Cult of Dan Brown: More Clues about TSK from Dan Brown

Greg, great stuff on keeping that update running on your site about the progress of the trial. Good to have a handy place to find all the relevant info.

Brown's witness depositon is a must read for any serious buff of this material. It offers an interesting glimpse into how this man thinks, in addition to providing his sources of information. The parts explaining particular points in the books were a nice bit of nostalgia. Very rare for a court document to be so enjoyable.

One of the most revealing things for me about the testimony, is that I think this is the first time that Brown actually publicly admitted purposely naming "Leigh Teabing" as an anagram in tribute to the work of Leigh and Baigent. It's an odd "tirbute" though, as Teabing is portrayed as basically a scheming monster and a vile antagonist who causes numerous deaths and thinks nothing of killing his own main helper. I wonder if L&B are considering a defamation suit against Brown now - because the current case as I understand is only about plagiarism.

But it is strange that Brown would model his biggest "Grail Authority" in the book on two authors whose book he says he barely consulted. Another weak point may be the "too well-thumbed" copy of the HBHG that Brown has, and his explanation for it is not very believable (that it got that way only afterwards...) Plus he admits he doesn't remember if he got his list of Priory Grand Masters from them or from the "Secret Dossiers".

It's also a disappointment to hear Brown say ""more than a year had passed since I'd researched and written the novel, and the precise names, dates, places, and facts had faded somewhat in my memory." It's an unexpected admission of stupidity from someone who comes accross as such an intelligent writer. Perhaps it means that he simply doesn't care about his material so much, because otherwise it doesn't fade from memory so soon, certainly not after you spend two very intensive years researching it. It sounds like a lame excuse to cover up something Brown is not saying.

The case may possibly stand or fall on the following statement of the man who published TDVC, Janson-Smith from Random House: “I assumed that because of that character it was likely that Mr Brown had at some point been in correspondence with the authors or, if not, that it was simply his nod of respect to them. I never thought to raise any concerns about plagiarism. HBHG purports to be non-fiction, while DVC is a thriller.” (this was quoted in one of the articles.)

The court may decide that "assuming" a correspondence with the authors is not good enough for a publisher, who should've made sure about it. It's actually his duty to "raise concerns about plagiarism", especially in such a blatant case, where he admits that he noticed whom Teabing's name is based on. On the other hand, it's also undeniably true that any good fiction author uses many non-fiction books for research, and to prove plagiarism one would have to show whole passages nearly copied.

What I find most disappointing is that Brown does not mention Laurence Gardner's "Bloodline of the Holy Grail" in his statement at all. And here I was thinking that Gardner's work was the big inspiration for the DVC, and that Teabing himself is modeled after him. I started thinking this because Gardner, like Teabing, is possibly the world's foremost authority on the Grail, and is also a Crown Historian and a "Sir" (though only of Scotland, and of the highly disputed royal line of Stuart.)

I find it actually very odd that Brown doesn't mention him as a source at all. And since I like conspiracies so much, I'm starting to think that maybe Gardner really was his big inspiration after all, but they're hiding this fact for some reason. Wider publicity for the whole Merovingian Bloodline business can greatly benefit Gardner's biggest sponsor, Prince Michael of Albany, who claims Merovingian descent.

The points you raise in your latest essay on the expected plot of SK are all valid. Brown did research the Freemasons a great deal for the DVC but did not put use them at all, as he said, he decided to "shelve the subject". So it's probably a given that they'll be playing a major role in his upcoming one. And he's likely to weave Manly Hall's "Baconian America" and the Sinclair Money Pit into it somehow too.

Regards,
Sol

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