When METRIC and KYRIE love each other a whole lot, you get… Dan Brown

“But now,” Dan Brown told a crowd at The Music Hall last night, “she’ll have to say, ‘he doesn’t get out of his pajamas for anyone—except Writers on a New England Stage.'”

There’s no question that Dan Brown, who lives in neighboring Rye, has no problem getting out of his pajamas to help local establishments, such as his alma mater, Phillips Exeter Academy, and Exeter’s Water Street Bookstore. Last night he had high praise also for NHPR and The Music Hall, calling them “two rare organizations that urge us to educate ourselves and to ask questions and to engage in dialogue,” and Portsmouth itself, which he spoke of as having “big city culture without the big city.”

Mr. Brown called attention to his parents in the crowd, calling them his favorite authors in the world, and wishing his mother a happy early birthday by recounting a time when she, a “prim and proper lady” kneeling next to her 10-year-old son at church communion, “broke wind” (“Happy Birthday, Mom”).

Dan also introduced his wife Blythe to the crowd, sharing what he said was the single truest statement he’d ever heard about the life of a writer: “There could be only one existence more cruel than that of being a writer, and that is being the spouse of a writer.” 

His talk was casual and familiar, as if he was speaking to a room full of old friends. He showed us his first published book, “The Giraffe, The Pig, and the Pants on Fire,” and said that it was the day he published that first book that he knew he was hooked—he’d become an author. Dan continued to write nonstop through elementary school, Phillips Exeter, and college, and told us that he feels very fortunate to be able to continue writing later in life. “My favorite stories to write,” he said, “are those that challenge long held beliefs.” The Da Vinci Code was certainly that. After the book came out and dealing with the subsequent backlash, “we avoided bonfires in my family for like three years.” 

“Even today,” he said, “people will come up to me and ask, ‘What happened to you? Did God not answer some childhood prayer? Did a priest drop you on your head during some childhood baptism?’ And I hate to admit it here in mixed company, but the blame for my heresy falls squarely on the shoulders of my parents.” He then told us about his mother and father—his father a math professor and his mother a church organist.

As a preface to recounting his parent’s influence, he quoted a talk he gave in a previous appearance at the Music Hall, shortly after The Da Vinci Code was published:

Dan Brown’s mom was not only the church organist, but the church choir director, which meant there was no escaping Sunday morning church services. “I didn’t mind it, I liked the music, I liked the people, and I really liked the free donuts,” he said, “but as a kid, all those hours in the House of God had a powerful effect me. Church is haute stuff. Thundering pipe organs, the exotic smell of incense, passionate sermons, the tolling of huge bells, and the magic of candlelight Christmas pageant, not to mention in my case, seeing my own mom stand up and conduct a huge congregation as they sang out ‘A Mighty Fortress is Our God,’ ‘Onward Christian Soldiers.’ So this reassuring and joyful world became my reality as a kid, and it never dawned on me to question any of it—the Virgin Birth, Noah’s Ark, Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, the Resurrection—it was all fact. It had to be.” His mother drove a van with the license plate, “KYRIE,” which was the most frequently used Latin word in the Christian Liturgy. Her devotion and enthusiasm to the church combined with an uncanny resemblance to a certain SNL character earned her the nickname, “The Church Lady.” 

He told a story of his mother not allowing him to fish when they were out in a rowboat on a Sunday, the day of rest. He tried to argue that if God didn’t want him to fish, He wouldn’t have made the fish so delicous, but he lost that argument (though he used the same argument to refuse to paddle all the way home).

His dad was equally attentive and enthusiastic to his passions, which were more scientific in nature. “When I was a kid he would take me out at night and we’d look up at the billions of stars in the heavens, and we’d talk about space, the universe, and the concept of infinity. Infinity, he and I agreed, was impossible to imagine. And yet if the universe was not infinite, then what did the edge of the universe look like? Was it a big brick wall in space? Was it a sign that said, ‘nothing beyond this point’? These were the kinds of things that kept me up as a kid.” At dinnertime, carrots were cut to became a circle, an ellipse, a parabola, or “the Holy Grail of all carrot cuts, the hyperbola.” Pizza pie became an opportunity for dad to teach son about the other “pi,” degrees of arc, diameters, and areas of surface. “I cannot tell you how mortifying it was to stand in line at Romeo’s Pizza with my dad, with his big Texas Instrument calculator, while he carefully calculated whether it was more cost effective to buy a large pizza, two smalls, or a large and a medium, and freeze the leftovers… all of this from the same guy who wrote ‘Advanced Mathematics.’” Then Dan showed the crowd his Dad’s license plate: “METRIC.” 

“So when I was a kid, in our garage, there was a bright red Volvo with the license plate ‘KYRIE’ parked beside the white minivan with the license plate, ‘METRIC.’ This age old battle between science and religion, squaring off right there next to my little blue Schwinn.” Dan was comfortable with the science/religion paradox until he was about 13, when he started to see contradictions. He asked a priest once how to reconcile these conflicting stories, asking which one was true. He was met with the answer, “nice boys don’t ask that question.”

Religion and science, as at odds as they may sometimes seem, have a very indivisible relationship, although while science dwells on the answers, religion savors the questions. Dan spoke of religion using gods to explain gaps in understanding, with thunder being attributed to Thor until science explained thunder and lightning, at which time Thor was written off as a false god, no longer needed to fill the gap. With science marching ever forward, it may seem that the need for religion would decrease, but that has not been the case; it is still used to fill in gaps of understanding. “We no longer turn to God for answers as to why the skies drop hail or why plagues spread; science has answered those questions for us. We turn to God for answers to a handful of questions that science has never been able to answer.  Why are we here? What does it all mean? Is death the end or is there something beyond that?” We tend to follow a certain pattern of logic: “I find ‘x’ impossible to fathom, therefore ‘not x’ must be true.” Some aver that this type of logic is the basis of all religion. But “whether this human need to believe in something is a random evolutionary trait or whether God created the human mind in a way to make us believe in God is an interesting debate.” Another interesting debate is sparked by stem cell research: “Which is more reprehensible to God? Harvesting fetal tissue or failing to use our God-given intellect to find new ways to fight disease? There are valid arguments on both sides.”

