Re: "Da Vinci" Debunking

JMM asked, plaintively,

> Isn't the DVC fiction? Are we supposed to come away with honest to goodness
> truth and/or fact from the fictional experience, so to speak? Or maybe just
> the semblance of same for the sake of a good tale?

Yes, it's fiction. But unfortunately it comes with an opening page headed,
bluntly, FACT. As the NYTimes article today said:

"The novel, in which even chapters only two pages long end with a
cliffhanger, might seem like little more than a potboiler. But it opens with
a page titled "Fact." That page concludes: 'All descriptions of artwork,
architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.'"

(http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/27/books/27CODE.html?pagewanted=2)

Unfortunately, the students I've talked to who read it (and the people I
overheard discussing it in a restaurant recently) are VEHEMENTLY certain
that Brown wouldn't have said these things were FACT if they weren't; that,
therefore, while the characters may be fictional the overall premise--that
Constantine overthrew an idyllic matriarchal paganism worshipping "The
Goddess"--is true.  In other words, they're not taking it as an amusingly
alternate-but-known-to-be-fantastic reality along the lines of, say, Harry
Potter. They think it reflects genuine history.

And then, to my taste, it *isn't* a "good tale." It's badly written,
annoyingly clunky, and way too predictable. If it HAD been a good tale,
perhaps I would have been more willing to overlook the goddess-schlock.

EV

Elizabeth Vandiver
Distinguished Visiting Lecturer
Department of Greek and Roman Studies
Rhodes College
Memphis, Tennessee 38112

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