Da Vinci Hoax Blog

In case you were wondering where I will be this coming week...

This Tuesday evening, May 16th, I'll be at the Catholic Information Center in Washington, D.C., to show The Da Vinci Hoax DVD and give a talk. It begins at 6:30 p.m. And for those who don't know, the Center is run by ... Opus Dei. Gotta like that! More info can be found here.

Then it's on to the Big Apple to (hopefully) give some interviews and maybe even pop up on a news program or three on Wednesday. On Thursday evening I will be giving a presentation to the Legatus chapter in Morris County, New Jersey. Then back home early Friday morning (a mere seven hours!) to pack, catch up on this and that, and then attend a 10:30 p.m. showing of (gasp!) The Da Vinci Code. On Saturday we head to Spokane to visit with close friends for a few days, then on to Plains, Montana to attend my parents' 40th wedding anniversary (congrats, Mom and Dad!).

A mostly complete schedule of my various talks and appearances during the next three months can be found here. (Please note that the June 10-12 Fullness of Truth Conference has been cancelled.) I will not be traveling in August unless absolutely necessary, and then plan just one or two trips a month through the rest of the year. I have a lot of work to catch up on, and will be trying to finish a book manuscript by the end of the year. And for those who are curious, my next book is a complete and thorough refutation of everything written by Danielle Steele.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Sunday, May 14, 2006 at 08:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

But at least the modern-day details in TDVC are accurate. Right?

Wrong. Just one of many examples, given by a reader from England:

I grew up in the Inner Temple, London, and subsequently was educated at Westminster School. As a result, I had free and constant access to two of the scenes of the Da Vinci Code, and for this reason I can say with confidence that Dan Brown has either never been to the Temple and Westminster Abbey Chapterhouse, or did so long before he wrote his book and therefore had forgotten the geography.

From the Temple Church, the heroes of the story run to Temple Station, and from there take the underground to King's College. But (a) Temple Station is in fact the nearest underground station to King's College and (b) King's College is closer to the Temple Church on foot than Temple Underground Station is.

From the Chapter House at Westminster there is no direct connecting route to or from the Abbey. As in most monasteries, you have to leave the Abbey, walk along the cloister, and enter the Chapter House from there. There is no view over College Gardens (named after my old school which uses them for cocktail parties - incidentally the oldest lawn in the world).

This reminds me of something written by Dan Burstein, editor of Secrets of the Code. He wrote (and I paraphrase, because I don't have his book with me and I'm on the road) that Dan Brown is actually more accurate the further back in history he goes in The Da Vinci Code. But if you can't trust an author to be accurate about modern-day details that can be confirmed through direct observation, or via trusted resources (maps, travel guides, etc.), why trust him about ancient history?  Weird.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Tuesday, May 02, 2006 at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (8) | TrackBack (0)

My rambling thoughts about TDVC movie captured in print...

... in this recent piece by Stephen Hunt. It's worth reading in its entirety, but here are some of my comments (no, my name hasn't changed from "Olson" to "Olsen." Just a typo on Hunt's part):

“My guess is that if they ‘soften’ it at all, it will be a lot of smoke and mirrors,” said Olsen. “To a certain degree, it’s easier to soften the premise in a movie than in a book, which has to be a more boldly stated fact." In a film, Olsen notes, "You can do it in the dialogue." Meaning that a potentially unreliable character — or characters — can state positions that may or may not ever be objectively presented. Even given that wiggle room, Olsen says, the film "will have to keep [the premise] to make the whole thing work. Otherwise, what’s the point? They shouldn’t even call it The Da Vinci Code.”

In the old days, there was a Catholic Film Board. Priests would actually warn against certain films — everything from a vampire film called Lemora to The Life of Brian to The Last Temptation of Christ — in their Sunday sermons.

These days, the Catholic Film Board has been replaced by Christian bloggers like Welborn, Olsen and Nicolosi. A common thread on their blogs and in interviews I did with Olsen and Welborn is that Hollywood — and mainstream American media, by and large — is "tone deaf" when it comes to the conservative Christian community.

“Stop insulting us,” Welborn said in a phone interview. “Stop making the Christian character in your movies the hypocrite, the villain.” Welborn referenced, in addition to Da Vinci Code, the film Saved. “Saved was basically a satire of organized religion,” Welborn said of the 2004 comedy starring Mandy Moore, Jena Malone and Macaulay Culkin. “It made fun of Christians. And I heard from someone that marketing people in Hollywood thought that they could lure the same people who went to see Passion to see a movie which essentially mocks Christians. I don’t know what’s in their head sometimes.”

