The introduction of the
summer of 2003 was the summer of The Da Vinci Code. It was the summer
of The Da Vinci Code but for kids, it
was the summer of Harry Potter and the
Order of the Phoenix. The Da Vinci Code mystery
is an attempt to figure out what Robert Langdon is involved in. According to Janet
Maslin of The New York Times, “it
would be a bloc006Bbuster when it first appeared in the spring: “That word is
wow, the author is Dan Brown (a name you will want to remember). In this
gleefully erudite suspense novel, Mr. Brown takes the format he has been
developing through three earlier novels and fine-tunes it to blockbuster
perfection. Not since the advent of Harry Potter has an author so flagrantly
delighted in leading readers on a breathless chase and coaxing them through
hoops.”[1]
According to Marcel
Danesi, a University of Toronto semiotics professor (the study of signs and
symbols), thinks the convergence of a number of themes that year created the
heat.[2]
The themes could be
interpreted in the backdrop of rising feminism and the cry for their identity. There
was also a growing interest in conspiracies, occultism and crime shows at the
time, he notes, all of which the book taps into.
Although Dan Brown
claims to have written the book uninfluenced, the fact is indigestible since he
took a genre that was sometimes ponderous in the writing to Umberto Eco’s Foucault’s
Pendulum.
In an interview given
to Paris Review –
INTERVIEWER
- Have you read The Da Vinci Code?
ECO
- Yes, I am guilty of that too.
INTERVIEWER
- That novel seems like a bizarre little offshoot of Foucault’s Pendulum.
ECO
- The author, Dan Brown, is a character from Foucault’s Pendulum! I invented
him. He shares my characters’ fascinations—the world conspiracy of
Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic
secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might
not even exist.[3]
Umberto Eco –Rethinking History and Fiction also explores the issue in the context of
Postmodernism where there is no originality, only re-representation of old
knowledge.
“Foucault’s Pendulum is a kind of re-working of medieval culture in
contemporary times with the present understanding of the past. Thus, Eco is a
torch bearer for the budding historical fiction writers like Dan Brown who hits
the market with the sensational fiction on the medieval ages. Dan Brown catches
the eyes of world audience with his most famous work – The Da Vinci Code –
which also discusses the Rosicrucian and the Templars.”[4]
For more information - http://centurypublications.co.in/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=3507
[1]
Anatomy of the blockbuster – the Da Vinci Code, The star. com.<< http://www.thestar.com/entertainment/books/2014/07/11/anatomy_of_a_blockbuster_the_da_vinci_code.html>>
[2] Ibid.
2
[3]
The Art of Fiction – The Paris Review Interviewed by Lila Azam Zanganeh
[4] Chetan,
Umberto Eco: Rethinking History and Fiction, Century Publication, New Delhi
2014, p 77.
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