Even Sony has provided a website of “Discussion” of the controversial book and soon to be released film: http://www.thedavincichallenge.com/. There is even a quiz one may take to see how much one knows of the Bible.
As a former Catholic the novel interests me, but I am willing to keep an open mind.
It makes me wonder however, if Brown fears becoming a pariah for the sake of his novel and the subsequent film.
I did a search in Cafe Society before posting this, and since I have been away for a while I may have missed this discussion, but I would still like your opinions.
I haven’t read Rushdie, but if he can write well at all there’s no comparison between him and Dan Brown. The organizations giving him a hard time obviously haven’t read his book. If they had, they’d realize that the more people read it, the more people will think Dan Brown is a talentless idiot.
(Just finished reading that thing, finally. His book “Angels and Demons” was much better. Which is like saying excrement with corn in it is better than plain ol’ excrement.)
Also, what don’t ask said - when he has to live in hiding and his translators fear for their lives, we can start making comparisons…
Pretty much, Salman Rushdie is a well respected writer, winner of the Booker Prize. He has a great sense of humor for someone who lived under fatwa - in fact, he just has a great sense of humor - but he has it about the fatwa.
Dan Brown is a hack.
Dan Brown has more in common with the Danish (?) cartoonist than Rushdie
I haven’t read the novel because many years ago I read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail by Baigent and Leigh. People would ask me whether I had read the novel and couldn’t understand how I knew the basis of it without having read a word.
As to my post - Rushdies translater was murdered for translating the book and Rushdie has lived in isolation since puplication. Let’s see what “catholic fundamentalists” do to Dan Brown.
I have to agree that there’s no comparison. Rushdie’s life has been threatened and that threat is VERY real. A few Catholics picketing a movie don’t compare.
The only people who would believe that the Catholic Church kills people today for heresy are the same kind of people who think that Dan Brown writes non-fiction.
Here I took the trouble to link y’all to a couple of sites whereby you could do a little reading and maybe enter into a discussion with me as to what might be the final outcome of all the controversy and give you an opportunity to maybe educate me a little, and instead you reverted to tunnel vision and attacked Brown as being a hack and not in the same league with Rushdie.
Well that may be so and I agree that Rushdie is a fine writer, but the fact remains that there are paralells to be drawn whether you can see them as I do or not.
If you want to wait until people are killed, then that is your choice.
I am sorry you chose to take the low road in this, and ignored the fact that I am “keeping an open mind.”
You took my whole sentence out of context, and I am surprised at you for this as you are usually more articulate. Where did I use the word “kill”? Intolerance is relative, and you should know better than to have written a reply such as this.
Intolerance in the days of the Inquisition did indeed result in killings, but where did I state that Opus Dei killed people today? I did not. All I said was they are intolerant of heresy, and if you will do a little reading, you may find you agree.
Nonsense. Your post has no context outside of its title. So some people want to urge a boycott? Haven’t you noticed that every single film about religion provokes a boycott from some group? The Last Temptation of Christ. Dogma. The Passion of the Christ. Boycotts are part of the process. They never work, either.
Let’s assume that even you didn’t believe in your own comparison to Salmon Rushdie. So how is Dan Brown to be made a pariah? I’ve got an idea. Let’s wait until after he’s sold 40 million hardback copies of his book, and half a million paperbacks in the first week of sales, and put his old books on the bestseller list for three years and made a big-budget summer blockbuster movie. Wow. That’ll show him. Such a pariah.
And of course your cites did not provide even a single passing mention of the Church itself taking any measures against Dan Brown. Opus Dei asked for, gasp, a disclaimer in the movie. Which, of course, Dan Brown has no control over.
There’s controversy over religion. The sun rises in the east. Salman Rushdie lived in fear of his life for years. Your comparison of Dan Brown to Salman Rushdie is odious. All these are true. Your other contentions about Dan Brown are not.
The thread title is just so wrong on so many levels.
Dan Brown is to Salman Rushdie what Tom Clancy is to, well, to Salman Rushdie.
**
Dan Brown:** luckiest hack in the world (after Clancy and King and Rowling and . . . okay, just one of many lucky hacks) who has a few scattered Church Ladies pursing their lips at him.
**Salman Rushdie: **Literary giant, who will one day have a Nobel if he doesn’t get fatwa’ed first, making major and lasting contributions to world literature, and targeted by an organized terrorist cult which has its leaders’ blessings to murder him.
Sorry, I fail to see a single parallel. Oh wait, you mean they both have first names that end in “-an”? OK, then sure.
I’m going to guess that the OP’s take on this stems from Opus Dei’s reputation as the most hardcore, cult-like organization associated with the RCC. Even at that (and I speak as one who eyes Opus Dei the way health inspectors eye chicken-blood-soaked counter rags at delis), Opus Dei getting all verklempt over Brown’s conspiracy-theory fable doesn’t even get high enough to count the belly scales on the assassins that are stalking Rushdie.
Start every day with a smile and get it over with.
A literary comparison is probably not what you meant in starting this thread, but the title of the thread certainly raises the issue. It’s really nothing to get all pissy over.
Calling for a disclaimer on a film and calling for the death of an author are so insanely far apart, that a comparison of the two is simply idiotic.
The book has been out for 3 years, and it’s been on the bestseller list for 159 weeks. In that time, I’ve heard of not one death, not one beating, nor any death threats made by any of the churchs. Do you have any evidence supporting the comparison you made?
If you believe the low road is discussing the literary abilities of authors rather than some some unproven, hypothetical comparison of likelihoods of death among authors, I fear you’re on the wrong route.
You post an idiotic OP, that equates the calling for a disclaimer in a movie or a boycott, with death threats against the author and the actual death of a translator, and then smarmily whine about the responses you get. I’m hoping for your sake that this isn’t your sharpest moment on the board.