阅读丹·布朗 Dan Brown在小说之家的作品!!! | |||||||
丹·布朗早年生活
丹.布朗出生于缩小美国新罕布夏州的艾斯特镇（Exeter），是家中老大，母亲是一名职业音乐家，在教堂演奏管风琴。丹.布朗的父亲查理布朗（Richard G. Brown）是一名数学老师，撰写过教课书，退休前是菲利普艾斯特学院（Phillips Exeter Academy）教授高中数学。
菲利普艾斯特学院是间不严格的寄宿学校，新老师任教前几年必须住校，所以丹.布朗和他的兄弟姊妹都是在学校里头长大的。艾斯特镇的社会环境大多是教徒，丹.布朗从小参与教堂合唱团跟主日学校，暑假则在教会营会渡过。他在艾斯特镇上中小学，读到9年级之后，转入菲利普艾斯特学院。
创作歌手
1982年从菲利普艾斯特学院毕业之后，丹.布朗进入艾摩斯特大学（Amherst College），成为古老的塞尤斯伦兄弟会（Psi Upsilon）的一员，他打壁球，参加艾摩斯特合唱团，向小说家艾伦-陆契克（Alan Lelchuk）学写作。
丹.布朗1986年拿到西班牙语和英文双学位之后，涉足音乐界，创作合成音效，自制一卷叫《动物合音》（SynthAnimals）的儿童卡带，卖了上百卷。他那时自己开了一家名叫「鬼混」（Dalliance）的录音公司，在1990年针对成人市场自资发行一张叫《Perspective》的音乐CD，也卖了上百张。1991年，搬到好莱坞追求创作歌手和钢琴家的人生大梦。
丹.布朗在洛杉矶进入国家作曲学院（National Academy of Songwriters），参与不少活动。也是在这时候，他遇到大他12岁的布莱丝-纽顿（Blythe Newlon），学院的艺术创作系（Artist Development）主任。她不寻常地接下丹.布朗栽培计劃，写新闻稿，举动活动，並将他介绍给有力人士，1993年，丹.布朗出了一张同名专辑。她和丹.布朗感情上也进展神速，虽然直到1993年为止，朋友都还不知道他们在交往，不过當丹.布朗回到新罕布夏州，而布莱丝夫唱妇随时，大家就明白了。他们在1997年结成夫妻。
帮助丹.布朗的歌唱事业外，布莱丝最大的影响莫过于写作，她对丹.布朗的作品助益良多。他们曾用笔名合写过幽默小品，推测她应该也在其它作品里占有重要的角色。在《大》的铭谢页上，丹.布朗感谢「布莱丝-布朗，感谢她不辞辛劳为我研究背景、提作写作灵感」。
新英格兰老师
丹.布朗和布莱丝在1993年搬回家乡新罕布夏州，到他的母校菲利普艾斯特学院担任英文老师，並在林肯阿克曼小学（Lincoln Akerman School，一所只有8个年级250名学生的小学校）教高年级学生西班牙文。
1994年，丹.布朗发行一张名为《天使与魔鬼》（Angels & Demons）的音乐CD，美术设计就是后来为同名小说设计双向图（Ambigram）的约翰-兰登（John Langdon）。唱片封面上，同样也有致妻子的感谢辞，「送给我孜孜不倦的合力撰稿者、合作制片人、副技师、其他重要的人，还有心理治疗师。」
也是同一年，他到大溪地渡假时，读完席尼-薛尔顿（Sidney Sheldon）的《末日追杀》（The Doomsday Conspiracy），他认为自己可以写得比他好。于是他开始起草撰写《数字城堡》，一边跟妻子用笔名丹妮儿-布朗（Danielle Brown）合写幽默小品《187种该躲开的男人：给情场失意女的指南》（187 Men to Avoid: A Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman），作者介绍写着，「丹妮儿-布朗现住新英格兰，教书写书躲男人。」着作权页还是列着丹.布朗的名字，这本书付印前就预售了上千本。
作家生涯
1996年，丹.布朗辞去教职全心投入写作。1998年出版《数字城堡》，布莱丝为这部小说作足了行销，她撰写新闻稿、为丹.布朗敲定谈话节目以及记者访谈。几个月后，丹.布朗和妻子又发表了另一本幽默小品《The Bald Book》，这部小品的作者正式属名为布莱丝，不过出版商说主要的撰写人还是丹.布朗。
丹.布朗的前三部小说成绩平平，每部小说的初版大约只有万本，但是到了第四部小说《达芬奇密码》，一跃而成畅销作家中的黑马，这部小说2003年一出版随即登上纽约时报畅销书排行榜（New York Times Best Seller list）第一名，现在已是有史以来最畅销的小说之一（尽管也受到了严苛的批评）。到2006年全球销畅量已累积达6050万本，丹.布朗前几部小说也跟着大卖。他的四部小说2004年同时进入纽约时报畅销书排行榜。2005年，他被《时代》杂志列入年度百大最有影响力的人，《富比士》杂志将丹.布朗评选为2005年百大名流第12名，估计他年收入达7600万美元，《时代》杂志估计他光是《达芬奇密码》就有2500万美元的进帐。
