Da Vinci Code on Trial

Pity poor Dan Brown. The millionaire author is on trial in England on charges that his best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code ripped off the 1982 book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.

The trial has been amusing; today in the Post-Dispatch, the headline read, "Writing takes discipline, author of 'Da Vinci Code' says in witness statement." That's news? According to cnn.com, Brown revealed details of his writing process:

Brown's 69-page witness statement described how he and [his wife] struggled to make ends meet during his early days as a writer, and how he composed the main synopsis of The Da Vinci Code in a cramped laundry room in his parents' house.

He said he woke at 4 a.m. every day.

"In addition to starting early, I keep an antique hourglass on my desk and every hour break briefly to do push-ups, sit-ups, and some quick stretches. I find this helps keep the blood (and ideas) flowing."

While I'm not a huge fan of The Da Vinci Code (I thought the writing style was silly and the characters none too deep), I'm troubled by the argument that Brown "appropriated the architechture" of the earlier book. Of course plagiarism is wrong, but no one is accusing Brown of stealing passages word for word. Instead, he is charged with borrowing ideas. Now, The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail is a work of nonfiction. The Da Vinci Code is fiction. Brown used the ideas in the other book to create his own story and characters. As far as I'm concerned, that's what fiction writers do. He even mentions HB&HG by name in the story. And the blockbuster status of Brown's book could only have helped sales of HB&HG.

For another discussion of turning nonfiction into creative work, see Malcolm Gladwell's 2004 article in The New Yorker, in which he describes meeting with a playwright who has "stolen" some of his words.