# Is Dan Brown the new Salman Rushdie? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 16, 2006, 11:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872 "2006-04-16T11:53:32Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![FriarTed](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/friarted/32/1052_2.png) [@FriarTed](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FriarTed)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/81 "2006-04-17T15:07:03Z")
[QUOTE=Mapache] You mean the Pat Robertson who said ``` "You say you're supposed to be nice to the Episcopalians and the Presbyterians and the Methodists and this, that, and the other thing. Nonsense. I don't have to be nice to the spirit of the Antichrist. I can love the people who hold false opinions but I don't have to be nice to them." ``` link; [http://www.religioustolerance.org/quot\_intol.htm](http://www.religioustolerance.org/quot_intol.htm) That Pat Robertson? [/QUOTE] Yeah, because in context he was talking about LIBERAL Episcopalians, Presbyterians & Mehodists- he had no real argument against conservative Episcopalians, Presbyterians & Methodists. To many conservative C’tians, denial of JCs unique & supreme Sonship, His Virgin Birth & Bodily Resurrection, & approval of sex outside of straight marriage are all symptoms of an “Antichrist” attitude/spirit. Robertson has more agreement with conservative Catholic & Orthodox than with liberal Protties. Granted- he ciould have actually explained all that rather than saying stupid stuff that I then have to explain. JThunder, he did indeed say it but I do agree that [ReligiousTolerance.org](http://ReligiousTolerance.org) is not a source of balanced objective info. ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 3:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/82 "2006-04-17T15:11:48Z")
I saw Salman Rushdie speak at a banquet in early 2003 at a hotel in downtown D.C. I don’t think anyone checked bags at the door, and in any case I brought in a bag of his books. There was no one visible protecting him. After the banquet, I was wondering, as I walked up to the head table to get his signature on the books, if there were snipers protecting him hiding in the balcony around the banquet hall. I began to imagine the conversation between these imaged guards on seeing me walk toward Rushdie: “What’s that little red-haired guy doing walking toward Rushdie with that bag in his hand? What’s he pulling out of the bag? Let’s shoot him now before he get any closer to Rushdie just in case.” Rushdie politely signed the books for me. Incidentally, he lives part of the year in New York and part of the year in London, according to a recent article. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 3:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/83 "2006-04-17T15:22:34Z")
[QUOTE=Qadgop the Mercotan] Brown’s kinda in the same situation as Monty Python, given the protests they got when they put out the movie “Life of Brian”. [/QUOTE] I consider the mere association terribly insulting to Monty Python. 😃 ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 3:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/84 "2006-04-17T15:24:03Z")
BTW, has anybody posting in this thread actually read _The Satanic Verses?_ Because I haven’t, and I’ve never heard anything about the book that would make me want to. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/85 "2006-04-17T16:03:11Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] BTW, has anybody posting in this thread actually read _The Satanic Verses?_ Because I haven’t, and I’ve never heard anything about the book that would make me want to. [/QUOTE] I tried. I’m either too much of an idiot, or Rushdie is overrated. “Plodding and convoluted” doesn’t begin to describe it, IMO. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/86 "2006-04-17T16:32:12Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] BTW, has anybody posting in this thread actually read _The Satanic Verses?_ Because I haven’t, and I’ve never heard anything about the book that would make me want to. [/QUOTE] Yep, not his best book. Midnight’s Children is much much better. And he writes essays very well. I think of him as being a lot like Umberto Eco as a writer. Difficult to get through, rewarding if you take the bother. Some authors “build character” like my dad claimed shoveling the walk does. Rushdie is one of those. (Brown is not). I read it a very long time ago, but unlike the Da Vinci Code, where what is regarded as heresy by many is a very central theme to the book, I remember the Satanic Verses as having its heresy be far less central and obvious. Dan Brown pretty much comes right out with “hey, lookie here, I’m saying things the Church won’t like.” Then again, I was raised Catholic, so understanding Islamic heresy isn’t nearly as easy for me. As to the books popularity, Rushdie has always been a literary, well respected author. He had just won a Booker, which made him higher profile than some more obscure respected authors, and his name is often talked about when probable Nobel Prizes in Literature are mentioned. But he’ll never be a best seller. He sits in a strange place in terms of World literature, an Indian who was born into a secular Islamic family (as opposed to a member of the Hindu majority), he was primarily educated in England. This gave his voice some weight on Indian Hindu/Islamic relations, and I suspect the fatwa had as much to do with heresy as with politics - Rushdie’s secular moderation isn’t really what the extremist want to hear - and he is one of the few voices who was heard at the time outside the culture (keep in mind, we are talking late 80s, the world has changed a lot since then). ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 4:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/87 "2006-04-17T16:35:35Z")
[QUOTE=Wendell Wagner] And when did the Catholic church last kill (or even threaten to kill) someone for heresy? [/QUOTE] Ever since the Church no longer is the law of the land. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 4:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/88 "2006-04-17T16:37:43Z")
[QUOTE=JThunder] Actually, that’s only what he said on his website, where he is clearly backpedalling from the position stated in the preface to his book. In his book, he specifically said, “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate.” I checked a copy of his book out from the public library, and that’s exactly what he said. [/QUOTE] I’m sorry, I see no distinguishable difference between what he put in his book and what he was quoted on his website. “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate” vs "the artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals depicted in this novel all exist " (I personally doubt that any of the “secret rituals” are really secret and that he is hyping stuff that is private, not secret, but I will give him a pass on that.) We are still talking artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals with no mention of historical events. It would be intersting to see an actual claim by Brown that he actually _believes_ that Jesus married (Mary Magdalene or anyone else) and that the descendants of Jesus are still running around Europe. It would even be interesting to find evidence that Brown believes that, even if it did not happen, the RCC believes that it did and that they are covering some vast conspiracy. What we generally get are these coy statements intended to promote book sales. ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/89 "2006-04-17T16:43:37Z")
Speaking of Eco, Brown has far more in common with Eco, who has heresy against the Catholic Church in both Name of the Rose and Foucoult’s Pendulum - as a I recall. Been a long time there as well, but Foucoult’s Pendulum is very Da Vinci Code-ish, and both are hermeneutic novels - knights templar and secret societies and murder. However, the plot is so darn convoluted that its possible no one understood the darn thing, so its possible Eco has only managed to avoid assination by irate Catholics through his literary denseness. ---
**Author:** ![magellan01](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@magellan01](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/magellan01)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/90 "2006-04-17T16:56:11Z")
[QUOTE=Quasimodem] The only thing that throws this whole “equation” out of balance are your inabilities to keep your minds “open” as mine was/is.Q [/QUOTE] In the spirit of, as you say, keeping an open mind, do you think it is possible that that the comparison you drew is simply ridiculous? Seriously. This is not a forum known for the throngs blindly coming to the defense of religion, yet the only person who agreed that there was a comparison (corectly) was **lissener** : both first names end in “an”. Nice, **lissener**. ---
**Author:** ![Loopydude](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e56c9b/32.png) [@Loopydude](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Loopydude)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/91 "2006-04-17T16:57:45Z")
Man, I thought _Name of the Rose_ was a walk in the park compared to _Satanic Verses_. ---
**Author:** ![CurtC](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ce73a5/32.png) [@CurtC](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CurtC)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/92 "2006-04-17T17:23:47Z")
[QUOTE=Kythereia] No need to apologize, mate 🙂 Is there any more material on the case I can follow? [/QUOTE] A few weeks ago, I heard an excellent explanation of the legalities on a Slate poscast, [which you can read the text of (or download the podcast) here](http://www.slate.com/id/2137797/). Its central point: > [@](#): > > My own conspiracy theories aside, the Da Vinci lawsuit raises an interesting copyright question that American and English courts have differed in answering. Can one writer freely borrow someone else’s wacky historical speculations? Say a historian publishes the idea that