The Dan Brown Enigma (6 page)

The couple walked for miles around Rome, taking hundreds of photographs ‘exploring the city using all kinds of guidebooks, maps and tours.'

Angels & Demons
came out under Simon & Schuster's Pocket Books imprint in April 2000. As with St Martin's Press the publicity for this book was poor and Blythe found herself winding up the publicity machine again. ‘Unfortunately, when the book came out, my print run was slashed down to 12,000 copies with virtually no publicity at all,' said Brown. He was on his own. ‘Blythe and I were heartbroken as we had put so much work into this book. The few readers who read
Angels & Demons
had gone wild for it, and Blythe and I really believed we had something – if we could only get it to a critical mass of readers.'
[44]

In August 2001
Deception Point
was published, the second half of the two-book deal he had with Simon & Schuster. But as with the two that went before it, the publicity for it was less than adequate and again Blythe began greasing the wheels of publicity. With
Angels & Demons
people had been emailing Brown; readers had bought the novel and gone over to Europe using it as a guidebook. All the places and names Brown had put into the book were real and people were saying how much they were enjoying the fact that he had described them as they were. For Blythe that was the angle to hang the promotion on, but with
Deception Point
there was nothing.

Blythe's involvement with
The Da Vinci Code
was far greater than anything previously. In her biography on Brown, Lisa Rogak states that for this fourth novel Brown and Blythe ‘began to work more closely together' because Blythe's expertise lay ‘in the primary subject of the book – the art of Leonardo da Vinci.' The subject matter of this book was much more complex than anything Brown had tackled before and more often than not he got bogged down in the intricate story line. Blythe's influence and passion for Da Vinci meant she could help Brown unblock his imagination. ‘There are days when it helps to have somebody around who understands art and Da Vinci and is passionate about it,' he said.
[45]

The day after submitting
Deception Point
to the publisher, Brown and Blythe had decided to head for Mexico on vacation. There they explored the Yucatan peninsula, and the ancient Mayan pyramids and archaeological ruins of Chichen-Itza and Tulum that got Brown's creative juices flowing again and he began to think about another book. ‘In the case of
The Da Vinci Code
, Blythe and I spent a year or so travelling and conducting research,' Brown said. ‘We met with historians and other academics and extended our travels from the Vatican and France to England and Scotland in order to investigate the historical underpinnings of the novel.'

The Da Vinci Code
was Brown's most heavily researched work yet, and Blythe played a major part in this. Indeed, he tells us that a lot of his research books for the novel are marked ‘with margin notes, sticky notes, underlining, highlighting, inserted pieces of paper, etc. A good portion of these notes (as with
Angels & Demons
) are in my wife's handwriting.'

While researching for
The Da Vinci Code
Blythe was passionate about learning as much as she could. ‘In
Angels & Demons
, she may have found me the exact specifications of Bernini's
Fountain of the Four Rivers
,' said Brown. ‘With
The Da Vinci Code
, however, she was reading entire books, highlighting exciting ideas, and urging me to read the material myself and find ways to work the ideas in to the plot.' Particularly inspiring for Blythe was the suppression of women by the Catholic Church. Brown tells us that ‘she lobbied hard for me to make it a primary theme of the novel. Blythe also tends to save far more memorabilia than I do; many of the research notes were now hers, and more of them found their way into safe-keeping.'
[46]

Blythe and Dan bought several books from which they would take the facts that Brown needed to tell his story. One of these books,
The Hiram Key
, Blythe marked quite heavily. ‘In my childhood, I was taught never to write in books,' Brown said. ‘To this day, I still have a strong aversion to it. For this reason, my margin notes often are very light or taken down on a separate piece of paper. Blythe does not share my idiosyncrasy, and she often marks books very heavily. She also often produced research documents for me as a result of her studies of the books. An example from
The Hiram Key
is “Hiram's Key Notes”. It can be seen from that document that she included a number of page references which she thought I should consult.'

