If we knew as much about Dan Brown as the man through whom he has chosen to live vicariously, we wouldn’t, in truth, know very much. From Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code we know that Robert Langdon is a Phillips Exeter Academy graduate, a respected Harvard professor renowned for his ability to crack codes and explain symbols, and that he is attracted to highly intelligent women of some accomplishment. There is not much more when it comes to revealing Dan Brown himself. From his publisher’s PR material, or the scant background information he provided during interviews in the days when he was still giving them, we essentially learn that he is a graduate of Phillips Exeter Academy and Amherst, where he had several influential teachers, that he wrote three books prior to The Da Vinci Code that achieved only modest success, that he has a strong preference for a quiet, ordinary New England life, a penchant for detailed research, and a writing discipline that includes hanging upside down in his gravity boots.

We begin our quest to know Dan Brown better, however, through a rare interview given when he began promoting The Da Vinci Code. We also find out how a person who has a joint major in English and Spanish makes use of Latin in his novels.

A Collision of Indiana Jones and Joseph Campbell
Craig McDonald Interviews Dan Brown

Craig McDonald hosts a website devoted to interviews with interesting authors (www.modestyarbos.com). As Secrets of the Code was researched, we found this to be one of the more revealing interviews with Dan Brown as writer that we came across.

You taught English at Exeter. What were some of the books you used in your teaching?

I taught both [literature and writing]. We’d teach books like The Iliad and The Odyssey, Of Mice and Men. You know, anything by Shakespeare. Anything by Dostoyevsky. The classics.

How long did it take you to sell your first novel?

You know, I got exceptionally lucky. My book sold in twenty days. The first editor who saw it bought it. Part of it had to do with the fact that it was an exceptionally commercial topic at that time. That being national security and civilian privacy. Electronic code-breaking. E-mail… National Security Agency [NSA]. It was a piece of fiction that had actual ties to the real world.

Would you write Digital Fortress differently if you were doing it in a post-9/11 world and with some of the controversies stemming from Homeland Security?

I don’t think so. You know what’s funny is when I first started writing that book and I learned about NSA, I thought, Oh my God, this is a huge invasion of privacy. I contacted a former NSA cryptographer and said, You know what you guys are doing? This scanning e-mail and cell phones--this is an invasion of privacy. This guy responded in a brilliant way. He faxed me the transcript of a Senate Judiciary hearing where the then-director of the FBI, Louis Freeh, testified that in one year alone--I believe the year was 1994--the NSA’s ability to infiltrate civilian communication had thwarted the downing of two US commercial airliners and a chemical weapons attack on US soil. What was funny, was, I must have done 150 different radio interviews after Digital Fortress came out and we'd get these callers who would call in and say, I can’t believe you’re supporting the National Security Agency--its basically Brave New World. And then, after September 11, people would call in and say, I don’t care what NSA needs. If they want to put a streaming video camera in my bedroom, that’s fine. Whatever they need to stop this, it’s fine. The entire feeling about national security, as a priority, shifted. Now, the question is, Have we gone too far? We’ll just bounce back and forth, I’m sure.

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Join the Discussion

What do you think of the mysterious Dan Brown? Really that mysterious or just a great publicity machine? Discuss this interview in the comments section.

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Given the subject matter, and its potential to offend some on a religious level, how do you account for The Da Vinci Code selling in such vast quantities?

I did a lot of research for this novel, and I really got the sense that people were ready for this story. It was the type of thing that people were just ready to hear. As far as my surprise with the success: I’m surprised with the level of success--the fact that this book is just breaking all records and we just found out it went back to number one on every list in the country, next week. I should say that when the book came out, I was a little bit nervous about the response. The response from priests, nuns--all sorts of people in the church--for the most part, has been overwhelmingly positive. There have been a few people for whom the book was shocking and was upsetting, but less than one percent.

Robert Langdon appears in your second and fourth novels. There have been some statements issued that you intend to focus on him as a series character. A number of crime and thriller writers launch a series, then rue the fact that they can no longer follow their muse in other directions. Why are you moving the other way?