Lyndon Johnson is a space alien who killed John F. Kennedy. Are you free to make a movie about it? The right answer, as perhaps Oliver Stone would testify, is that the nature of the claim matters. The authors of Holy Grail chose to make claims to truth—and while that gives their book a certain rhetorical power, it should also mean their work loses much legal protection. When copyright starts saying you can’t borrow claims to truth, it stops helping and starts hurting all authors. > > … > > Why should Dan Brown be able to walk away with tens of millions of dollars if Leigh and his pals put in all the hard labor? The answer is that Leigh et al., had a choice: They could have decided to portray their work as fiction, not history—and that, in the words of American judge Frank Easterbrook, “makes all the difference.” When you, as an author, make a claim to present the truth, you both gain something and lose something. You have a shot at changing what we think to be true, and you may gain reader interest. But you cannot own the truth the way you might own elements of a fictional story, like the character “Rocky.” To claim the truth is fine, but to own it is not. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 5:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/93 "2006-04-17T17:30:16Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] BTW, has anybody posting in this thread actually read _The Satanic Verses?_ Because I haven’t, and I’ve never heard anything about the book that would make me want to. [/QUOTE] I have. It’s all right. The heresy thing is blown way out of proportion. The book’s about an actor, Muslim by heritage, who’s in the process of an extended mental breakdown, and is having vivid hallucinations that he’s the prophet Mohammed. How literally one is to take these halluncinations is never made entirely clear. It’s possible to take this character’s delusions as a commentary on the religious experiences of the original Mohammed, but again, this is not at all explicit in the book, and is largely up to the interpretation of the reader. I wouldn’t recommend _The Satanic Verses_ to someone who hasn’t read anything else by Rushdie. _Midnight’s Children_ or _The Ground Beneath her Feet_ are much better, more accesible novels. ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/94 "2006-04-17T17:33:09Z")
Sorry, that should have been “…is having vivid hallucinations that he’s the angel Gabriel, who (as I understand it) revealed the Koran to the prophet Mohammed.” ---
**Author:** ![Dangerosa](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Dangerosa](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dangerosa)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 5:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/95 "2006-04-17T17:34:05Z")
[QUOTE=Loopydude] Man, I thought _Name of the Rose_ was a walk in the park compared to _Satanic Verses_. [/QUOTE] Try Island of the Day Before. Name of the Rose is Eco’s most accessible (that I’ve read) and Satanic Verses is Rushdie’s least (that I’ve read). ---
**Author:** ![Paxton\_Fettel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/77aa72/32.png) [@Paxton\_Fettel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paxton_Fettel)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/96 "2006-04-17T18:01:17Z")
[QUOTE=Quasimodem] Apparently, during these last few days before the release of **The Da Vinci Code** , Opus Dei and many churches are campaigning for a boycott of the film: [http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060415/D8H0NSH80.html](http://apnews.myway.com/article/20060415/D8H0NSH80.html) Even Sony has provided a website of “Discussion” of the controversial book and soon to be released film: [http://www.thedavincichallenge.com/](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. Thanks Q [/QUOTE] Rushdie is a very good writer…there’s one major difference between the two. ---
**Author:** ![Lemur866](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lemur866/32/434_2.png) [@Lemur866](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lemur866)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/97 "2006-04-17T18:06:01Z")
Let me see if I’ve got this straight. Dan Brown writes a novel about how the Catholic Church has secret death squads that assassinate anyone who dares to tell the suppressed true story of Jesus’s life. So therefore, Quasimodem is concerned, because Dan Brown has wrote a story about the suppressed true life of Jesus, and therefore could be under threat from those Catholic death squads. Except the death squads are fictional, not real. There are no death squads who assassinate heretics, and haven’t been any since the Middle Ages. Heck, if they were going to assassinate heretics, wouldn’t just about every Protestant church member be a heretic? And if the Catholic church was planning on killing anyone who dared reveal the secret history, haven’t they done a piss-poor job? The time to assassinate Dan Brown is BEFORE he publishes his book, not after. So Dan Brown is not in danger from Catholic death squads, despite the fact that his novel has people who are in danger from Catholic death squads, because those Catholic death squads were what we scientists call “fictional”. Fictional death squads are unlikely to kill anyone. It’s like asking if James Cameron should be worried about robot assassins from the future. Or if Oliver Stone should be worried about assassins sent by the military-industrial complex that had Kennedy whacked. So no, Dan Brown doesn’t have to be worried about the fictional death squads he wrote about in his fictional novel. