Please, please, please come out, have your run and GO AWAY.

No more stupid junkumentaries all over my TV with the SHOCKING TRUTH about how a bit of complete and utter fluff that should have dropped into the non-mentally-taxing-beach-reading ocean with nary a blip novel might *gasp* not be an accurate depiction of reality OMG. (And, just as an aside, wow, are they ever wasting their time. Because anyone who's decided to believe all that stuff? Is so not going to believe the Big Bad Establishment-Controlled Media when it tells them otherwise. Duh.)

No more Tom Hanks with truly frightening hair.

No more ridiculous lawsuits brought by people who've either confused someone else's fluff novel with a scholarly work, or forgotten that their own book was supposedly a scholarly work.

No. More.

Now, I'll probably end up seeing you 'cause, hey, Audrey Tautou. And Ian McKellen. And I'm kinda curious to see if they think the audience will be smart enough to get the ending as written, or if it will be all Hollywoodized and actually show the McGuffin.

But after that? Go. Away.

Thanks awfully,
Val

http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/04/07/arts/web.0407code.php

In issuing his judgment, Justice Peter Smith said that Brown did indeed rely on "The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail" in writing a section of the book, but he said that Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, the two authors of earlier book, had failed to prove what the central theme of their book was and thus failed to prove that Brown had lifted it from them.

In fact, the judge said, the earlier book "does not have a central theme as contended by the claimants: it was an artificial creation for the purposes of the litigation working back from 'The Da Vinci Code.' "

Yowza. And here I was just going "Um, hey, if you want your work to be accepted as history, maybe you should be HAPPY somebody wrote an insanely popular novel set in a fictional world where your ideas are actual history?"

It's like conspiracy-theory authors suing Oliver Stone over JFK. Or suing the X-Files producers, for that matter.

If I were to write a novel about, say, Scottish Knights Templar sailing to America in the 12th century, would I get sued by Andrew Sinclair? Or only if it were insanely popular and he were an opportunistic jerk looking for a piece of it? (I'm not going to, incidentally, but somebody probably should. It's junk history, but could be a ripping good novel.)

And, because it bears saying Yet One More Time (because I'm OMGSICKTODEATHOFIT and the darn movie isn't even out for two more months!): Just because an absurdly large chunk of the public (not to mention pop-culture media) talks about Brown's "theories" as if they were (a) new, (b) his, or (c) in any way intended to be regarded as reality? Doesn't mean either he or his publishers ever intended anyone to do so.

Attention People STILL Flipping Out About The Da Vinci Code:

The reason the Catholic Church (and pretty much every other modern Christian denomination) didn't teach you about the Gnostic Gospels and all the rest of that stuff isn't that they were NEFARIOUSLY HIDING THE TRUTH OMG!!!

They didn't teach it because they regard it as false.

Whether you agree with that assessment or not is another discussion entirely. By all means, read further on the bits and pieces of moderately-obscure legend and relatively-little-known fact that Dan Brown assembled into a really impressively coherent framework. I have plenty of books I can lend you; he probably read some of the same ones in his prep process.

But dude, leave the conspiracy theories in the tremendously fun fictional detective yarn where they belong. 'Cause the phrase "missing the point" is springing sproingily to mind here.