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 #2 (permalink) Sat Jun 03, 2006 15:44 pm Anyone reading 'Angels and Demons' by Dan Brown? |
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| Torsten wrote: | | It contains information about organizations and peoeple that actually existed and events that actually took place. |
Dan Brown does not publish factual novels. They consist mostly of various fabrications of his own imagination, while using the names of organizations and people who existed.
This gets to be problematic, because for some reason people people find his stories compelling and believe them as if they were fact, even though at the very superficial level and at very deep levels, they are demonstrably false. For example, he'll talk about what it says in "the original Aramaic" of some document, when the document is actually in Coptic, and the words he is talking about are not actually in the document, because the corner of the page is broken off. He has popes doing things more than 200 years after they were dead. In one novel he has an Opus Dei monk, but Opus Dei has never had any monks. The list goes on and on practically forever.
You can enjoy his writing as fiction, if you want, but you should realize that the man has almost no real knowledge of the people and subjects he's writing about, and that a lot of what he presents is false. I don't know if he is intentionally lying for a reason, or if he just intended to make up interesting stories. |
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Jamie (K)
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Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 5264
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| #3 (permalink) Sat Jun 03, 2006 19:58 pm Dan Brown |
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Hi,
| Jamie (K) wrote: | | I don't know if he is intentionally lying for a reason, or if he just intended to make up interesting stories. |
Surely that's what writing fiction is all about.
Alan
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Alan
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| #4 (permalink) Sat Jun 03, 2006 20:42 pm Dan Brown |
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| Alan wrote: | | Quote: | | I don't know if he is intentionally lying for a reason, or if he just intended to make up interesting stories. |
Surely that's what writing fiction is all about. |
You're right. Fiction is all about making up interesting stories. No dispute on that point. It's also an interesting device to weave one's fiction with realistic-sounding phony documentation, and many authors have done it to great effect. However, if an author sees masses of people around the world believing his fiction is really true and really credibly documented, then the ethical thing for him to do would be to openly and emphatically state that his work is just fiction. Instead, Dan Brown seems to be coy on that issue. |
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Jamie (K)
I'm a Communicator ;-)
Joined: 24 Feb 2006
Posts: 5264
Location: Detroit, Michigan, USA
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| Any experience with Toastmasters (public speaking)? | Research on reading |
