Still, the writer's life has been a good one. I'm not trying to emulate William Faulkner. I'm trying to write books that taste like ice cream but have the nutrition of vegetables. I think if you're a creative person you want everyone to love what you do. I don't mind getting a bad review.' I think that's a lie. 'We would all like to say, 'Eh, I don't read my reviews. Stephen King, for example, has called Brown's writing the intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. And I do believe that for most of us, the approval of our parents trumps everything.'īut some fellow writers haven't been as kind. 'It is, because we're talking about my parents. 'It's still meaningful to you today?' Dokoupil asked. The first call he made was to Mom and Dad. I walk into the hotel and the concierge says, 'Mr. And I'm just sort of waiting to hear if I'm on it. 'I was out in Portland, Oregon, on tour,' he recalled. Published in 2003, 'The Da Vinci Code' has sold more than 80 million copies. Tom Hanks starred in the 2006 film based on 'The Da Vinci Code,' and in two film sequels. There would just be an envelope with a code,' he said. 'My brother and sister and I would come down to the Christmas tree and there would be nothing there. In the book, Robert Langdon has to solve a series of riddles and codes, much like Brown did as a child on Christmas morning. And in the mornings, he wrote 'The Da Vinci Code' in a little office above a friend's bookstore.

He also started teaching back at Phillips Exeter, teaching English in the afternoon. 'That was my only selling book,' Brown laughed. He wrote three novels and, under a pen name, a joke book called '187 Men to Avoid.'ĭokoupil asked, 'In the early days, was that your bestselling book?' He says one lesson Exeter taught him was 'not to use too many adjectives, to get to the point.'īut for decades Brown's career wandered … first to music ('I hit Los Angeles at about the time that the rap craze hit, and really nobody wanted to hear the kind of songs I was writing'), and few wanted Brown's early books, either. Which story is true?' And this particular man said, 'Nice boys don't ask that question.'' You're talking about Adam and Eve and the seven days of creation, and I'm learning about evolution. It happened when Brown was 13 years old: 'I went to my priest and I said, 'Hey, there's a problem here. When asked when religion stopped being his truth, Brown said, 'I remember the moment that I started the journey to find out what my truth was.' As an Episcopalian, she taught her son to place his faith in God.

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