THE STRAIGHTS TIMES

By Clara Chow

Dan Da Man

THERE is just no breaking American author Dan Brown's Code.

Since the thriller, The Da Vinci Code, was published in March last year, it has sold more than eight million copies worldwide and has consistently hogged bestseller lists. In Singapore, it has sold 40,000 copies and has stayed on the Life! bestsellers list for 13 months.

The author also has three other books on the charts. Angels And Demons and Digital Fortress, both published in paperback here in January this year, have sold 15,000 and 5,000 copies respectively. Deception Point, out in March this year, has moved 8,000 copies.

In fact, sales for The Da Vinci Code could have been higher, if not for stocks running out, leaving the book's distributor MPH to frantically ship in more.

The Da Vinci Code's popularity shows no signs of abating. Teenagers can be spotted reading their battered copies on MRT trains. Da Vinci Code package tours, which fit in visits to the sites mentioned in the book, are available from a United States-based travel company Beyond Boundaries and a free guide is available at www.fodors.com.

A movie directed by Ron Howard is in the works, with either Russell Crowe or Harrison Ford rumoured as the star.

There is even a Da Vinci Diet, created by an American baker, which uses a complicated formula based on the 'golden ratio' of phi, or 1.618, featured in the book.

The word-of-mouth success of the book has, of course, delighted bookstores.

Mr Matthias Low, bookstore manager for MPH in Raffles City and CityLink Mall, recommends Brown's novel to customers from 18 to 60, some of whom return to thank him for introducing it to them. He estimates that the five MPH bookstores easily sell a total of 500 copies a week.

So why is it so popular?

A primary factor is its mixing of fact and fiction. Mr Low says: 'It challenges you. Some people will want to query the doctrine of Christ after reading it. Others read it simply because the plot is so juicy.'

At Kinokuniya Books in Ngee Ann City, store director Kenny Chan compares the Brown phenomenon to 'good old Harry Potter'. Both male and female customers buy the title, and they are usually aged 20 and above.

He adds: 'It's a light read covering heavy but cool topics, like the controversial aspects of Christianity and interesting aspects of art history, science and mathematics.'

Its premise is a scintillating brew of history, art and conspiracy theories - tossed with some 'lite' science, and served up in a string of bite-sized chapters with cliffhanger endings.

A Harvard professor who studies symbols, Robert Langdon, is summoned to a crime scene in the Louvre in Paris, where a murdered curator has been found arranged like Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man. Teaming up with the dead man's granddaughter, Langdon uncovers a secret involving clandestine societies and religious doctrine.

Asked to rate Brown's writing against the masters of the thriller genre, literature professor Kirpal Singh says it is more complex than most of Stephen King's works, and better written than John Le Carre.

He adds: 'Compared to the old foxes - the Conrads and the Stevensons - I think Brown has some way to go yet. But here is a sophisticated writer who knows his craft and definitely has a handle on art.'

CLUED IN

THE man responsible for this literary phenomenon is a 39-year-old former English teacher born in Exeter, New Hampshire, in the US. A graduate of Amherst College, Brown taught English and creative writing at Phillips Exeter Academy until 1996, when he became a full-time writer.

In 1998, his debut novel Digital Fortress - about the US' National Security Agency, privacy issues and terrorism - was published. It was followed by Angels And Demons (2001), set in the Vatican's secret archives and involving the secret Illuminati brotherhood, and Deception Point (2002), a political thriller about a shocking scientific discovery.

Other nuggets of interest to note about Brown: He grew up in a house full of books on a street where author John Irving used to live. When he was a child, his father, a teacher who was also a keen mathematician, would create treasure hunts for his children built around codes and ciphers.

The author would later transplant this detail into his cryptographer character Sophie's life in The Da Vinci Code.

Brown's wife Blythe, an art historian and painter, helped him research the artworks he mentions in his books.

A second reason for the success of The Da Vinci Code is perhaps its subversive power. By dangling conspiracy theories and undermining religious dogma, Brown plugs into the same type of intellectual paranoia that made television shows like The X-Files and Millennium cult favourites.

The author also has a way of explaining complex concepts in easy-to-understand language. Arts programmer Phan Ming Yen, 37, who is a fan, says: 'It's like making classical music composers Dowland, Palestrina, Bach or Beethoven into pop.'

