As many people know, there’s an ongoing court case between Dan Brown, writer of The Da Vinci Code, and a couple of the authors of a piece of cod-history called The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail which was published quite a few years ago.
At first glance, it seems as though it’s a battle between a paperback-pop author (as my old English teacher once referred to Evelyn Waugh of all people) who’s lucked out with a massive selling novel, and a couple of loons who kick started a whole sub-genre of pseudo-history books. Their book sold well enough first time around, but now you’ll find it front at centre at most high street book shops as they cash in on both the legal case and renewed interest in the subject matter.
But as Nic Cohen says in his Observer piece from the weekend, the prospect of Brown losing his case is really quite scary.
As I understand it, Leigh and Baigent, the authors of Holy Blood, are arguing that Brown stole the central theme from their earlier book. It’s certain that Brown read their book, although precisely when is unclear. And both titles have similar stories. Except one is presented as fiction and the other as fact.
If for a moment, we ignore the fact that Holy Blood is load of nonsense, and instead accept it as historical fact, then we’re left with a true story. Why shouldn’t I be able to fictionalise that true story as long as I avoid libelling living characters? I can go out and write a book about Queen Elizabeth I and pretty much have her behave or say whatever I like. There are plenty of known facts about her for me to base my novel on – indeed her life has been dramatised twice in recent months on TV. There are a wealth of biographies for me to consult when I’m writing my masterpiece. I’m not breaching copyright by dramatising these events. These things happened.
I suspect that the writers in this case are more annoyed about the fact that they dreamt up a fictional story and, having presented it as fact, have then seen the same story presented as fiction. You can’t have it both ways though. Even if it was presented as a piece of fiction, then there’d be problems, since ideas in novels are regularly regurgitated. It’d be pretty impossible to make sure that the central tenet of any book hadn’t already been used in a prior work.
Brown must surely win – bringing untold extra sales (who’s left, I’m not sure) and valuable publicity for the forthcoming film. All totally pointless.