“I’m a little bit cynical about Hollywood’s approach to traditional Christians,” Olsen said. “Starting with the ridiculous reaction to Passion of the Christ. Now, with Da Vinci Code, everyone is saying, ‘It’s just a movie, get over it.’ Well, if that’s the case, why was everyone so wound up about Passion? In the case of Da Vinci Code, here we have a novel that is completely historically inaccurate ... and is bigoted towards Catholics. If these themes come out in the film, why shouldn’t we be upset?”

Olsen wasn’t completely dismissive of the film, however. “In one sense, the movie has to be better than the book. Ron Howard is a competent, pretty good director. Tom Hanks is a great actor. And the supporting cast is pretty good. Did you know Tom Hanks is a practicing Greek Orthodox? And Ron Howard has been a longtime member of the Presbyterian Church.”

In Olsen’s view, the problem faced by a film like Da Vinci is that, if it truly strove to have an individual voice comparable to the book's, it would need to have been brought to life outside the studio system.

“If Passion had been made by the studios, by the time it made it through the system, everything that made it great would have been bowdlerized. They dilute it ... water it down. You just have so many hands in the pie. It’s only in independent film where you ever see a strong point of view. Now, I like a big popcorn movie as much as anyone, but it takes Mel going off on his own to get that particular point of view expressed.”

So will Olsen be attending the film?

“Oh, yeah, absolutely,” he said. “In fact, if I didn’t, my publisher would put a gun to my head. The week it comes out, me and my co-author (Susan Miesel) will be guests on the Eternal Word Network, talking about the movie.”

Yes, yes, that last remark contains at least two errors. No gun will be put to my head by anyone at Ignatius Press. If they really want to make me sweat, they'll tell me that if I don't do X, they will make me translate one of Hans Urs von Balthasar's trilogies from German into French and then into Japanese. That's far more frightening. Secondly, Sandra Miesel and I will be on "EWTN Live" on Wednesday, May 3rd; the DVC movie comes out on Friday, May 19th. That week I will actually be in New York and New Jersey, giving talks and interviews.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Thursday, April 06, 2006 at 08:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

"The novel has really given people a new way to look at these destinations and these sights."

So says Jennifer Paull of Fodors Travel. As you probably know, Fodors publishes travel guides to help real people traveling to real cities and real countries. But now Fodors has published Fodor's Guide to The Da Vinci Code:

This fully illustrated guide to the best-selling novel gives you fresh insight into the Da Vinci Code phenomenon. Following the path of the novel's characters, Fodor's Guide to The Da Vinci Code delves into the locations, people, historic events, and symbols involved in the story.

Inside you'll find answers to questions such as: Do cryptexes really exist? Is there a secret chamber below Rosslyn Chapel? And what did conservators discover when they restored Leonardo's The Last Supper? Photographs interviews, maps, and smart lively essays from experts in their fields reveal the eye-opening true tales behind the mystery.

Uh, isn't the novel just a novel? Isn't that what so many people keep saying to us silly Christians who are clearly too dull to understand the difference between fiction and reality? Or, is this just a marketing ploy? Of course it's a marketing ploy — and one that shamlessly revels in the nonsensical and stupid claims made by the novel. And Fodor's website features "The Da Vinci Code Tour," (Paris, London, Scotland, England, and New York!), and includes quotes from the novel while resorting to this sort of silly copy-writing:

"A must-read before a trip to Paris," wrote "Jay" on the Fodors.com Travel Talk forums earlier this year. The book he was describing: Dan Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code, a suspense story wrapped around a lecture on art and religion. Although the real meaning behind Leonardo's art is ultimately unknowable, the real-life places in which Brown has set his tale are known to historians and tourists throughout the world, and the book has inspired travelers to visit them.. ...

The Da Vinci Code opens with a late-night visit by the police to Robert Langdon, a prominent symbologist from Harvard University. The curator of the Louvre has been killed inside the museum, and a cryptic message has been found alongside the body. Thus begins a tale involving murder, religious intrigue, and a quest for the Holy Grail. To operatives of the Vatican and Opus Dei, a conservative Catholic group, the secrets the curator was trying to protect flew in the face of church teachings, giving both organizations an incentive to suppress them. [emphasis added]

So, in light of this copy (and there are other examples), what does it mean to say, "The novel has really given people a new way to look at these destinations and these sights"? Obvi0usly it refers to the connections the novel makes between real places and real groups (Catholics, Opus Dei) and not-s0-real events (the Lecture, the suppression of "secrets"). Tourists are encouraged to associate fictional events with real places as a way of enhancing and even enlightening their travels. Sadly, as Sandra Miesel shows in our book, The Da Vinci Hoax, Brown's descriptions of modern day places and buildings are often incorrect. As Sandra likes to dryly note, The Da Vinci Code is correct in saying Paris is in France and London is in England. After that, you'd be better of trusting Fodors. Maybe.