在2004年10 月，丹.布朗和家人捐款220万美元给菲利普艾斯特学院，祝贺父亲獲得总统荣誉奖，设立「查理-布朗科技基金」，用于「提供电脑和高科技设备给贫困的学生」。丹.布朗对密码学、密钥和密码兴趣浓厚，一直都是他故事里的主题，评论家常对书里的密码学行话和科技用语进行探究，他的小说已经被翻译超过40种语言。
2006年，哥伦比亚电影公司（Columbia Pictures）推出由丹.布朗同名小说改编的电影《达芬奇密码》，朗-霍华担任导演，汤姆-汉克斯饰演主角罗柏-兰登，奥黛莉-朵杜饰演苏菲-纳佛，伊恩-麦克连爵士饰演李伊-提宾。这部电影被认为是2006年最令人期待的影片，5月17日在坎城影展首映，评语却是一片唱衰。
丹.布朗列名为电影《达芬奇密码》的执行制片，为电影设计了不同的密码。丹.布朗自编自奏的歌曲《Phiano》也收录在电影原声带里面。
主要小说作品
1998年 Digital Fortress 数字城堡
2000年 Angels and Demons 天使与魔鬼
2001年 Deception Point
2003年 The Da Vinci Code 达芬奇密码
其它轶事
* 丹.布朗会在阁楼他的写作间玩网球，他凌晨4点就起床工作，书桌上摆放着一隻古董沙漏，用来提醒他要适时休息。
* 丹.布朗告诉书迷，他使用倒吊鞋（Gravity Boots）倒立来克服创作瓶颈。他说，「头下脚上倒挂起来，使我整个想法都焕然一新，有助于解决剧情上的挑战。」
* 丹.布朗小说中的人名多是取自身边的真实人物。罗柏-兰登来自创造《天使与魔鬼》双向图的约翰-兰登。总司库卡罗-凡特雷思卡的名字来自漫画家朋友卡拉-凡特雷思卡。罗柏-兰登的编辑琼纳斯-佛克曼，就是以丹.布朗真实生活的编辑杰森-佛克曼命名的。李伊-提宾爵士取自《圣血与圣杯》（Holy Blood, Holy Grail，《达芬奇密码》的主要取材对象）的两位作者之名。
* 丹.布朗在2006年3月的审讯声明（當时《圣血与圣杯》作者控告丹.布朗抄袭，后判驳回）里说，在他小时候，父亲会在生日和圣诞节时，用提示和密码设计寻宝遊戏，让他们兄弟姊妹循線找到礼物。同样的事件他也将之写入角色的童年。
* 不少人评论丹.布朗的小说里（尤其是《达芬奇密码》）隐含有反的思想。丹.布朗以徒自居，他表示造成讨论风气反而是好的，最后反而能证明真理的不可动摇。
* 丹.布朗的畅销书《达芬奇密码》是他首部登上大银幕的作品，不过却是主角罗柏-兰登系列的第二个故事，他第一次登场的《天使与魔鬼》电影版也正在筹拍中。
* 小说中兰登跟丹.布朗一样，母校都是菲利普艾斯特学院。
* 在2005年的电影《黑道比酷》（Be Cool）里有一幕史密斯飞船演唱会的场景，根据资料显示，丹.布朗夫妇就坐在前排。
* 电影《达芬奇密码》里，丹.布朗夫妇的身影曾出现在前段一个书店场景里面。
Brown's novels that feature the lead character Robert Langdon also include historical themes and Christianity as recurring motifs, and as a result, have generated controversy. Brown states on his website that his books are not anti-Christian, though he is on a 'constant spiritual journey' himself, and says of his book The Da Vinci Code that it is simply "an entertaining story that promotes spiritual discussion and debate" and suggests that the book may be used "as a positive catalyst for introspection and exploration of our faith".