These arguments led Dan Brown to do more research into religion and its symbols. He found many accounts in religions more ancient than Christianity that were startlingly similar to the stories he’d heard in Sunday school. Different versions of Adam & Eve (and an earlier one which suggests it was NOT a woman who ate from the Tree of Knowledge), various martyred gods all born on December 25th… eager to explore these various mythologies more, he wrote The Da Vinci Code. He wanted to explore the question of what would happen to Christianity if Jesus was not the literal son of God, but a mere mortal. Not everyone was enthusiastic about this question, of course…

Once, a priest walked up to Mr. Brown in Boston and said, “Mr. Brown, I don’t like your novel bit,” and before Dan could respond, the priest broke into a big smile and added, “but I just had to come over here and thank you.” He told of how he’d been hosting Bible studies in his office every Wednesday night for ten years, and always had the same 8 people show up. Once week the notice in the church bulletin noted that the next week’s Bible study topic would be The Da Vinci Code, and hundreds of people showed up, forcing them to move the meeting into the church to accommodate all the people. “I’ve been trying to get these people interested in this stuff for years. Talking about your book isn’t quite how I imagined it, but I’m grateful the dialogue is happening.”

One of the more entertaining parts of the evening was when Dan related tales of the experience of making The Da Vinci Code into a $150M movie. Apparently the process was not as glamorous as one might think. Patriots owners Robert and Myra Kraft flew out to Paris, visited the set, and after 90 minutes of watching Tom Hanks and Jean Reno deliver the same 4 lines over and over, Bob turned to Dan and said, “movie making isn’t really a spectator sport, is it?” and Bob and Myra promptly flew home.

On the first night of shooting, around 3am, Dan found himself alone, standing in front of the Mona Lisa, “that quietly smiling face who had started this whole thing. And if that in itself were not enough of a life moment, when I looked out into the grand gallery, I saw an albino monk go running by. Needless to say, quite a feeling.”

Dan also read excerpts from a list he entitled “Things You Never Thought You’d Hear”:

     “I just met the Pope. Nice guy. He’s a Sox fan” (that was Dan’s dad).

     “Move the corpse three feet to the left; just don’t get any blood on the Carpaccio.”

     “Could someone please get Mary Magdalene a Diet Coke?”

     “Mr. Hanks, great news. Lady Rosalind called, you can use the bathroom in her castle.”

At an after party in Edinburgh, Dan was informed that all the men would be wearing formal kilts. Before the party, Dan was in a hotel room with Tom Hanks and Ron Howard, trying to figure out how to put on his kilt. “This was the first time I’d ever worn a skirt. [laughter] No, seriously.” He was having trouble with the kilt, and Tom Hanks nicely came over to help. Ron Howard then said, “Dan, when you started writing the Da Vinci Code, did you ever imagine you’d be in a hotel room in Scotland with Tom Hanks pinning your skirt?” 

“I sheepishly admitted that this exact scenario had been my life dream, and the only way I could get it done was to write The Da Vinci Code.”

At the end of the evening, Dan reiterated some ideas that he firmly believed about faith. He reminded everyone that we aren’t born with certain beliefs coded into our DNA, we are born into cultures. “If all of us in this room were born in the mountains of Tibet, most of us would be Buddhists, and we would hold on to that Buddhist philosophy with all the passion that we now hold on to our own beliefs. We worship the gods of our parents. It is truly that simple… The world is getting smaller everyday, and now more than ever there is enormous danger in believing that we are infallible, that our version of the truth is absolute, and that everyone who does not think like us is wrong and therefore an enemy. For our own survival it is critical that we live with open minds. That we educate ourselves, that we ask difficult questions, and above all that we engage in dialogue, especially with those whose ideas are not our own. It is critical that our philosophies continue to evolve. Religion will not survive the modern world if having religion forbids the use of our intellect, if it demands absolute belief without permitting inquiry, if it proclaims answers but outlaws questions…Religion is a work in progress, it evolves and matures, and that’s what keeps religion exciting and relevant in the modern world…Religion has only one true enemy: apathy… Apathy has no better antidote than passionate debate and dialogue.”

A few excerpts of Q&A with Word of Mouth‘s Virginia Prescott

Q. You talk about the similar quests of religion and science. For the medical researcher conducting research on stem cells but finding it morally reprehensible… is that actually religion and science, or more religion and politics?
A. I think it’s more ethics. To me it’s fascinating…There are alot of people who are very upset that we are havesting them, and fair enough. And yet if you know somebody who is sick and that technology could cure them, it’s a real ethical dilemma as to whether we use our minds or we use our hearts. I don’t think there are any clear-cut answers. In the end our minds will win because I think science is just too powerful. But I think it’ll take some time.

Q. What is your role (and do you feel you have one) in continuing the dialogue? What about teasing out those sore points?
A. I find that the easiest way to think about it is you sort of throw a grenade into a room and then you run away. I’d rather listen to other people talk about these ideas than put forth my own ideas. I have very specific ideas but I don’t tend to share them. I argue both sides of the equation and let people think on their own.

For the full interview, tune in to Word of Mouth next week!