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Tuesday, April 04, 2006 at 03:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0)

Dan Brown's statement to the court tells us how little he knows

Sandra Miesel will soon be posting but is currently addressing some small technical glitches. But she sent me some comments about Dan Brown's witness statement to post:

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

I've now read Dan Brown's entire personal statement to the court and would like to offer a few reactions, not in any particular order but things that leap out of my notes.

Brown is trying to present himself as a serious Artist, a man of many talents just bursting with nuggets of arcane lore. If the judge is well-educated, this could backfire because Brown's performance merely reveals him as surprisingly ignorant. The way he tries to claim status from the accomplishments of family and friends does raise the suspicion that Brown is the slow child in a bright household.

The mentions of albums recorded during his brief and unsuccessful musical career carefully avoid mentioning that these were never released by a professional label. Brown speaks of Amherst but never what his major was; of his wife's art historical knowledge without identifying her education. And yet despite these supposedly fine backgrounds, Brown admits not having heard of this, that, and the other that should be available in a well-furnished liberal arts mind. (e.g. the existence of the witch-hunters' manual, the MALLEUS MALIFICARUM) And there's a certain dissonance in complaining of poverty in his early career while referring to vacations in Tahiti and Mexico during the same period.

With one exception, the books Brown does admit to using heavily are worthless esoteric histories, conspiracy books, or New Age titles. The one genuine volume of academic history, THE MURDERED MAGICIANS: THE TEMPLARS AND THEIR MYTH by Peter Partner, has gone missing. But inasmuch as it's a thorough debunking book, there's nothing in TDVC to suggest that Brown used it. (If you want to read about the Templars, Partner's book is the place to start.) That he tries to pass off ludicrous sources such as THE TEMPLAR REVELATION, Margaret Starbird, Jim Marrs, THE TOMB OF CHRIST, THE HIRAM KEY, or Barbara Walker as legitimate scholarly authorities is laughable. And that's putting it kindly.

This scheme will fail if the judge examines Charles Addison's HISTORY OF THE KNIGHTS TEMPLAR in the particular edition Brown provides. (The crackpottery of the advertisements in the back would be enough to discredit the work eve before it's read.)  This decorously Victorian text is not a bad book, just an old one--published in 1842, two years before a printed edition of the Templar trial became available. But here it's accompanied by a bizarre and ridiculous introduction penned by David Hatcher Childress that's heavily dependent on HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL with the Knights presented as sworn enemies of the Church, privy to wisdom passed down from Atlantis. I wondered while writing my part of THE DA VINCI HOAX how Brown had forgotten that the Pope who suppressed the Templars was ruling from Avignon, not Rome. Well, here's the answer--Childress forgot it first. He also, as Brown does, makes the Pope, not the king of France give the order to arrest the Templars.

Brown implicitly admits what I had suspected: he read no Gnostic texts himself. He depended on quotes from Elaine Pagels' THE GNOSTIC GOSPELS. Neither had he read any actual Grail romances although several of these are readily available in good editions from Penguin Books. He lists some books about Leonardo da Vinci but no academic titles on Renaissance art, Gothic architecture, or the witch-hunt. He used the popular Fodor travel guides for European places instead of the far more informative (and authoritative) Michelin ones. This is a man who grabs whatever scraps of information his wife happens to provide, regardless of quality. She seems as poor a judge of sources as he is.

In both TDVC and the court statement, Brown thanks an academic librarian for help but identifies his institution as the non-existent "University of Ohio" instead of the regional branch of Ohio State University at Chillicothe where the man actually works.

Browns attempts to show off his rich fund of lore simply demonstrate his ignorance. For example, he claims great admiration for Bernini and familiarity with his paintings. But Bernini's great achievements are in sculpture and architecture. Only a few paintings are attributed to him and these uncertainly.