Early life and education
Dan Brown was born and raised in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA, the eldest of three children. Brown grew up on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy, where his father, Richard G. Brown, was a teacher of mathematics, and wrote textbooks from 1968 until his retirement in 1997. Both of Brown's parents are also singer/musicians and served as church choir masters, with his mother serving as church organist. Brown was raised as an Episcopalian.
Brown's interest in secrets and puzzles stems from their presence in his household as a child, where codes and ciphers were the lynchpin tying together the mathematics, music and languages in which his parents worked. The young Brown spent hours working out anagrams and crossword puzzles, and he and his siblings participated in elaborate treasure hunts devised by their father on birthdays and holidays. On Christmas, for example, Brown and his siblings would not find gifts under the tree, but would follow a treasure map with codes and clues throughout their house and even around town in order to find their hiding place.[dead link] Brown's relationship with his father inspired that of Sophie Neveu and Jacques Sauniere in The Da Vinci Code, and Chapter 23 of that novel was inspired by one of his childhood treasure hunts.
After graduating from Phillips Exeter, Brown attended Amherst College, where he was a member of Psi Upsilon fraternity. He played squash, sang in the Amherst Glee Club, and was a writing student of visiting novelist Alan Lelchuk. Brown spent the 1985 school year abroad in Seville, Spain, where he was enrolled in an art history course at the University of Seville. Brown graduated from Amherst in 1986.
Songwriter and pop singer
After graduating from Amherst, Brown dabbled with a musical career, creating effects with a synthesizer, and self-producing a children's cassette entitled SynthAnimals which included a collection of tracks such as "Happy Frogs" and "Suzuki Elephants"; it sold a few hundred copies. He then formed his own record company called Dalliance, and in 1990 self-published a CD entitled Perspective, targeted to the adult market, which also sold a few hundred copies.
In 1991 he moved to Hollywood to pursue a career as singer-songwriter and pianist. To support himself, he taught classes at Beverly Hills Preparatory School.
He also joined the National Academy of Songwriters, and participated in many of its events. It was there that he met Blythe Newlon, a woman 12 years his senior, who was the Academy's Director of Artist Development. Though not officially part of her job, she took on the seemingly unusual task of helping to promote Brown's projects; she wrote press releases, set up promotional events, and put him in contact with individuals who could be helpful to his career. She and Brown also developed a personal relationship, though this was not known to all of their associates until 1993, when Brown moved back to New Hampshire, and it was learned that Blythe would accompany him. They married in 1997, at Pea Porridge Pond, a location near Conway, New Hampshire.
In 1993, Brown released the self-titled CD Dan Brown, which included songs such as "976-Love" and "If You Believe in Love".
In 1994, Brown released a CD titled Angels & Demons. Its artwork was the same ambigram by artist John Langdon, which he later used for the novel Angels & Demons. The liner notes also again credited his wife for her involvement, thanking her "for being my tireless cowriter, coproducer, second engineer, significant other, and therapist." The CD included songs such as "Here in These Fields" and the religious ballad "All I Believe."
Brown and Blythe moved to his home town in New Hampshire in 1993. Brown became an English teacher at his alma mater Phillips Exeter, and gave Spanish classes to 6th, 7th, and 8th graders at Lincoln Akerman School, a small school for K–8th grade with about 250 students, in Hampton Falls.
Writing career
While on holiday in Tahiti in 1993, Brown read Sidney Sheldon's novel The Doomsday Conspiracy, and was inspired to become a writer of thrillers. He started work on Digital Fortress, setting much of it in Seville, Spain, where he had studied in 1985. He also co-wrote a humor book with his wife, 187 Men to Avoid: A Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman, under the pseudonym "Danielle Brown". The book's author profile reads, "Danielle Brown currently lives in New England: teaching school, writing books, and avoiding men." The copyright is attributed to Dan Brown.
In 1996, Brown quit teaching to become a full-time writer. Digital Fortress was published in 1998. His wife, Blythe, did much of the book's promotion, writing press releases, booking Brown on talk shows, and setting up press interviews. A few months later, Brown and his wife released The Bald Book, another humor book. It was officially credited to his wife, though a representative of the publisher said that it was primarily written by Brown. Brown subsequently wrote Deception Point and Angels & Demons, the latter of which was the first to feature the lead character, Harvard symbology expert Robert Langdon.
