Dan Brown speaks!

The reclusive novelist recently granted an interview to Parade, promoting his new novel, The Misplaced Metaphor—er, The Lost Symbol, due out next Tuesday:

What interests you about D.C.?
I'm fascinated by power, especially veiled power. Shadow power. The National Security Agency. The National Reconnaissance Office. Opus Dei. The idea that everything happens for reasons we're not quite seeing. It reminds me of religion a little. The power that religion has is that you think nothing is random: If there's a tragedy in my life, that's God testing me or sending me a message. That's what conspiracy theorists do. They say, "The economy's terrible? Oh, that's not random. That's a bunch of rich guys in Prague who sat down and..."

Are you religious?
I was raised Episcopalian, and I was very religious as a kid. Then, in eighth or ninth grade, I studied astronomy, cosmology, and the origins of the universe. I remember saying to a minister, "I don't get it. I read a book that said there was an explosion known as the Big Bang, but here it says God created heaven and Earth and the animals in seven days. Which is right?" Unfortunately, the response I got was, "Nice boys don't ask that question." A light went off, and I said, "The Bible doesn't make sense. Science makes much more sense to me." And I just gravitated away from religion.

Wow. I'm...um...wow. Really? Really? No searching for answers in thick books of theology? No examination of the history of Christian philosophy and what great thinkers such as Aquinas and others had to say about creation and such? No deep talks with his parents about these matters? How revealing is it that Brown decided the Bible did not make sense when he was supposedly blown off by a flippant, light-weight pastor? His response does not sound sensible, but emotional.

By the way, his answer doesn't jibe well with what he said in a 2003 interview, in response to the question, "Are you a Christian?":

DB: I am, although perhaps not in the most traditional sense of the word. If you ask three people what it means to be Christian, you will get three different answers. Some feel being baptized is sufficient. Others feel you must accept the Bible as immutable historical fact. Still others require a belief that all those who do not accept Christ as their personal savior are doomed to hell. Faith is a continuum, and we each fall on that line where we may. By attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith, we end up debating semantics to the point where we entirely miss the obvious-that is, that we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment. I consider myself a student of many religions. The more I learn, the more questions I have. For me, the spiritual quest will be a life-long work in progress.

So he gravitated away from religion but still remained a Christian? Actually, it makes complete sense, as The Da Vinci Code was very much about religion being bad, spirituality being good. As I noted in this 2004 essay, it seems that "just about everyone is a Christian, including those who reject the existence or the divinity of Jesus and therefore are Christian simply by virtue of having an opinion about the Christ. Exhibit A is Brown, who says he is a Christian, but adds, 'although perhaps not in the most traditional sense of the word.' (Meaning he doesn't believe Jesus was the Christ, just a 'mere mortal prophet,' in the words of one of his characters.) But Brown does believe 'we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment.' So there you have it: Anybody can be a Christian, as long as he doesn't mind the term and can define it however he desires."

Of course, it's always interesting to hear people rigidly chide others for "attempting to rigidly classify ethereal concepts like faith" and then rigidly asserting that "we are all trying to decipher life's big mysteries, and we're each following our own paths of enlightenment." Brown has an Obama-like penchant for presenting himself as the cool mean between two hot extremes, while actually holding to one of the extremes. Back to the new interview:

Where are you now?
The irony is that I've really come full circle. The more science I studied, the more I saw that physics becomes metaphysics and numbers become imaginary numbers. The farther you go into science, the mushier the ground gets. You start to say, "Oh, there is an order and a spiritual aspect to science."

What led you to write about the Sacred Feminine, a woman-centered version of Christianity, in The Da Vinci Code?
Part of it was my mom--she is strong in her convictions and yet absolutely open to embracing a change in them. Part of it was falling in love and also looking at other religions, especially older ones, paganism, the Mother Earth concept. And some of it came from looking at the destructive force of man and saying, "Look at what we're doing. If we spent half the intellect and money we spend on killing each other on solving problems, wouldn't that be great?" I kind of equate that with testosterone. You say, "What if God were a woman? What if we embraced our feminine side--the more creative, passive, loving side?" It's a gross generalization, but all those things added up to my celebrating the Sacred Feminine.

"I kind of equate that with testosterone"? Yep, man's destructive impulses and evil inclinations are the result of a chemical/hormonal imbalance. We need to get in touch with our feminine side! Emasculators, unite! (Or should it be, "Epicenes, unite!"?) I'd rather go with Chesterton, who stated that original sin "is the only part of Christian theology which can really be proved" (From "The Maniac", Orthodoxy). After all, I prefer to think my disdain for Dan Brown's form of shallow sophistication is rooted in a love for truth and not in a primal male need to attack weaker creatures.

Comments

[Ed Peters]

dan brown and the triumph of the banal.

[Augustine]

If men were more in touch with "our feminine side" (if I had one, it'd be lesbian), we'd gossip each other to death! :-D

[Bob the Ape]

When you're wounded and left on Afghanistan's plains,
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Jest roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
And go to your gawd like a soldier.
- Kipling, “Young British Soldier”

Creative, passive, loving side indeed.

[Sandra Miesel]

The Prologue printed with the interview linked above describes the initiation of a Knight Templar, the highest degree in Royal Arch Masonry (which is limited to Christians only). Maybe the big Secret will involve a non-Christian or atheist gaining access to this degree and its "light."

The writing is so bad, it's self-parody.