I Hope Dan Brown Has The Catholic Church On His Christmas Card List

June 19th, 2008 by Jake Hatlin | Posted in Other |

How do you take a mediocre novel and turn it into a phenomena of success?  You get the church all riled up about it, just ask Dan Brown.  He, of course, authored the Da Vinci Code, the biggest lottery jackpot in literature to ever be written.  The book that single handedly sold over sixty million copies, one quarter of the combined total sales of all of John Grisham’s 21 books. And then of course, there was the blockbuster movie, starring Tom Hanks.

And who do we have to thank for this unrivaled success?  Dan Brown?  No, not the sub-par author, but the Catholic Church for the buzz it created for the book by taking issue with the historical picture of Jesus Christ that the FICTIONAL story painted.

Instead of just allowing the Da Vinci Code to enjoy its moderate success, the Church turned counter productive on its own goal of suppressing the story by protesting it and picketing bookstores everywhere.  The end result - everyone just had to read it, everyone had to find out what all the noise was about, including me.  And I could not have been more let down by the so-so story.

Well, having not learned their lesson the first time, the Catholic Church is back to yet again boost Dan Brown’s fame and success by doing all they can to stand in the way of the filming of another Tom Hanks movie based upon his work, Angels and Demons.  I swear, somewhere right now, Dan Brown is grinning from ear to ear, drink in hand as he laughs at the thought of all that his arch nemesis has done for him. 

I would much rather find out that this whole thing is a hoax and that Dan Brown and the Catholic Church are actually in bed together, with the latter taking kickbacks from the former for all their publicity stunts.  That, to me, would at least make sense.

Yet that is the unlikely case.  Rather, the Catholic Church is yet again going to build the hype and success of Mr. Brown (with both the film and his continued book sales) with its pleas to viewers to buy a ticket to something else.  Dan Brown makes another boatload of money, and the con of all cons continues.

This is exactly why I sleep well past noon on Sundays.