Brown's first three novels had little success, with fewer than 10,000 copies in each of their first printings. His fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, became a bestseller, going to the top of the New York Times Best Seller list during its first week of release in 2003. It is now credited with being one of the most popular books of all time, with 81 million copies sold worldwide as of 2009. Its success has helped push sales of Brown's earlier books. In 2004, all four of his novels were on the New York Times list in the same week, and in 2005, he made Time magazine's list of the 100 most influential people of the year. Forbes magazine placed Brown at #12 on their 2005 "Celebrity 100" list, and estimated his annual income at US$76.5 million. The Times estimated his income from Da Vinci Code sales as $250 million.
Brown's third novel featuring Robert Langdon, The Lost Symbol, was released on September 15, 2009. According to the publisher, on its first day the book sold over one million in hardcover and e-book versions in the U.S., the U.K. and Canada, prompting the printing of 600,000 hardcover copies in addition to the five million first printing. The book takes place in Washington D.C. over a period of 12 hours, and features the Freemasons. Brown's promotional website states that puzzles hidden in the book jacket of The Da Vinci Code, including two references to the Kryptos sculpture at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia, give hints about the sequel. This repeats a theme from some of Brown's earlier work. For example, a puzzle at the end of the book Deception Point decrypts to the message, "The Da Vinci Code will surface."
Brown has stated that he has ideas for about 12 future books featuring Robert Langdon.
Characters in Brown's books are often named after real people in his life. Robert Langdon is named after John Langdon, the artist who created the ambigrams used for the Angels & Demons CD and novel. Camerlengo Carlo Ventresca is named after "On A Claire Day" cartoonist friend Carla Ventresca. In the Vatican Archives, Langdon recalls a wedding of two people named Dick and Connie, which are the names of his parents. Robert Langdon's editor Jonas Faukman, is named after Brown's real life editor Jason Kaufman. Brown also said that characters were based on a New Hampshire librarian, and a French teacher at Exeter, Andre Vernet. Cardinal Aldo Baggia, in Angels and Demons, is named after Aldo Baggia, instructor of modern languages at Phillips Exeter Academy.
In interviews, Brown has said that his wife is an art historian and painter. When they met, she was the Director of Artistic Development at the National Academy for Songwriters in Los Angeles. During the 2006 lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement in The Da Vinci Code, information was introduced at trial which showed that Blythe did research for the book. In one article, she was described as "chief researcher".
Influences and habits
In addition to Sidney Sheldon, Dan Brown has been quite vocal about a number of other literary influences who have inspired his writing. He appreciates wit and humor, as shown when he talked about Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing: "I didn't understand how funny this play Much Ado About Nothing truly was until I became an English teacher and had to teach it. There is no wittier dialogue anywhere." He also lists personal friend, mystery writer Harlan Coben, and Robert Ludlum's Bourne series of books. On Ludlum, he states, "Ludlum's early books are complex, smart, and yet still move at a lightning pace. This series got me interested in the genre of big-concept, international thrillers." Recurring elements that Brown prefers to incorporate into his novels include a simple hero pulled out of their familiar setting and thrust into a new one with which they are unfamiliar, strong female characters, travel to interesting locations, and a 24-hour time frame in which the story takes place.
Because of the research-intensive nature of his novels, Brown can spend up to two years writing them. In order to remain focused on such projects, Brown ensures that when he chooses a theme for the novel (what he refers to the "big idea"), and its subject, that they be those that can hold his interest. In Brown's view, the ideal topic does not have an easily defined right or wrong view, but presents a moral grey area that can lend itself to debate. Because his favorite subjects include codes, puzzles, treasure hunts, secretive organizations and academic lectures on obscure topics, he tends to incorporate those into his novels. Because Brown considers writing to be a discipline that requires constant practice, he has developed a routine to maintain his abilities. He rises at 4:00am when there are no distractions (a practice he began with Digital Fortress when he had two daytime teaching jobs) and when he feels most productive, in order to give symbolic importance to the first order of business each day. He keeps an antique hourglass on his desk, so that he can stop briefly every hour to do push-ups, sit-ups and stretching exercises in order to keep his blood flowing. Brown does his writing in his loft. He has also told fans that he uses inversion therapy to help with writer's block. He uses gravity boots and says, "hanging upside down seems to help me solve plot challenges by shifting my entire perspective."
