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Sorry to bring up a certain abomination once again, but the Italian news agency Ansa reports this as news, dated May 27. Apparently an American university professor was about to marry a researcher from Trento, Italy, when he abruptly broke off the engagement claiming that, after reading THE DA VINCI CODE, he just did not like Catholics any more. The young lady, a devout Catholic, was understandably furious, and is suing him for 170,000 Euros. I understand her anger, but I think she should count her blessings. If the story is genuine, she was in danger of ending up married to someone who took TDVC seriously. The words "fate worse than death" spring to mind.
A fair comment
Jun. 7th, 2006 10:29 am"'Even if [The Da Vinci Code] is just fiction,' a student opined, 'it's still interesting to think about.'
"To which another student replied: 'Your mother's a whore.' And then, to the first student's stunned incredulity, he added, 'And even if that's just fiction, it's still interesting to think about....'"
"To which another student replied: 'Your mother's a whore.' And then, to the first student's stunned incredulity, he added, 'And even if that's just fiction, it's still interesting to think about....'"
Umberto Eco on Dan Brown
May. 21st, 2006 06:55 pmI wonder how many of the people who read my blog when I took a couple of hard swings at Dan Brown's loathsome THE DA VINCI CODE are with me still - most, I hope. Anyway, what I remember is that one person asked me about Umberto Eco's THE FOUCAULT PENDULUM, from which Brown was said to have swiped most of his plot. I did not answer, because I had not read Eco's book (and, to be truthful, I had not made it through all of Brown's, missing in particular the revelation of Teabing's villainy - but who can read hundreds of pages of a book whose style, content and ideology he finds uniformly detestable?). However, Eco, who to the best of my knowledge had not so far said anything about his brother novelist's successful effort, did finally oblige with a few pointed remarks, in the context of an interview about the general concept of conspiracy theories.
[My translation]: In my work on "Pendulum," I used conspiracy-theory literature, down the very worst dregs, to exorcise it. Instead of which, Dan Brown rolled into town with his "Da Vinci Code," taking those booklets as literally true, and immense numbers of readers in America actually ask me whether the whole corpus of work and doctrine of the Catholic Church is in fact a conspiracy. Eco, adds his interviewer, was hoping to chop down conspiracy theories with the Ockham's razor of reason, and they sprang back stronger than ever, insolent and universally present. I will add that Eco, one of a number of people who migrated from Catholic youth groups to the old Italian Communist Party in the early sixties, is not a believer and is regarded by Italian Catholics as an intellectual opponent. But he has way way way too much knowledge of the real intellectual and artistic achievement of the Church to take Dan Brown and his rubbish as anything but an insult to the intellect.
[My translation]: In my work on "Pendulum," I used conspiracy-theory literature, down the very worst dregs, to exorcise it. Instead of which, Dan Brown rolled into town with his "Da Vinci Code," taking those booklets as literally true, and immense numbers of readers in America actually ask me whether the whole corpus of work and doctrine of the Catholic Church is in fact a conspiracy. Eco, adds his interviewer, was hoping to chop down conspiracy theories with the Ockham's razor of reason, and they sprang back stronger than ever, insolent and universally present. I will add that Eco, one of a number of people who migrated from Catholic youth groups to the old Italian Communist Party in the early sixties, is not a believer and is regarded by Italian Catholics as an intellectual opponent. But he has way way way too much knowledge of the real intellectual and artistic achievement of the Church to take Dan Brown and his rubbish as anything but an insult to the intellect.
The Da Vinci code
Feb. 4th, 2005 12:53 pmThe impact of The Da Vinci Code on any person who knows history - any period of history from ancient Rome to the present day - is slow, cumulative, and horrendous. One has to come to terms with the fact that it has been read by millions; that our world is so dreadfully ignorant of the very basics of its own history, its own artistic heritage, its own intellectual background, that so many, so many individual readers can actually bear to go through it without throwing it to the floor about the twentieth page in disgust. It is, in the old phrase, like watching a train wreck.
The novel is preceded by a page arrogantly titled "Fact," ( Read more... )
The novel is preceded by a page arrogantly titled "Fact," ( Read more... )
Ingratitude
Oct. 7th, 2004 08:37 pmI hope I have never been anything but scathing and unforgiving about Dan Brown's fraudulent novel The Da Vinci Code. Among other things I have repeatedly pointed out is the fact that it is wholly based on a bad cult book from the early eighties, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, which I read at eighteen. What I did not know is that Brown had, among his other egregious sins of intellectual fraud, committed the one of ingratitude. This article appeared recently in London's Daily Telegraph. I especially appreciate the cynicism of the closing sentence.
( Read more... )
( Read more... )
