More on The Da Vinci Hoax

As a result of my recent post on The Da Vinci Hoax, I've heard from both authors, Sandra Miesel and Carl E. Olson. In the interest of fairness and promoting further discussion, I'm posting the substance of Olson's judicious, open-minded reply below.

Okay, a few random, but hopefully coherent, thoughts. You wrote:

> That said, I stand by my critiques of _The Da Vinci Hoax_. Most importantly,
> I think that you're misreading Brown when you claim that "He openly questions
> whether we can even know the truth about the past." Brown clearly thinks we
> can know the truth about the past, it's just that his version of that truth is
> wacky that no reasonable person could ever accept his version of events.

I'm actually open to the possibility that I misread Brown, at least to some
extent, on the issue of "can we really know history?" But I think there is
another, more irritating problem here, which is Brown's inability to make
his position clear. Or, to put it another way, I am convinced that he has
mastered the art of having it both ways, mostly by being ambiguous and
spouting cliches, usually empty of any substantial thought or meaning.

I'm not convinced that Brown does think we can know the truth about the
past, nor am I sure that he could articulate, as you have, the difference
between interpreting recorded history and figuring out what actually did
happen. There is, it seems to me, a very fine line to be walked here, and I
don't think Dan Brown is much for fine lines. I am firmly convinced that one
reason his novel has done so well is that he relies on a relativistic notion
of truth, while also claiming to have The Truth. Again, having it both ways.

You write:

> While reading your book, I found myself nodding and smiling most of the time.
> But when you started criticizing postmodernism, I got rather confused. As you
> suggest, "But the kinds of errors that Dan Brown makes requireno lofty
> analyses of 'discourse.'" If Brown's errors are simply factual ones, I see no
> need to raise the spectre of relativism and postmodernism.

There is really only one passage about postmodernism and I purposely
described what I was referring to as "a mixture of popularized
post-modernism and deconstructionism" (p. 27). I then have a footnote with
definitions of those two terms. If I were to rewrite that section I would
spend more time making a distinction between Brown's crude use of ideas
taken from postmodernism and the far more nuanced and academic forms of
post-modernism that exist.

While I think postmodernism (to the degree it can be carefully defined) is
seriously problematic and ultimately very flawed, I also don't think Brown
knows postmodernism from a hole in the ground. I think that he has dabbled
in superficial, pop forms of various philosophies and worldviews and has
then filtered them through his own simplistic manner of expression, which is
quite crude and often laughable (and very lucrative, sadly).

In other words, Brown does make (as Sandra indicates and you well know) a
myriad of factual errors. This is quite serious in its own right, of course,
but here are other problems, namely his coy, slitherly remarks about history
and it being "written by the winners" and so forth. This attitude, however
poorly expressed by Brown, owes quite a bit to postmodern and
deconstructionist thought, as I attempted to explain in our book.

In your original post, you wrote:

>They view The Da Vinci Code as a systematic effort on the part of Brown to
discredit traditional Christianity (and Catholicism in particular) and
replace it with a relativistic belief in the "sacred feminine." But it seems
to me that Dan Brown is simply not smart enough to be as insidious as Olson
and Meisel suggest he is.<

I think you misread us a bit on this, although I'm open to a rebuttal.
First, I don't think TDVCode is systematic in the least; I don't think Brown
is capable of a systematic effort. I think he has tossed a great deal of
silliness (much of it quite dangerous) together and has thrown it against
the cultural wall--and quite a bit of it has stuck. Therein lies the problem
and a major reason we wrote our book. I do agree that Brown is not smart
enough to produce a systematic effort, but (and it's a HUGE "but") that
doesn't mean his distortions and errors won't have a tremendous impact, no
matter how incoherent, illogical, and erroneous they are. Which is, I
suppose, the "genius" of TDVCode: it makes sense to people who are looking
for a particular mythology. And that is what I think many TDVCode fans
want‹not a systematic, structured, and scholarly attack on Christianity, but
an entertaining, emotional, and highly subjective work that gives lip
service to "fact' and "truth" without taking those things seriously.

Finally (and I really must go to bed!), you wrote, in your original post:

>Olson and Meisel's own vision of history is awfully outdated; no historian that
I know of shares their opinion. Criticizing Brown, they write that "He
openly questions whether we can even know the truth about the past" (27).
Well, yes. Any historian who doesn't question the limitations of historical
knowledge isn't being terribly responsible. We can't know *the* truth about
the past, and to think otherwise is to display a remarkable lack of
knowledge about just how history is produced.<

Here is the fine line I mentioned above and I wonder if perhaps you step
over it in writing this particular paragraph. Both Sandra and I understand
the difference between the historical record and how history has sometimes
been written; I'll also acknowledge that we don't make that entirely evident
in our book, and so you make a valid and helpful point. But we can, I am
convinced, know truth about the past, even while we might revise our
understanding of particular events, people, etc. I have a serious problem
with the statement, "We can't know THE truth about the past," since it begs
a number of serious questions: Is that a true statement? Can we know the
truth about the present? Can we know the truth about truth? Can we know
TRUTH, period?

Take your example of Trevelyan and the French Revolution. I happily concur
that historians can revise and update their understanding of certain events,
personalities, causes, effects, etc. But Trevelyan did believe that the
French Revolution happened, didn't he? And he would likely agree that this
event occurred and that person existed, etc. However, if Brown were writing
about the French Revolution, I suspect he would happily say it didn't happen
if that would serve his needs, whether they were "artistic" or otherwise.

I don't think that Brown really takes history seriously at all; in reacting
against his irresponsible and insulting approach, I may have overreacted a
bit in the other direction. But I think it's unfair to say that our view of
history is "awfully outdated," when our view is simply that there are many
historical facts that we can and do know, and that these need to be taken
seriously and address soberly. And we also know that there are many things
that we do not know about the past and many judgments that historians will
disagree about to one degree or another.

I'll post my response to Olson tomorrow.