Dan Brown
The Da Vinci Code

Posted on Paul Katz's Place for Entertainment
18 August 2004

IN SUM: In an age where moral foundations have collapsed and material and spiritual equilibrium has lost the balance, the book's conspiracy theories, no matter how badly written, stir the longings of the reader's heart and defies his intellect.

WHEN Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code became one of the most widely read novels in recent years, it is clear that millions of readers have become riveted with Mr Brown's knowledge of spiritual truths wrapped in fabrics of fantasy.

This is where my problem lies. Mr Brown's fantastic fiction writing is simply terrible. In one singular tome, he sets forth mind-blowing conspiracy theories with relentless passion because a third installment of protagonist Robert Langdon's encounters, adventures, and idiosyncrasies cannot wait. And he begs for understanding. Fast. Witness how we learn what we can about the grandeur of phi, amongst others, because we need to understand—fast— that phi is as hunky and brainy as Langdon is.

The first 300 pages made me think that Dan Brown was, indeed, an informed spiritual person. He laid out, very beautifully, the truthfulness of gender equality, unity of science and religion, and oneness of all religions—the same principles promoted by the Bahá'í Faith. Those early pages made me so very happy.

Then came the episode in which he promotes the station of Jesus Christ as a fabricated reality. Without sounding like a a religious fanatic and losing my appreciation of fictional writing—where heresies are commonplace—I cannot compromise on Mr Brown's obliviousness of divine truth. His fantasy implies a misplaced understanding of the truth of Christ as a Divine Messenger in the cycle of progressive revelation. Worse, it shuns the unshakable fact that the Divine Being and His Messengers remain the greatest source of inspiration for human creativity and the most compelling reason for human accomplishment, including Mr Brown's.

Although the reading went downhill for me afterwards, I must admit that Mr Brown's daring heresies are what make Da Vinci Code a popular work of fiction. In an age where moral foundations have collapsed and material and spiritual equilibrium has lost the balance, the book's conspiracy theories, no matter how badly written, stir the longings of the reader's heart and defies his intellect. Only in this regrettable light can I say that Da Vinci Code succeeds.