Umberto Eco on Dan Brown
November 28th, 2007
When interviewed about Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code for the three hundredth time, Umberto Eco – the man who mastered and modernized the genre in which Brown became a millionaire – said:
“I was obliged to read it because everybody was asking me about it. My answer is that Dan Brown is one of the characters in my novel, Foucault’s Pendulum.”
You can read the whole interview with Umberto Eco in the NYT Magazine.
It’s been a while since both books have been published and I am totally surprised more individuals have not come forth expressing their opinions.
I believe Mr. Eco is all too kind in his remarks about Dan Brown’s DaVinci Code. To me the are definite smacks of plagarism throughout much of the first half of this book, and no one has taken exception to this.
Am I alone taking this position?
-BAA
I am just now reading Dr. Eco’s “Pendulum” after having seen it on my parents’ bookshelf when I was growing up. Like the rest of the US, I gobbled up Brown’s “Da Vinci” when it came out – went back for seconds, even!
I share your surprise at the lack of uproar over Brown’s apparent plagiarism of Dr. Eco’s novel. Dr. Eco’s work could never be as popular as Brown’s because of “Pendulum”‘s more experimental narrative structure and more satisfyingly literary bent. Eco’s work has moments of poetry where Brown’s works only as “an American thriller,” a fascinating bit of prescience uttered by one of the characters in “Pendulum.”
Michael
@michael
Bernard,
You may or may not know my name – I am Marshall Blonsky and once had the audacity to publish a book in homage to Barthes, called “American Mythologies.” Eco was my teacher and indeed friend and were it not for him, my first book “On Signs” would not have seen the (presumptive) light from the readers’ eyes.
I just saw “Angels and Demons,” and had the sense 1) that I was rereading “Foucault’s Pendulum,” as Eco himself has remarked, and 2) that perhaps Dan Brown was trying (miserably) to write on semiotics.
But what I find hard to believe is that Brown would dare to plagiarize Eco. I was wondering if you would specify a bit where,in FP, the plagiarized words have been acquired?
Actually, I don’t know this website, but would like to. I came on it by a Google search for “Umberto Eco Dan Brown.”