Langdon is a character who has my own interests. I am fascinated with ancient mysteries. Art history. Codes. You spend a year, a year and a half writing a book, you better be darn sure your hero is involved in subject matter you are excited about. As excited as I was about NASA and meteors or the National Security Agency, my passions really do lie with ancient mysteries and codes and that sort of thing.

Have you always had that interest in the covert?

I have. I grew up on the East Coast, right in New England, sort of in the heart of prep schools and Ivy League colleges with all of their little fraternities and eating clubs and secret societies and all of that. I had associations early on with people from the National Security Agency. Secrets, I think, interest everybody and the concept of secret societies--especially after I visited the Vatican--just really captured my imagination.

Ah yes, your famously touted audience with the pope.

A lot of people have had an audience with the pope. It basically means that you are in his presence and that’s just a very sort of arcane and silly way to put it. I was in a room with a group of other people and that’s about the extent of it.

You were also purportedly afforded some unusual access to the Vatican grounds. …

That’s true. I have a very good friend who has a connection, extremely high, in the Vatican. The parts of the Vatican that we saw--such as the Necropolis … currently, something like eleven people a day are allowed in to see the Necropolis. That was probably the most secure area that we saw that was absolutely really, really memorable and special. The Vatican archives--only three Americans in history have been allowed inside. I was not one of them. Two were cardinals and one was a professor of religious studies, I think, at the University of Florida. All of the descriptions were accurate. But I was not allowed inside the secret archives myself. I was allowed inside the Vatican Library and the Vatican archives, but not the Vatican secret archives.

Think you might still be afforded that access after Angels & Demons and The Da Vinci Code?

Chances are slim.

There was a statement somewhere to the effect that you’re in possession of something like a dozen rough outlines for future Robert Langdon novels.

I am. Chances are I won’t get to write them all.

Given the plot complexity of the novels, I assume you must write to a pretty structured outline.

Oh my, yeah. The outline to The Da Vinci Code was over one hundred pages. The stories are very intricate and plot-driven. They have a lot of twists, a lot of codes. A lot of surprises. You can’t write those freehand--those come from careful planning.

You’ve indicated you spend about a year and a half on a books composition. How much of that time is committed to research?

About half.

You’ve taken on some fairly powerful entities in your books--the Catholic Church … the Masons … various alleged secret societies and government agencies. Are you starting to have any fears for your own safety?

I really am not. I work very hard to portray these organizations in a fair and even light and I think I’ve succeeded. Certainly, with respect to Opus Dei, as I say in the book, there are those for whom Opus Dei has been a wonderful addition to their lives. And there are those for whom Opus Dei has been a nightmare, and I talk about both.

Do you think these Langdon books would have been written if you weren’t married to an art historian?

My wife is an enormous influence--her knowledge and her passion for the subject matter certainly buoys the process when it bogs down. Writing a book is incredibly hard. I would not wish it on my worst enemy. There are definitely days when it helps to have somebody around--especially in the case of The Da Vinci Code who understands art and da Vinci and is passionate about it and can say, You know, lets go take a walk and talk about why we got into this in the first place—what’s so exciting about da Vinci and what he believed. So I’m very fortunate on that front.

Returning a little bit to September 11, 2001, I read an interview that you gave in 1998 and it’s particularly prescient, now, looking back on it. You were commenting on projects that were under way to monitor U.S. citizens for the reason specifically of preventing terrorist attacks, and you said, The threat is very real. … Americans hate to admit it, but we have a lot of enemies; we are a ripe target for terrorism and yet have one of the lowest rates of successful domestic terrorist attacks on earth. Such an attack was on your radar a bit before it was on most people’s radar. Why?

I think because of my shock, well, you probably read the story about the guys who showed up at the campus of Phillips Exeter from the Secret Service.

Yes, you had a student who had written something in an e-mail and they came to investigate the student.

