The Legacy of the Da Vinci Code
October 20th 2006 04:45
What exactly is the legacy of 'The Da Vinci Code'? Well, aside from a middling blockbuster film and the addition of several million dollars to Brown's bank account, I think the main legacy of the book is the fact that it has pulled the sheets off a whole genre of writing that has remained in the attic for the last few decades, slowly gathering dust.
Biblical/historical detective fiction and non-fiction has always enjoyed minor surges of popularity, mostly owing to it's controversial nature - in fact, a lot of the non-fiction entries into the genre relied on their challenging of widely-held beliefs to gain some publicity upon their release. With the explosion of the Da Vinci Code a couple of years ago, a sudden peak of interest appeared for other books that dealt with the subject matter... books about the Knights Templar, about Jesus being a rad dude, the Holy Grail, apocryphal and suppressed Bible passages, fictional mystery thrillers in the
The most popular of these was the non-fiction 'Holy Blood and Holy Grail' - already a famous book before 'The Da Vinci Code', the authors of which attempted to sue Dan Brown for copyright infringement (they were unsuccessful). Really, they should've thanked Brown... their book was suddenly in demand everywhere and I reckon their sales since release would've doubled in the last three years alone solely thanks to Brown's book.
All sorts of other books have been re-released in the wake of 'The Da Vinci Code'. Suddenly their was a canon of biblical/historical detective thrillers and their non-fiction counterparts... a whole genre popped up out of nowhere! And it had been going on for years. Now there are several other authors pumping out new books for the genre, and authors who have had their book covers re-designed to look more like Dan Brown's (it sells! Right, David Hewson?)
All these books might've been long dead had it not been for 'The Da Vinci Code', now they've had their shelf lives extended considerably. Is this a good thing? I'm not sure.
| 69 |
| Vote |
Subscribe to this blog
Comment by Keira
Keira's Blog
Comment by Luke
Book Club
Old Movies
Cane Toad Warrior
it's biblemania!