Not all the documents that Blythe prepared for her husband were what he wanted, however. He read everything she gave him with care but sometimes ‘she prepared notes that were either too lengthy which I skimmed, ignored or seemed off-topic,' or the notes were more interesting to her than they were to Brown.

The couple worked very well together as a team, with Blythe providing research that Brown could not possibly have had the time to do if he had been working on his own.
The Da Vinci Code
is a highly complex novel and without Blythe it would have been much harder for him to write. ‘She was becoming more and more intrigued by the information we were learning, and she wanted me to incorporate all of it which I could not possibly do,' Brown explained in his witness statement for the High Court. ‘She often playfully chided me about my resolve to keep the novel fast-paced, always at the expense of her research. In return, I jokingly reminded her that I was trying to write a thriller, not a history book. In the end, we found a comfortable balance of pace and history, and we had a wonderful time throwing ideas back and forth. Blythe's female perspective was particularly helpful with this book, which deals so heavily with concepts like the Sacred Feminine, goddess worship and the feminine aspect of spirituality.'

Blythe played a hugely important role in researching the Sacred Feminine, which was one of the central themes of the book. Margaret Starbird had written about Mary Magdalene and this captured Blythe's imagination. ‘Blythe reacted to Starbird's books with enormous passion and enthusiasm,' Brown said. ‘In fact, I'm not sure I had ever seen Blythe as passionate about anything as she became for the historical figure of Mary Magdalene (particularly the idea that the church had unfairly maligned her).'
[47]
So enthralled was Blythe by Starbird's portrayal that she purchased a painting of Magdalene which she hung on the wall over her desk.

Starbird's books opened Blythe's and Brown's eyes to the way the Church had subjugated the Sacred Feminine. ‘My wife ordered a series of three historical films by the film maker Donna Rea,' Brown explained. ‘I found the films absolutely fascinating. I was amazed to learn of the existence of a church publication called
The Malleus Maleficarum.'
This book told its readers how to identify and then murder women who fitted the very broad definition of what the Church called a witch. ‘I began to realise that history barely mentioned the Church's systemic subjugation of the Sacred Feminine,' Brown continued. ‘The films also mentioned the Gnostic Gospels, prehistoric art honouring the female as life giver, the symbol of the inverted triangle – the womb, Catholicism, symbols, the serpent being linked to religion, the obliteration of 25,000 years of goddess worship by the ancient Greeks.'
[48]

But Brown had still not decided what the ‘big idea' of the book was going to be. He toyed with writing a few sections just to get a feel for the setting and especially for the characters, but the basis of the book was not yet fully formed in his mind. Enter Blythe with the solution. ‘Blythe encouraged me to incorporate the theme of the Sacred Feminine and the goddess,' said Brown. On a note inserted into the inside cover of the
Woman's Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects
‘Blythe has written a note “goddess section” and on
here
, she has written “read all” by the Goddess entry.'

So with encouragement from Blythe, the three films of Donna Rea and Starbird's books, Brown was swayed to making the Sacred Feminine the central theme of his book. ‘Margaret Starbird's books were a big inspiration – the image she created of Mary Magdalene being the bride, the lost sacred feminine, was very elegant – it seemed like the “big idea” – like the core of a classic fairy tale or enduring legend.'
[49]

In his acknowledgements Brown thanked the two women closest to him, his wife Blythe and his mother, and noted that the novel ‘draws heavily on the Sacred Feminine.' In his witness statement he added, ‘If we spent half the intellect and money we spend on killing each other on solving problems, wouldn't that be great? I kind of equate that with testosterone.'
[50]

It is highly likely that Blythe came up with most of the art references for
The Da Vinci Code.
One published account, according to David Shugarts, author of
The Dan Brown Revelations
, suggests that it was Blythe who came up with the reference to Rosslyn Chapel in Scotland.
[51]
In the book, this is one of the last settings and it is where Sophie finds her brother and grandmother. It is also where she discovers her background. ‘The predominant source for my Rosslyn information was
The Hiram Key
, a lot of which is devoted to Rosslyn,' Brown said, adding that Blythe made notes throughout the book on Rosslyn. ‘She also compiled two research documents called Rosslyn Castle Info and Rosslyn Highlights, much of which appears to come from
The Hiram Key
.'

