Archived Editorial for 05/07/06

Speculative Non-Fiction vs “What If” Fiction
by Rebecca Brown

Man o man! has The Da Vinci Code stirred up a hornet's nest! Even 60 Minutes got into the fray with an earnest report about a certain aspect of the tale. We've all heard how Dan Brown was summoned to the British Old Bailey courts of law to defend himself against Michael Baigent & Richard Leigh & their accusation of plagiarism (& idea stealing) of their 1983 Holy Blood, Holy Grail -- a work of “speculative non-fiction”. Dan Brown was exonerated &, no doubt, Random House has guffawed all the way to the bank with the spike in sales of both books, even as it pays the piper for the “losers'” legal bills.

Who else has seen the 600lb oxymoron in this commotion? “Speculative non-fiction” -- can you say that with a straight face? Call me a rube. Call me a doddering dowager, just don't call me a sucker! Peer closely at the book jacket -- see the words: “A NOVEL”?

When I read The Da Vinci Code, which I thoroughly enjoyed, I never once thought it anything other than a well written mystery /thriller that wove some history, a handful of legends & a bagful of artifacts into a suspenseful yarn about some heretofore taboo “what ifs”. As I read it, Steven Spielberg's movie Indiana Jones & The Last Crusade often bobbed up in my mind. Some of the artifacts described in The Da Vinci Code are indeed real -- as “real” as we, today, can interpret anything historical -- & as all authors know, the closer you skate to the edge of “true” & “real”, the better will be your story. & for those with the inclination, these artifacts can be viewed by taking one of the newly-organized guided tours along part/s of the trail/s described in the book. Whether they “prove” the premise of Dan Brown's novel is quite another kettle of fish.

In case you didn't know it, a new genre of mystery/thrillers has evolved over the past half-century which are based on just such “what ifs”. It's called “alternate history”, of which Chris Fox's The Devil's Halo & Robert Harris' Fatherland are two good examples. For decades, however, in Science Fiction there've been many alternate history tales: Eric Flint's series starting with 1632 comes to mind.

&, always ready to milk a cash cow when they find one, Amazon.com now has “The Da Vinci Code Store”, wherein you may browse all the latest alternative history offerings.

I expect few remember D. H. Lawrence's novella The Man Who Died (first published in 1929. I read it in the 50s): a “what if” Jesus survived the crucifixion & went on to become a wise guru in India, the land of the birth of Buddha, two millennia earlier. To add a frisson of verisimilitude to this idea, consider Abubakr Salahuddin's definitely non-fiction Saving The Savior. Complete with black & white location photos it documents, via legends & artifacts, Jesus' actual final resting place high in the mountain wilderness of Kashmir. Did it cause a furor when it was published? Not at all. I imagine few people have bothered to read it, which is sad because it's an earnest little tome with some fascinating Big Thoughts.

Why does the idea of Jesus surviving cause such a ballyhoo? Of Him going on to marry & father children? I suspect it's because, in part, in our legends, myths & stories (& no matter how we “take” the stories of Jesus in the New Testament -- written, I must add, decades -- even a century after His demise), they are unsubstantiated by any historical document other than those four gospels, & other gnostic writings which the Roman Catholic Church decided, way back when, to quash. Certainly, the great Jewish chronicler of the time -- Josephus -- made no mention of Jesus or the uproar surrounding His life.

In our super hero stories, they never get off their white horses, never step up to the altar to say “I do”, never go in life-long debt with a mortgage on the family home, & never, ever get on with being kind husbands & fathers. The metaphors & allegories of derring-do, killing dragons & rescuing damsels in distress are not, to me, nearly as heroic as getting married, holding down a job to provide for your family, raising good children, wisely teaching grandchildren, & keeping the peace.

Then there's J. R. Lankford's lively & semi-plausible thriller The Jesus Thief. Published in 2003, it posed the “what if” scenario of someone taking DNA from the Shroud of Turin & creating a test tube baby &.... It's movie rights were promptly snapped up & was going into production when it got nixed for being too controversial, too heretical.

Heresy:
1 a) a religious belief opposed to the orthodox doctrines of a church; especially such a belief specifically denounced by that church
b) the rejection of a belief that is a part of church dogma
2 any opinion (in philosophy, politics, etc.) opposed to official or established views or doctrines
3 the holding of any such belief or opinion
Synonyms: nonconformity, dissidence, revisionism, protestantism, dissent, heterodoxy, sectarianism, doctrinal divergence, apostasy, agnosticism, schism, unorthodoxy, secularism, blasphemy, paganism, sin, atheism, fallacy, misbelief, heathenism.

Many religions have an attitude about “non-believers”. Some even convince themselves that “non-believers” are sub-humans. I kid you not! Surely you've heard all those jokes about what happens to “true believers” when they get to Heaven & find out they're not the only ones there. Personally, I think if G-d had wanted to be the only one, He woudn't have invented all the others, all of which are facets of our expression of spiritual consciousness. Some prefer a man killed on a cross, others many-armed dancers, still others sons of the Sun, while some actually don't worship any godlike being, preferring to reach the serenity of consciousnes through the emptying of the mind.

Once upon a time in Western Europe, Protestantism was deemed heresy. Back when the Roman Catholic Church was the only Christianity in town -- it was spread via the roads of the recently converted Roman Empire, which promptly announced it was Holy. It sent us into a 600 year Dark Age in which the RRC morphed into an omnipresent tyranny intent on suppressing & absorbing any other kind of religious practice by any means possible: usually mind control & genocide. It also asserted it was the only right way to be a Christian. Remember the Eastern Orthodox Church which, recent reconciliatory gestures notwithstanding, the RCC still dislikes?

Well, times change. Out of the excesses of that absolute power evolved the thousand year Medieval Period, during which we survived -- by the hairs on our chinny-chin-chins -- reoccuring pandemics of fire, starvation, warfare & pestilence, ever climbing out of that black pit toward The Renaissance. Out in the sunshine we reinvented ourselves until that too became so excessive, so corrupt that it drove Martin Luther to nail his Ninety-Five Theses (his declaration of independence) not to any old “random house” -- he chose the door of the Wittenberg Church. The trickle-down effect of what he'd done & written so inspired Europeans, especially the monarchs, that they separated from the Mother Church in droves in a centuries' long bloodbath that would be called The Reformation = re-formation, out of which cohesed entire nations of Protestants, who refused to kow-tow to the Vatican.

Returning to the The Da Vinci Code: only in today's climate could Dan Brown have dared write such a yarn & Random House dared publish it. The furor is, after all, about taking a figurehead, a super hero that is revered & sacred to millions & spinning a tale based on the most heretical of concepts: what if He hadn't died?

& to add a dash of idiocy to the brew, now members of the Agnus Dei organization, who feel they got bad press in the book, want the producers of the movie to show a disclaimer that the story we're about to see does not represent the society's true purpose.

Man o man! How seriously folks take this stuff! When did they forget that Dan Brown wrote a brilliant mystery, a super thriller, yet for all that:- A NOVEL. Not a tome of speculative non-fiction!

Rebecca