it were equivalent an encyclopedia. Though can't say I blame them if Brown's talent was so convincing, I would let it go only as a novel.
A new tourism industry has sprung up around the book - ''Grail trails'' retracing the characters' steps in Westminster Abbey and Temple Church in London, the normally quiet village of Rosslyn in Scotland and tourists at the Louvre reputedly ignore Leonardo's Mona Lisa to ask staff: ''Is this the room where the curator was murdered?''