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/98 "2006-04-17T18:13:10Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] I’m sorry, I see no distinguishable difference between what he put in his book and what he was quoted on his website. “All descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals in this novel are accurate” vs "the artwork, architecture, documents, and secret rituals depicted in this novel all exist " [/QUOTE] I think there’s a world of difference between the two! For example, nobody denies that _The Last Supper_ by Leonardo da Vinci exists. However, in his book, Dan Brown goes far beyond that. He inaccurately describes it as a painting of Jesus Christ sitting beside Mary Magdalene, with the Apostles in attendance. He says that the Dead Sea Scrolls exist – and indeed, they do. However, he inaccurately claims that they contained many alternate gospels about the life of Christ, apart from those in the New Testament. This is simply false. The Dead Sea Scrolls do exist, but his _description_ of these documents is simply inaccurate. And so forth, and so on. The artwork, architecture, documents and rituals that Dan Brown mentioned may indeed exist, but his descriptions are inaccurate in the extreme. ---
**Author:** ![tomndebb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/b9e5f3/32.png) [@tomndebb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tomndebb)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/99 "2006-04-17T18:25:59Z")
[QUOTE=JThunder] The artwork, architecture, documents and rituals that Dan Brown mentioned may indeed exist, but his descriptions are inaccurate in the extreme. [/QUOTE] OK. Let me rephrase that: I see no distinguishable difference between what he claimed for the book in his preface and what he claimed for his book in the web “interview.” In each case, he makes the claim that there are real objects and rituals. In each case, he notes that the book is a work of fiction. In neither case does he make a claim that the events in the book are historical or accurate. His claim (in the preface and the web interview) is only that he employed actual artifacts and rituals as props in his book. Yes, in the text of the book (which he admits is fiction) he employs those artifacts and rituals in wildly stupid ways. When discussing his fiction, he then coyly avoids directly admitting that his descriptions are fictive, however, in neither his preface nor his interview does he actually state that he has not manipulated his descriptions for his own purposes. ---
**Author:** ![JThunder](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/e95f7d/32.png) [@JThunder](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JThunder)\ **Post date:** [April 17, 2006, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872/100 "2006-04-17T18:34:27Z")
[QUOTE=tomndebb] OK. Let me rephrase that: I see no distinguishable difference between what he claimed for the book in his preface and what he claimed for his book in the web “interview.” In each case, he makes the claim that there are real objects and rituals. In each case, he notes that the book is a work of fiction. In neither case does he make a claim that the events in the book are historical or accurate. [/QUOTE] But I’m not talking about the events. I’m talking about (to use Brown’s own words) the " artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals." In that respect, the disclaimer on his website clearly does NOT match up with what he stated in the book. (Moreover, I think that some of his descriptions of documents would have to encompass their corollary events as well – such as his allegation that Constantine compiled the New Testament, or that the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in the 1950s. Even if we ignore this distinction though, Dan Brown’s claim remains grossly inaccurate.) > [@](#): > > …however, in neither his preface nor his interview does he actually state that he has not manipulated his descriptions for his own purposes. I must disagree with that. The preface of his book (which is labelled “FACT” in large, bold letters) clearly affirms that his descriptions of all these documents, etc. are _accurate_. By labelling his descriptions as accurate, he is affirming that he did not manipulate them in any way, shape or form. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872.md?page=4) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-dan-brown-the-new-salman-rushdie/352872.md?page=6)