Wednesday, June 14, 2006

This Letter is Da Bomb
I haven't read The Da Vinci Code. I don't plan on reading it. I've heard it's engrossing but terribly written. I don't want to simply jump on the bandwagon (same reason why I haven't read a single Harry Potter book). I don't plan on seeing the movie. I wish the whole craze would just fade away.
Which is why I was so thrilled to see someone point this out in a letter to Roger Ebert in a recent Answer Man column:

One of the great ironies of Dan Brown's book is that it assaults you with its greatest piece of idiocy before you've even picked it up. The man's name is Leonardo, please. "da Vinci" (note the lower-case "d"), is NOT his family name, it's his hometown. He was born in Vinci, Italy, in 1452, in a time before Europeans had started surnaming themselves. Brown's error is on par with writing a book on the life of Christ called The Of Nazareth Code, or assuming St. Joan was the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. "Of Arc." It's amazing that anyone could take seriously the historical claims of a work whose title screams out, "penned by an historical ignoramus!"

What an amazing catch!

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

But what was Leonardo's "porn" name?

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the comments. Probably the most annoying result of Brown's efforts is that I will have to deal with an entire generation of youngsters in my classroom who will insist on calling him DaVinci.

Signed, The Author
CJE Culver