‘The Da Vinci Code » author Dan Brown was accused in Britain’s High Court on Monday of taking material for his blockbuster conspiracy thriller from a 1982 book about the Holy Grail.
The accusation was made in a breach of copyright lawsuit filed against »The Da Vinci Code » publisher Random House. If the lawsuit succeeds in getting an injunction barring use of the disputed material, the scheduled May 19 release of »The Da Vinci Code » film starring Tom Hanks and Ian McKellan could be threatened.
Brown has been sued before. In 2005, a U.S. judge in New York ruled that his book did not infringe on the copyrights of »Daughter of God, » by Lewis Perdue. The judge also ruled out any copyright violations of Perdue’s 1983 novel »The Da Vinci Legacy. »
In today’s New York Times.
I know a lot of readers and fans of this book are not aware of the allegations of plagiarism, so I’m going to link to the Wikipedia section called: Criticisms of The Da Vinci Code.
I think they should have simply sued him for bad writing.
Dan Brown didn’t write a non-fiction theory. He wrote a fictional story that involved a non-fictional theory. Is that still plagiarism?
I really enjoyed the book’s premise and read along, as I have with Brown’s other books, to see it through. Brown would have made a compelling history teacher but I find his characters utterly forgettable and each book repeats the same pattern. So, I don’t know that I’d agree that Brown is a bad writer, per se. I just think he puts entirely too much effort into the wrong areas.
Sincerely, I don’t know that it can legally be interpreted as plagiarism, even though he used a lot of information from other people’s researches. He’ll probably win in court.
It just drove me crazy that SO many people took his book and the « research » behind it seriously. Brown contributed to that in a way with the kind of interviews he gave and the way he took all of this so seriously. (I probably would take it seriously as well if I had made so much money with a book! ;-)
I found the book painful to read and couldn’t finish it. The structure is so repetitive that it became childish, with every chapter starting and ending in the same way.
You are right in a way about the history teacher thing: the book is more didactic than literary. But with the way he takes liberties with research and information, I wouldn’t want to have Brown as a history teacher! ;-)
Thank you. You saved me the embarrassment of posting uninformed praise of the novel.
You people are just jealous because you’re not part of the bloodline in question.
Frank: it’s okay to like the book. It’s just not okay to believe it’s more than fiction. ;-)
Bob Christ: My ancestors are all French (except for one Irish great grandmother). If I dig long enough, I might find out that I’m Marie-Magdelena’s distant cousin! My mom was named Madeleine after all…
it’s fiction all right, but based on actual research that was not his. i liked the book enough – although it seemed to me that nothing in there was so new as to be shocking (and if the research he based himself on dates to 1982, then i was correct). what i hated though was a feeling of being manipulated – and good authors should manipulate, if it is their wish, but in a subtle way, not so obviously. i also very much resented that he apparently thought he was writing a screenplay – the scenes were cut as if for a movie, not for a novel. that supremely annoyed me – form got in the way of content. imho.
It’s true, Five Blue: it bugged me as well that I could tell it had « please buy the rights do this screenplay » written all over it.
I think I’ll probably enjoy the movie more than the book!
Yes, I was a bit more than eager to believe much of it as truth. I had read the US News & World Report special issue that reinforced what Brown claims in the book. I really have to read Wikipedia more often. Anyhow, the post was poorly writen and has been sitting on the shelf for a couple months. I write another with a different angle.
It’s a win-win situation. Lots of free publicity for both books, ‘coincidently’ published by the same publisher group, Random House.
They don’t give a rat’s behind who wins.