Of course, aggressive marketing has also played a part in the phenomenon. Brown's publisher Random House went on a publicity blitz. It sent some 10,000 free copies of the book to bookshops and online bookseller Amazon.com's most prolific book reviewers, guaranteeing buzz for the title. An Internet code-breaking competition was also held, with clues hidden on the book cover and in the text.

The resulting hype snowballed. Some readers interviewed by Life! say they picked up the book because others were raving about it.

The success of his fourth novel has reportedly stunned the author. Probably overwhelmed by all the media attention, he has declared that he will not be granting any more interviews.

On his website, he writes that he is busy working on his next novel, which will be about the Freemasons and the architecture in Washington, DC., slated for 2005.

BRAIN TICKLING

BROWN may be keeping a low profile for now. But his fans - and detractors - are certainly making themselves heard.

While readers here have praised The Da Vinci Code's strong pacing, a slew of books and pamphlets have popped up to refute the 'facts' in this work of fiction.

Among them are Breaking The Da Vinci Code by Darrell L. Bock, The Da Vinci Deception by Erwin W. Lutzer and Cracking Da Vinci's Code by James L. Garlow and Peter Jones.

The works take umbrage at the novel's following claims - that Jesus married Mary Magdalen (a reformed prostitute), its questioning of the divinity of Christ, its depiction of the Opus Dei prelature as a sinister sect and its description of a conspiracy to eradicate the feminine aspect from organised religion.

The latest anti-Da Vinci Code book to hit the shelves in the US this month is The Da Vinci Hoax, written by Sandra Miesel and Carl Olson.

In it, the authors address Brown's unflattering portrayal of the Catholic Church, expressing their concern that people might read the book and turn away from the church as a result.

In an e-mail interview with Life!, Olson writes: 'I have no interest in censoring Brown or in telling people not to read his books.'

However, he adds: 'I do think that The Da Vinci Code can confuse and mislead people, including Catholics, who are either not aware of the historical record and Church teaching, or who do not take the time to question the claims made in the novel.'

Co-author Miesel, a Catholic journalist, writes of the need to rebut a work of fiction: 'Fiction plants powerful images of the past. How would you like the world to form its picture of Singapore from some sensational romance novel about Sir Stamford Raffles?'

She adds that the novel appeals to women with its claims of a sexually-active Christ, with Mary Magdalen and the Holy Grail as romantic subjects. The latter refers to the cup Christ drank from at the Last Supper.

Ms June Goh, 31, the owner of a furniture and interior design company, burst into laughter when she came to the Jesus-Mary Magdalen denouement in the book. 'I thought it was ridiculous,' she says.

Lawyer Gerald Tan, 34, who read all 454 pages of the book in two days, likens its pace to Jeffrey Archer's suspense novels, with historical details and a narrative that 'tickle the brain'.

Of the controversy, Mr Tan, who is a Catholic, says: 'It's a novel, a perspective and it's meant to enthrall. Whether the claims are true or not, I still believe in God.'

Auditor Ong Wee Yong, 27, agrees: 'It's fiction, so I take it with a pinch of salt. You'd want to double-check what Brown writes in the book to make sure it stands up against your own belief and reading of the Bible.'

Nevertheless, to those observing the controversy from without, there is irony in the situation.

Franciscan friar John-Paul Tan, 43, who has yet to read the novel, says: 'All thinking Catholics should respond to works of fiction as such - just works of fiction.'

The chaplain at the Nanyang Technological University, who holds a master's in canon law, adds: 'Why give credibility to such works? It seems ironic that we are putting more faith in fiction.'

DA VINCI PUZZLERS

THE Da Vinci Code hinges on some of Leonardo Da Vinci's works. Warning: spoilers ahead.

THE MONA LISA (circa 1479-1528)

Dan Brown creates an anagram out of the painting's name as a clue for his hero and heroine in their search for the motive behind a curator's murder.

THE LAST SUPPER (circa 1495-1498)

The author was inspired by an art history lecture at the University of Seville, in which a professor showed a slide of The Last Supper and began to outline anomalies in the painting.

For example, he claims that the figure seated on the right of Jesus is actually a woman.

THE VIRGIN OF THE ROCKS (circa 1503-1506) This painting hangs on the wall opposite the Mona Lisa in the Louvre. Again, Brown creates an anagram out of its title as another piece in the puzzle to solving the murder mystery.

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