Brown follows Margaret Starbird in deriving the dynastic name Merovingian from the French "mer" for sea and "vigne" for vine. He seems blissfully unaware that these rulers of France in the Dark Ages didn't speak French but rather Frankish, a Germanic language akin to Dutch and weren't called "Merovingians" in their own era. The designation in fact comes from the name of their ancestor Merovech, Latinized as Meroveus.

And then there is Brown's disquisition on the etymology of the word "sincere" which he derives from a Renaissance Spanish expression meaning "without wax" for well-wrought marble statues that required no wax to repair mistakes. My college dictionary says that "sincere" comes from French and ultimately from the Latin "sincerus" meaning pure or honest. But hey, what does Webster know? Or the OXFORD LATIN DICTIONARY?

Dan Brown's statement to the court certainly tells us what little he knows.

Sandra Miesel, co-author of The Da Vinci Hoax

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Monday, March 20, 2006 at 01:44 PM | Permalink | Comments (22) | TrackBack (0)

Five Easy Steps to a Best-seller. And lawsuits.

The European edition of TIME has a short piece titled "Five Easy Steps to a Best Seller" that takes up "tips" about writing a hit novel from Dan Brown's written testimony for the special "The Code Goes to Court" case in London. The tips, along with my thoughts:

1. Be disciplined. "My routine begins at around 4 a.m. every morning, when there are no distractions," says Brown, who also breaks every hour for "push-ups, sit-ups and some quick stretches. I find this helps keep the blood (and ideas) flowing."

In other words, be flexible — especially in how you use your sources. And in how much credit you give to them. And consider using some flexibility in how you describe your research. And don't be afraid to flex the truth, so that you can use the word "FACT" to apply to things that aren't actually factual (such as the Priory of Sion being a "real organization" that was founded "in 1099"). Push over some facts. Sit on some history. Stretch the truth.

2. Pick a "big idea" with a gray area. "The first step is to select a theme that [you] find particularly intriguing � The ideal topic has no clear right and wrong, no definite good and evil, and makes for great debate." In this case, the provocative "Jesus was married" conspiracy theory might have created too much debate.

No, no, no. Not a "big idea," but a big target, namely the Catholic Church. Don't let the complex reality of Christianity  (Eastern Orthodox? Who are they? Protestants? I think I've heard of them. Don't even ask about the Ancient Oriental Churches) get in the way of mentioning the dreaded Vatican every two or three sentences. And be sure to that there are definite goods (goddess worship and Harvard symbologists) and evils (the Vatican, the Catholic Church, Opus Dei). Be clear how right your protagonist is and how wrong the dreaded Vatican is. Hammer on it. Don't relent. Pound away. And, if you're lucky, many readers won't notice that you haven't a clue about any of these "big ideas" or big targets.

3. Location, location, location. Brown initially wanted to stage a Masonic romp in Nova Scotia, but it lacked sufficient drama. Instead, a 1998 personal tour of a concealed passageway beneath the Vatican — "used by early Popes to escape in event of enemy attack" — inspired Brown to opt for Old Europe.

Pick big locations and then describe them incorrectly. Pretend to know a thing or three about Paris and London, but take comfort in the knowledge that some readers don't know the Louvre from a chapel from a Swiss bank — nor do they care. They are into the "big idea" of bashing Christianity — and anxiously awaiting the moment when Langdon and Sophie gaze into each other eyes and whisper sweet nothings about nothing at all.

4. Keep chapters snappy. "I have a short attention span," Brown told a packed courtroom, "and I write short chapters for that reason." (Chapter 27 is only 1½ pages long.)

A nice technique for conveying a sense of movement and action when nothing is happening — which is exactly what happens (or doesn't happen) for much of the novel. Also, find relief in the knowledge that readers also have short attention spans. For instance, have your characters breathlessly explain how incredible it is that Jesus has descendants, but don't explain why this has any meaning since you've already explained that Jesus is a mortal prophet. Period. End of story (so why care about him any further?) I guess that's what happens when you don't read the entire Holy Blood, Holy Grail.

5. Marry well. Not only did Blythe Brown secure her husband's first book deal, she also did much of the work behind The Da Vinci Code. "She was reading entire books, highlighting exciting ideas and urging me to read the material myself," admits Brown, who sometimes found the extent of her research "frustrating."

Marry well. Have your wife do the real work. Then point the finger at her when asked tough questions. Sure, it undermines your credentials as a dyed-in-the-wool feminist, but it beats answering tough questions. Such as: "When did you read Holy Blood, Holy Grail?"

Posted by Carl E. Olson on Monday, March 20, 2006 at 12:04 PM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBack (0)

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