A commonly held belief about writers is that they toil away in loneliness and isolation. Indeed, this is an image that we have seen Brown himself use in writing at 4am in his cottage. But clearly throughout the research phase of his writing Blythe was there with him – to the degree that they started sharing information via email. ‘The reason for this,' Brown explained in his witness statement, ‘is that more of our research was taking place on the internet, and email became the most efficient way of sharing information. For Blythe, sending me cut-and-paste text or a clickable link to a large website was easier than printing out dozens of pages in hard copy.'

Using email was especially useful for Blythe to send her husband images from particular websites. He claims that photos helped him to write out his descriptive passages but ‘they printed poorly and ate up expensive printer toner; I preferred to see them online.'

Blythe would bring information and research together from a wide variety of sources and then type it up into a document for Brown to use. ‘This new tool of email now meant that those research notes appeared in all kinds of different forms – her own extracts, clips from the internet, scans from source books, and website resource files. Sometimes I got a paper copy of those notes, usually an emailed copy, and sometimes both.'
[52]

While Brown does his own research, Blythe's work in this field is key to providing the big picture, enabling him to produce what he regards as the most interesting parts for the reader. Most of the research is discarded for the final product. ‘My tendency toward heavy editing (“trimming the fat” as I called it) fuelled the ongoing push-and-pull between Blythe and me. Blythe constantly urged me to add more facts and more history. I was always slashing out long descriptive passages in an effort to keep the pace moving,' Brown said. ‘I remember Blythe once gave me an enormous set of architectural/historical notes for a short flashback I was writing about Notre Dame Cathedral. When I had finished the section, she was frustrated by how little of work actually made the final cut. In these situations, I always remind Blythe I was trying to write a fast-moving page-turner.'
[53]

One particular document that Blythe produced for Brown for
The Da Vinci Code
was titled
Constantine
. Much of it was taken directly from the source and wasn't in her own words. ‘It is not unusual for her to do this when we are working together,' Brown said in his witness statement. ‘I will tell her the outline of a section of a book I have written and then ask her to go away and make a note of more specific information about the topic which I can use to elaborate my text.

‘She is better than me at producing a good summary of the material which we have looked at,' he added. ‘If she finds a particular source which has many of the relevant facts collected together, she will make her note from that source. Sometimes she combines a number of sources in her notes to me. Sometimes she adds notes to me to look at other sources as well. There is no fixed pattern.'

One thing that makes this document on Constantine interesting is that a lot of it came from the book
Holy Blood and the Holy Grail,
whose authors launched a court case against Brown claiming he had plagiarised their work. (We will look at that in greater detail later.) A second thing is that Blythe often transcribed paragraphs directly from the work she was looking at, to ensure that her husband had the exact data he'd asked for.

Blythe doesn't just email a document over to her husband – she often peppers it with notes to draw her husband's attention to a particular point while he's writing. She explains: ‘The document says, “Keep in mind these important references” and then there is a list of several points or themes and a corresponding source and page number.' She would pass notes to Dan pointing out something she felt was important, as she did with the Constantine document where she noted, ‘Throughout my readings of all my books, this smell or perfume for some reason keeps coming up in relation to Mary Magdalene. I have seen this many times.' Brown said that she was referring to many references she'd discovered regarding a perfume that was connected to Mary Magdalene.

‘Our studies into the origins of the Christian movement and the ancient mysteries continue to this day. Our research and Blythe's note taking is a continual process,' Brown said in his 2005 witness statement. Both he and Blythe knew that they had something with
The Da Vinci Code
, but before they began that project they went through the three preceding novels that were poorly promoted to see what could have been done better.