Fridays on campus often bustle with students, and this Friday was no different. A winding queue formed outside the GMB as the exciting chatter of numerous conversations unveiled last night’s guest speaker – the creator of the best-selling fiction novel The Da Vinci Code, author Dan Brown.
After a short introduction, Hist auditor Julia McCarthy presented Brown with the Burke medal for his outstanding contribution to the arts, after which he opened his speech by humbly thanking The Hist for giving him the opportunity to address the packed room of bright-eyed fans. He remarked on the daunting fact that he was speaking on the home turf of some of the world’s best writers in the English language, not to mention speaking just a stone’s throw away from the Book of Kells.
Brown began his speech by noting that he works for the purpose of inspiring dialogue. He spoke of his respect and reverence for the past, and saw that the best way of respecting the past and its traditions is by challenging them. When speaking to The University Times, he noted that “the real antagonist to religion is apathy. People just stop caring. If anything, I think I’m helping getting people talking about it, or at least thinking about it. Apathy is the real enemy.”
Brown described novel writing as very solitary. The author is the master of the universe he’s creating, whereas films have to go through the minds of directors, editors, actors, scriptwriters and Hans Zimmer before the final work is formed.
Brown spoke at length about his childhood, and how growing up in a household parented by a god-fearing mother and a math-crazed father shaped his fascination with his future novel themes from a very young age. He confessed that he had been happy in his two worlds of science and religion until he began to see certain inconsistencies and ambiguities posed by the two differing discourses. He mentioned here his popular character Robert Langdon, who believes science and religion as two different languages aiming to tell a single story. His books, he noted, have recurring themes of religion, faith, and humanity’s quest for the divine, and yet his talk very much focused on the idea of the future of spirituality.
Despite his numerous jokes and lively anecdotes throughout the address, Brown unmistakably portrayed a thorough knowledge of history, technology, anthropology and mathematics. He explained the ancient Greek quest for a type of spirituality he calls “gods of the gap”, whereupon any natural phenomenon or occurrence would have been described as an act of a particular god. When asked by The University Times whether he feels as if he filled some gaps with his books, he boldly answered “I try to create them.” Today, however, he feels we rely less on religion to answer for natural incidents, and instead turn to God when we have questions that science cannot answer – why are we here, what happens next?
Continuing on the subject of the future of spirituality, Brown wondered if religion has anything to fear from science – will they ever get along, or will there ever be a winner. He noted that the time limit of human development is compressing, and further questioned the role of our existing gods today in the philosophies of tomorrow. He called on the room to remember that there is nothing in our DNA that predetermines our beliefs – we are born into a culture, we worship the gods of our parents, and that we should challenge the questions of religion and spirituality with respect to ancient history and technological future.
“I am not trying to make people believe in my books, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing fiction. I like to blur lines between fact and fiction, and as a suspense thriller writer, you have to use all the tools to mess with your readers’ minds.”
A thundering applause followed Brown’s speech, after which the floor was opened for Q&A from an eager audience. When asked about his fan base, he replied “I am not trying to make people believe in my books, otherwise I wouldn’t be writing fiction. I like to blur lines between fact and fiction, and as a suspense thriller writer, you have to use all the tools to mess with your readers’ minds.”
On a question about his thoughts on the film adaptations to his books, Brown reflected that the films are only successful if they stay true to the beat of the novel, following its themes and main concepts. He described novel writing as very solitary, the author is the master of the universe he’s creating, whereas films have to go through the minds of directors, editors, actors, scriptwriters and Hans Zimmer before the final work is formed. When asked about Ireland as a potential setting for a future book, he indicated his interest in the history and religious conflict in Ireland, further noting “everything is possible.”
After a lengthy photograph and autograph session with his many fans, Brown agreed to speak to The University Times before dashing off to the airport in the quest for a new adventure. He observed that he first started calling himself a writer after “the Digital Fortress was published”, and if he wasn’t writing full-time, he would undoubtedly be teaching. He further noted that he would “hope to go back to it someday.” He confessed that “for a book that takes three years, half of that time is research”, and that he gets his ideas from reading the “thrillers of Robert Ludlum, the wordplay of Shakespeare, the description of Steinbeck” among other writers. Brown assured The University Times that religion has nothing to fear from him: “Religion’s been around for two thousand years. I’m one voice, I write thriller fiction and get people to ask questions. If I don’t, somebody will ask those questions.” But he questioned the future of spirituality, “because I see what science has done historically and I see a trend. Whether or not it’s in my lifetime I feel it will extrapolate at such ease, that there’s less and less religion every day.” Brown feels that writing changes the writer by making “the writer more observant, more curious, and old in a hurry.”
Reflecting on the character Langdon, and how he gets himself into various novel-worthy situations, Brown joked “it doesn’t happen to him every day, I just write about the bad days.”
Brown’s days, however look a lot less hectic – “I start writing at 4am. I’ve got an hourglass on my desk, that every hour flips over, and I stop and do push-ups and sit-ups and stretch, to keep the blood flowing – Langdon is much cooler than I am.”
In his talk, Brown mentioned scientific studies regarding potential future contact with parallel universes, and when asked if that could be a future theme, he replied, “that would be unbelievable! I can’t write about it until it happens, but certainly.”
Brown is currently working on a new project, topic of which was hushed by his unamused publisher.
