Posted on 06/06/2006 1:51:25 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Controversy in the press surrounding "Da Vinci Code" author Dan Brown, just beginning to fade, will likely revive later this week when the July issue of Vanity Fair hits the stands. According to an advance copy, the magazine's contributing editor Seth Mnookin alleges -- in a massive article titled "DaVinci Clone?" -- two new instances of possible plagiarism in Brown's past. Two textual analysis experts also tell him they believe Brown borrowed the plot for his book from Lewis Perdue's "Daughter of God."
The two libel experts say they are convinced Brown borrowed heavily from the Perdue book, despite Brown's recent victory in court. John Olsson, the director of Britain's Forensic Linguistics Institute, said, "This is the most blatant example of in-your-face plagiarism I've ever seen. It just goes on and on. There are literally hundreds of parallels."
Brown did not respond to requests for comment from Vanity Fair.
Mnookin also cites an incident in which Brown copied for "The DaVinci Code" an exact passage from the paper "Leonardo's Lost Robot," written by robotics expert Mark Rosheim. Brown's publisher, Doubleday, said it was covered under fair-use. Rosheim says, "Every now and then I'll be giving a talk and someone will come in with The Da Vinci Code and ask me to sign a copy. Either that or they'll accuse me of copying him."
Finally, Mnookin offers evidence that he says may link Brown's wife, Blythe, to a spate of "mysterious" e-mails that Perdue has received, coming from one "Ahamedd Saaddodeen."
The lengthy article mainly follows the trail of Perdue's legal case. Mnookin reveals that Perdue first contacted him in 2003. Mnookin wrote a brief item about the dispute for Newsweek in June, 2003.
The new Vanity Fair article concludes with Perdue's words: "Sometimes it's hard not to feel as if I'm going crazy."
Come on people, it's just fiction! Brown is just pretending he came up with this stuff himself! He never claimed he actually wrote it!
"Seth Mnookin? Seth Mnookin?"
What kinda name is that?
I suspect that if the book hadn't met the agenda of the Court he would have been found guilty but the Court liked that the book was so anti Catholic Church.
He probably did plagerize, but Dan Brown is a liberal and he will get away with it because he smeared the Christian religion.
What a gentleman. Blame the wife.
Classic smear from the politics of personal destruction magazine Vanity Fair. Remember folks, the liberals don't like this guy either.
Foucault's Pendulum was brilliant. It is almost impossible to find any current authors who can put out a novel like that any more.
Eco has a great essay that discusses a famous rehash in his short book "Serendipities," telling how a series of little known works of fiction eventually came to be known as the Protocals of the Elders of Zion (which were taken seriously by fools then just as Davinci is today).
If it were, anybody who writes historical fiction, or non-fiction for that matter, would be a plagiarist.
Some are now saying that random publishing can produce plagiarism.
Hmmm. Lends credence to the quote that a plagiarist copies the work of another, while a historian quotes the works of several others.
> Remember folks, the liberals don't like this guy either.
Liberals love (not just like) any sliming of Christianity. That's why across the West the liberals are hard at working trying to dismantle and rewrite (or outright exclude) any refrence to Christianity's major (and overall positive) influence on the West.
The "feminist subset" loves both the anti-Christian messages and the vague "goddess religion" of pseudo-Gnostic babblings. Unfortunately, I have one family member in another state who is devoted to that nonsense. I sent her some links (after she had mailed me a copy of the novel), links to info debunking virtually all of Brown's claims about history, Christianity, art, etc. I wasn't harsh, all I said was "you might want to know some more about this guy and his alleged 'research'...... All she wrote back to me was "I DON'T CARE - THE GODESS RULES!"
People like that depress me deeply..... not even remotely interested in learning any facts, only concerned to live all warm and fuzzy within a cult.
I liked his earlier book "the name of the rose"
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