PROFILE: DAN BROWN:The long-awaited follow-up to the 'Da Vinci Code' is due to hit the bookstands later this year, but will it become another publishing sensation for author Dan Brown?
THE POPE won't be too pleased, devout Catholics will be dismayed, and lovers of literature will groan with despair, but the announcement that Dan Brown is to publish his long-awaited follow-up to The Da Vinci Codewill fill his millions of fans with feverish anticipation, and whet the appetites of puzzle-lovers and amateur cryptographers everywhere.
The Lost Symbolis Brown's third novel to feature the character of symbologist Robert Langdon, and takes place over a breakneck 12-hour period, its setting rumoured to be Washington DC. We don't know the plot details as yet, but we can surmise that during the book's half-day time frame, our hero will have to decipher complex codes, unravel mysterious cryptograms and interpret enigmatic symbols, all the while staying one step ahead of the bad guys, who will probably be wearing robes. The action will most likely take place in art galleries, churches and historic sites, and feature old masters, ancient manuscripts and secret societies. In other words, all the usual ingredients fans have come to expect from Brown's novels.
"From the first page, Dan's readers will feel the thrill of discovery as they follow Robert Langdon through a masterful and unexpected new landscape," promises Brown's longtime editor, Jason Kaufman, vice-president and executive editor of Doubleday. " The Lost Symbolis full of surprises." Sonny Mehta, chairman and editor-in-chief of Doubleday, says: " The Lost Symbolis a brilliant and compelling thriller. Dan Brown's prodigious talent for storytelling, infused with history, codes and intrigue, is on full display in this new book. This is one of the most anticipated publications in recent history, and it was well worth the wait."
In expectation of demand, the novel will have a first print run of five million copies in the US and Canada, the largest first print in the publishers’ history. If they don’t fly off the bookshelves within days, that would be the book’s biggest surprise.
“This novel has been a strange and wonderful journey,” says Brown. “Weaving five years of research into the story’s 12-hour timeframe was an exhilarating challenge. Robert Langdon’s life clearly moves a lot faster than mine.”
IT'S BEEN SIXyears since the world was gripped by the publishing phenomenon that was The Da Vinci Code. The novel spent 144 weeks on the New York Times'Hardcover Fiction bestseller list, 54 of those at the top. It went on to become the biggest-selling hardcover adult novel of all time, and there are now 81 million copies of the novel in print.
For the then 38-year-old failed musician turned second-division thriller writer, the incredible success of his fourth novel was like winning the lotto several times over. Not only did the novel change Brown’s life – it also had a seismic effect on the world of publishing, spawning a slew of imitations as publishers tried to cash in on the Da Vinci phenomenon.
It wasn't long before the bookshelves were bursting with titles such as The Rule of Fourand The Michelangelo Code, put out to satisfy a voracious public appetite for code-and-cowl thrillers. And before the movie version of The Da Vinci Codecame out, Nicolas Cage was already doing battle with freemasons in National Treasure.
The novel also spun a cottage industry of books dedicated to decoding The Da Vinci Code. These works tended to approach Brown's book in a scholarly manner, focusing on the rich historical and religious backdrop of the book rather than the meagre thrills and spills. One of the most successful, Secrets of the Code, became a New York Times'bestseller. Many of them set out to refute the theories put forward in The Da Vinci Code, but only succeeded in fanning the flames of hype and boosting sales of the novel even further.
While The Da Vinci Codewas an engaging enough thriller, its plot didn't stand up to close scrutiny, and its pacing – it read more like a collection of puzzles than a real narrative – was hardly edge-of-the-seat stuff. (There's a laughable scene in the movie version where Langdon, played by Tom Hanks, jumps on a London bus and announces, "I've got to get to a library . . . fast!") Plainly, more work went into the research than the writing; much of that research was done by Brown's wife Blythe, an art buff 12 years his senior whose interest in arcane symbols and hidden codes in art and literature captured Brown's imagination.
The novel's central conceit – that Jesus fathered a child by Mary Magdalene, whose bloodline has continued to this day – not to mention his casting of monks and bishops as murderous villains, angered many devout Christians, and led to Brown being accused of being anti-Christian. As a queue of would-be protectors of the faith lined up to condemn Brown for his alleged blasphemy, it was often forgotten that The Da Vinci Codewas a work of fiction.
When sales of his previous novels, Digital Fortress, Deception Pointand Angels and Demons, went sky-high in the wake of The Da Vinci Code's success, detractors found more ammunition to accuse Brown of religious heresy, particularly with Angels and Demons, much of which is set in the Vatican and features a shady bunch known as the Illuminati. The Vatican refused director Ron Howard permission to film parts of Angels and Demons within its walls.
Brown was also accused of a worse sin than heresy – at least in publishing circles – when Richard Leigh and Michael Baigent, co-authors of a 1982 work of speculative non-fiction, Holy Blood, Holy Grail, sued Brown's publishers, claiming Brown's novel "appropriated the architecture" of their book.
Ironically, their book, which had been a bestseller on its publication, rocketed back into the best-seller lists on the back of The Da Vinci Code. Brown had cited Holy Blood, Holy Grail as source material, and even named one of his characters, Leigh Teabing, after the authors (Teabing is an anagram of Baigent). The pair lost the case, the judge ruling that the ideas contained within were too general to be copyrighted.
Brown’s worst crime, however, as far as the literary world is concerned, is that he has “dumbed down” the art of the novel, reducing it to a linear series of conundrums completely bereft of flair and originality. One critic recently referred to him as “the typist Dan Brown”. He may not have the writer’s gift, but he has hit on a lucrative formula.
THE SUCCESS OF The Da Vinci Codehas brought Brown untold riches, but it has also driven him into near-reclusion. He was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in June 1964, the eldest of three children; his father, Richard G Brown, was a maths teacher at the upmarket Phillips Exeter Academy and his mother Constance was a musician who regularly performed sacred music.
Brown studied at Exeter, then at Amherst; when he graduated, he moved to LA and tried to establish himself as a piano-playing singer-songwriter in the mould of Billy Joel and Barry Manilow. He found a willing fan and mentor in Blythe Newlon, who was the artistic director of the National Academy of Songwriters. She became his manager, then his lover, moving back with him to New Hampshire where he took up a teaching post at Phillips, and eventually becoming his wife.
Brown's writing career began after he read Sidney Sheldon's The Doomsday Conspiracywhile on holiday, and reckoned he could do better. Combined sales of his four books to date bear out his self-belief, but many believe he couldn't have done it without the creative input of Blythe. Brown has acknowledged her research work on his novels, and, during the plagiarism court case, it emerged she had done the lion's share of the background leg-work. She is, says Brown, his "inspiration". Some say she should get a co-author's credit.
In the hiatus since the Da Vinci Code, it's been rumoured that Brown has suffered from writer's block, but now that the follow-up is finally ready to roll off the presses, his publishers will have another licence to print money. And the unbelievers will have another false idol to bear witness against.
