I avoided reading this Eco interview, as i don’t want to accidentally discover any more of the plot of the new novel than i already know before i remember that it’s on the nightstand, but Rake’s Progress quotes a great bit where he snipes at Dan Brown:
What does Eco make of the Dan Brown phenomenon? “I wrote the story of Dan Brown!” he erupts. “I wrote Dan Brown’s biography!” He laughs again. “I even used the stuff about Christ and Mary Magdalen, because it was easy to find in any bookstore. Dan Brown was able to use old material and to take it seriously, instead of telling a grotesque story as I did.” The Da Vinci Code is very well done, he admits, but it’s a fake based on a fake based on a fake. “Still, there are some fakes that continue to live because they have some archetypal attraction.” He takes great delight in pointing out that if the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail sue Brown for plagiarism as threatened, they will first have to demonstrate that their book is untrue.
I refuse to read the Da Vinci Code, having read Foucault’s Pendulum, what’s the need? I haven’t ever read Name of the Rose. Should I? (After White Castle, and Kis, and the new Eco, and who or whatever else is on the shelf…)