Dave’s Midlife Blog

As I was writing my post on my Shake-spearean crisis, I went to the website for Mark Anderson’s biography of Edward de Vere, “Shakespeare” by Another Name. There I found the link to his podcast. That reminded me that I had heard a promo for this podcast a couple years ago; I think that may have been what started me thinking about the whole “authorship question” once again.

Episode 1 of Anderson’s podcast is an excellent nutshell summary of the anti-Stratfordian argument. It also sets the stage for Anderson’s Oxfordian argument, which is developed in both his book and in subsequent editions of his podcast. (The entire podcast series is nine episodes long.)

Anderson also has a blog in which he presents the latest developments in the Shake-speare debate. I’ve subscribed to the RSS feed for the blog as well as to the podcast. In one blog entry he mentions a performance by my new podcast friends the Reduced Shakespeare Company.

I’ve mentioned before here that my wife and I have season tickets to the Shakespeare Theatre in Washington, DC. I’ve also been an actor in the past, and have played several roles in Shakespeare in professional theatres.

This past year I came to a Shakespearean crisis point. Or perhaps I should say a Shake-spearean crisis point. That hyphen in Shake-speare is deliberate. I have come to believe with very strong conviction that Shake-speare was a penname, and that the actor guy from Stratford-upon-Avon never wrote a word of those plays. (more…)

This morning’s Washington Post has a report of a plagiarism trial involving Dan Brown, author of The Da Vinci Code. (I have railed against this lazily written book before in these pages.)

According to the report, Brown was called as a witness in a lawsuit brought against his publisher (not Brown himself) by a couple of writers who claim he lifted the structure of his story from their non-fiction work. He finds their claim “absurd” and says he drafted the outline himself in 2001 in his parents’ laundry room.

I cannot tell from this report what the merits of the case might be. I observe, simply, that plagiarism is a lazy tactic often used by lazy and unoriginal writers. I have observed this in my 20 years of college and high-school teaching.

And, of course, I’ve earlier argued that The Da Vinci Code is a very lazily written book. I’m not saying he lifted the plot from Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh’s work–I have no idea one way or another. I’m just saying I would not be at all surprised if that turned out to be the case.

The Post Style-section article, by Kevin Sullivan, has the rather sarcastic and bemused tone of so many Style-section pieces, and seems to assume that Brown is the victim of money-grubbing star chasers. I guess this is to be expected, since Brown and DVC are the flavor-of-the-week (flavor-of-the-decade?).

Too bad. It would have been much more interesting to read a bit more about the merits of the case, rather than Brown’s “exasperated” answers to “a line of questioning as compelling and clear as a toaster warranty.” Kevin Sullivan describes the attorneys and the judge as “[wearing] … august black robe[s] and … white wig[s] with Shirley Temple curls.” Yeah, well, it’s a British court. They’ve dressed like that for centuries, Kevin.

Sullivan must not have observed many trials. Legal inquiry, to someone outside of a case, is usually stultifying. That doesn’t, however, make it invalid.

Categories: religion, books, law

The movie of The DaVinci Code is coming out soon, with Hollywood’s Mr. Nice Guy, Tom Hanks. (I actually like Hanks a lot onscreen.)

The book’s been out for a couple years now. I bought it with fascination after Christmas 2003, right at the beginning of the time when it became a phenomenon.

I was appalled. Not because I am a conservative Christian (I’m not), but because it was so horribly, stupidly written.

Any “mystery novel” whose protagonists are much more clueless than I am as a reader is a failed “mystery.” When I could see what was coming three pages before the characters in the story, I felt really disappointed. It was like learning the secret of a magic trick: “Is that all there is?”

The most egregious stupidity, I think, is probably the “mystery” of the code writing–the point when the main guy (whose name I’ve forgotten) makes the stunning discovery that something is written in a “secret code.” Duh. Hold the book up to the mirror. Most eighth-grade kids learn something about DaVinci and mirror writing.

In the NY Times on February 9 there’s a piece by Laurie Goodstein about the film company’s setting up a website for critics of the film to vent. The site seems intended for those conservative Christians who can’t abide the feminist theology that underlies the story.

I was actually fascinated by the feminist theology and the notion of Jesus of Nazareth having a wife. What galled me was Dan Brown’s ham-handed and glib way of presenting this notion in fiction. Somebody should have done a better job with this. Oh well. Brown’s laughing all the way the bank now.

Too bad. It’s a shame such a lousy book has become such a favorite of the theological left.

Categories: religion, books