Right. That really was my first encounter with the National Security Agency. The more I read about them, the more upset I got. And I couldn’t believe that essentially highly trained American civilians would be working on projects to snoop other civilians. It made no sense to me, until I started to dig deeper and realized why it’s happening and why no matter what we say and what we want, it will continue to happen. And ending up getting lists of terrorist attacks that never happened because of NSA. I started to sense, Oh my God, we are under attack, almost daily, and just never hear about it. It’s important to remember about terrorists that their job is not necessarily to kill people, it’s to create terror. In the event that there is a bomb under the White House, or, say, a bomb in New York City that NSA is able to stop with three seconds left, they will make that bomb disappear and hope nobody ever found out about it, because whether or not the bomb goes off, the second you know it almost went off, it’s almost just as scary. So there is a lot of protecting our ignorance/innocence.

Looking at the dates, you were touring immediately after September 11 for Deception Point, I take it?

Yes.

What was that like?

It was awful. It was a tough time. I was working on Da Vinci Code on the morning of September 11. I have an office where I have no telephone, no e-mail, no nothing, where I go just to be totally alone. My wife walked over and just said, Something terrible is happening and I instantly knew that it had finally happened. For a couple of months after that, it was very hard to be motivated to write fiction. It felt totally unimportant. With so much going on in the world, how can you afford to allow yourself the luxury of moving fictional characters around in a fictional landscape--you know, how are you helping your country doing that? As it turns out, you are--at some point you’re giving people release from the pain of reality and some recreation. It’s just hard to remember that.

You have a background in music. Have you thought of using any musical themes or elements in your novels?

I have. One of my future novels focuses on a famous composer and his associations with a secret society, all factual.

There have been some mentions that your next book after The Da Vinci Code is going to be set in Washington, D.C.

That’s correct.

And, something about Freemasons . . . ?

Yep … Are you hoping I will say more? [laughing]

I thought I would leave some ellipses dangling there and maybe you would fill ‘em in … but I guess not.

That’s about all I’m allowed to say.

You do get a sense of readership through your readings and signings?

You know, that has been the most gratifying aspect of tour--to look out at these bookstores and see men, women, and a lot of teenagers. Kids have really reacted--especially to Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. It’s sort of like a more mature Harry Potter, I guess, is what a lot of kids are feeling. It has some of those ancient mystery elements that people like in Harry Potter.

That comparison is made in some of the press materials from your publisher.

The first time I heard the analogy was Janet Maslin in the New York Times, who wrote an absolutely glowing review. People called and said, Is Janet Maslin your mother, because she never says stuff like that. She invoked the holy name of Harry Potter and I believe she was first. I don’t read fiction, except occasionally to blurb somebody’s novel if I’m asked by my editor. That’s the other thing—I’ll get novels almost daily saying, Wouldn’t you love to read this and put a blurb on it? I have not read Harry Potter, but in my mind, anything that gets kids that excited about reading has got to be really good. I think it’s just fantastic.

Any of the books been optioned for film yet?

All kinds of interest. Because Langdon is a series character, I’m hesitant to sell the film rights. One of the beauties of the reading experience is that everybody pictures Langdon in his or her perfect way. The second you slap a character [in a script] no matter how you describe Langdon or any other character--they picture Ben Affleck or Hugh Jackman or whoever it happens to be, you know? So, I’m hesitant. Also, Hollywood has a way of taking a story like this and turning it into a car chase through Paris with machine guns and karate chops. So, I’m very hesitant, and yet I’m talking to a few specific individuals who are the kinds of people who could make this a smart movie, and that’s the only way I would sell, is if I had exceptional amounts of control.


See also:

• Codes, Symbols, and Other Clues
• Cracking The Da Vinci Code at the Louvre
• Echoes of the Hidden Past
• Glossary of Terms
• Mary Magdalene and the Sacred Feminine

• Secret Societies
• The Da Vinci Code Effect
• The Early Days of Christianities
• The Sacred Feminine