With the release of the film version of Dan Brown's Angels and Demons this Friday, some authors are taking the opportunity once again to slam Dan Brown's writing. Jodi Picoult let fly in the Daily Mail saying that Brown's The Da Vinci Code was poorly written.
Graciously allowing that she doesn't "deny Dan Brown any of his success", Picoult went on to pick apart Brown's best-known novel, declaring that the code-cracking thriller left her cold. "I don't understand the hype over such a poorly written novel - and as an author who does all her own research, I know better than to consider myself an expert in the field I am writing about," she told the Daily Mail. "I believe this was an error in judgment for this particular author."
Picoult, sales of whose page-turning novels of families in crisis have made her a worldwide bestseller, is not the first author to have given Brown a rough ride. Salman Rushdie memorably laid into him in lecture he gave at the University of Kansas in 2005, during which he called The Da Vinci Code "a novel so bad that it gives bad novels a bad name". The Booker prize winner did, however, allow that despite the apparent paucity of his writing, Brown should be allowed to continue living. "Even Dan Brown must live," he said. "Preferably not write, but live."
Writers are entitled to their opinions about their peers' work, but the criticism of Dan Brown seems especially mean spirited to us. Then again, is there another author on the planet that Salman Rushdie does think is worthy of his time?
Dan's sequel to The
Da Vinci Code, The Lost Symbol is available for pre-order at Amazon.com for a very nice discount. We can't wait to read it.