Film adaptations
In 2006, Brown's novel The Da Vinci Code was released as a film by Columbia Pictures, with director Ron Howard; the film starred Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu and Sir Ian McKellen as Sir Leigh Teabing. It was much anticipated and served to launch the 2006 Cannes Film Festival, though it received overall poor reviews. It currently has a 24% rating at the film review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, derived from 165 negative reviews of the 214 counted. It was later listed as one of the worst films of 2006 on Ebert & Roeper, but also the second highest grossing film of the year, pulling in $750 million USD worldwide. Brown was listed as one of the executive producers of the film The Da Vinci Code, and also created additional codes for the film. One of his songs, "Phiano", which Brown wrote and performed, was listed as part of the film's soundtrack. In the film, Brown and his wife can be seen in the background of one of the early book signing scenes.
The next film, Angels & Demons, was released on May 15, 2009, with Howard and Hanks returning. It, too, garnered mostly negative reviews, though critics were kinder to it than to its predecessor. As of September 2009[update], it has a 36% meta-rating at Rotten Tomatoes.
Copyright infringement cases
In August 2005, author Lewis Perdue unsuccessfully sued Brown for plagiarism, on the basis of claimed similarity between The Da Vinci Code and his novels, The Da Vinci Legacy (1983) and Daughter of God (2000). Judge George Daniels said, in part: "A reasonable average lay observer would not conclude that The Da Vinci Code is substantially similar to Daughter of God".
In April 2006, Brown won a copyright infringement case brought by authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, who claimed that Brown stole ideas from their 1982 book Holy Blood Holy Grail for his 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code. It was in the book Holy Blood Holy Grail that Baigent, Leigh, and co-author Henry Lincoln had advanced the theory that Jesus and Mary Magdalene married and had a child and that the bloodline continues to this day. Brown even alluded to the two authors' names in his book. Leigh Teabing, a lead character in both the novel and the film, uses Leigh's name as the first name, and anagrammatically derives his last name from Baigent's. Mr Justice Peter Smith found in Brown's favor in the case, and as a private amusement, embedded his own Smithy code in the written judgment.
On March 28, 2007, Brown's publisher, Random House, won an appeal copyright infringement case. The Court of Appeal of England and Wales rejected the efforts from Baigent and Leigh, who became liable for paying legal expenses of nearly $6 million USD. A contributing factor for the outcome of the case is that these authors presented their work as nonfiction. Fiction writers often draw upon nonfiction resources for content research.
Philanthropy
In October 2004, Brown and his siblings donated US$2.2 million to Phillips Exeter Academy in honor of their father, to set up the Richard G. Brown Technology Endowment to help "provide computers and high-tech equipment for students in need."
Criticism
Brown's prose style has been criticized as clumsy. Much criticism also centers on Brown's claim found in the preface to The Da Vinci Code that the novel is based on fact in relation to Opus Dei and the Priory of Sion, and that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in [the] novel are accurate".
In an interview with Matt Lauer on The Today Show in September 2009, Brown responded by saying, "I do something very intentional and specific in these books. And that is to blend fact and fiction in a very modern and efficient style, to tell a story. There are some people who understand what I do, and they sort of get on the train and go for a ride and have a great time, and there are other people who should probably just read somebody else."
Works
CDs
* SynthAnimals, a children's album
* Perspective, 1990, Dalliance. Music CD
* Dan Brown, 1993, DBG Records
* Angels & Demons, 1994, DBG Records
* Musica Animalia, 2003, a children's CD comprising 15 tracks songs portraying animals in poem & song. Proceeds benefited for the Families First charity.
Humor writing
* 187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman, 1995, Berkley Publishing Group (co-written with his wife under the pseudonym Danielle Brown). ISBN 0-425-14783-5, Scheduled for re-release in August 2006
* The Bald Book, 1998, co-written with his wife Blythe Brown. ISBN 0-7860-0519-X
Novels
* Digital Fortress, 1998
* Angels & Demons, 2000
* Deception Point, 2001
* The Da Vinci Code, 2003
* The Lost Symbol, 2009
Films
* The Da Vinci Code, 2006
* Angels & Demons, 2009