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Dan Brown

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Dan Brown
File:Brownd.jpg
BornJune 22, 1964
Exeter, New Hampshire
OccupationNovelist
GenreMystery
Website
danbrown.com

Dan Brown (born June 22, 1964) is an American author of thriller fiction, best known for writing the controversial 2003 bestseller, The Da Vinci Code.


Early life

Dan Brown was born and raised in Exeter, New Hampshire, the oldest of three children. His mother Constance (Connie) was a professional musician, playing organ at church. Brown's father Richard G. Brown was a prominent mathematics teacher, writing textbooks and teaching high school mathematics at Phillips Exeter Academy from 1962 until his retirement in 1997.

Phillips Exeter Academy is an exclusive boarding school, which required new teachers to live on campus for several years, so Brown and his siblings were literally raised at the school. The social environment at Exeter was mostly Christian. Brown sang in the church choir, attended Sunday school, and spent summers at church camp.[1] His own schooling was at public schools in Exeter until the 9th grade, at which time he enrolled in Phillips Exeter, as did his younger siblings Valerie and Gregory when it became their turn.

Songwriter and Pop Singer

After graduating from Phillips Exeter in 1982, Brown attended Amherst College, where he was a member of Psi Upsilon fraternity. He played squash and sang in the Amherst Glee Club, and was a writing student of novelist Alan Lelchuk. [2]

Brown graduated from Amherst with a double major in Spanish and English in 1986, and then 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", and sold a few hundred copies. He then formed his own (vanity) 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.

While in Los Angeles he 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 North Conway, New Hampshire. [3]

Along with helping his singing career, Blythe has also been a major influence on Brown's career as an author, as she assists with much of the promotion involved with his books. She co-wrote both of his early "humor" books, which were written under pseudonyms, and there is speculation that she may have helped with other books as well. In the Acknowledgement for Deception Point, Brown thanked "Blythe Brown for her tireless research and creative input."

In 1993, Brown released the self-titled CD Dan Brown, which included songs such as "976-Love" and "If You Believe in Love".

New England teacher

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 7th graders at Lincoln Akerman School, a small school for K–8th grade with about 250 students, in Hampton Falls[4].

In 1994, Brown released a CD entitled 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."

This CD included songs such as "Here in These Fields" and the areligious ballad "All I Believe" [5].

Also in 1994, while on holiday in Tahiti he read Sidney Sheldon's novel The Doomsday Conspiracy, and decided that he could do better. [6] He started work on Digital Fortress, and 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" (one of the 187 items in the book was "Men who write self-help books for women"). The book's author profile reads, "Danielle Brown currently lives in New England: teaching school, writing books, and avoiding men." The copyright, however, is listed as "Dan Brown". It sold a few thousand copies before going out of print.

Bestselling author

In 1996, Brown quit teaching to become a full-time writer. Digital Fortress was published in 1998. 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.

File:DaVinciCode US.jpg
The Da Vinci Code
(US edition)

Brown's first three novels had mediocre success, with fewer than 10,000 copies in each of their first printings; but the fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code, became a runaway 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 (despite being heavily disparaged critically), with 60.5 million copies sold worldwide as of 2006. [7] 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[8], 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 $76.5 million USD. The Times estimated his income from 'Da Vinci Code' sales as $250 million.

File:BrownAndFamily.jpg
Brown and his family at the ceremony presenting the endowment to the Phillips Exeter Academy. From left to right: Blythe, Richard, Dan, Gregory, Valerie, and Connie

In October 2004, Brown and his siblings donated $2.2 million USD 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."

Brown is interested in cryptography, keys, and codes, which are a recurring theme in his stories. Currently his novels have been translated into more than 40 languages.[9]

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 Leigh Teabing. It was considered one of the most anticipated films of 2006, and was used to launch the Cannes Film Festival on May 17. Brown was listed as one of the executive producers of the film, as well as creating additional codes for it. One of his songs, "Phiano", which Brown wrote and performed, was listed as part of the film's soundtrack.

Works

CDs

  • SynthAnimals, a children's album[10]
  • Perspective, 1990, Dalliance. Music CD [11]
  • Dan Brown, 1993, DBG Records, (included songs "976-Love" and "If You Believe in Love")[12]
  • Angels and Demons, 1995, DBG Records (included songs "Here in these Fields" and "All I Believe") [13]
  • Musica Animalia 2003, a charity CD for the organization Families First [14]

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 0425147835
  • The Bald Book, 1998, co-written with his wife Blythe Brown. ISBN 078600519X

Novels

Movie

Future projects

Template:Spoiler

  • Brown is working on a new novel, called The Solomon Key, which will reportedly take place in Washington D.C., and feature the secret society of the Freemasons. Exact release date has not been announced, but the most common media speculation says 2007. [15] Brown's promotional website states that puzzles hidden in the bookjacket of The Da Vinci Code (including two referring to the Kryptos sculpture at CIA Headquarters in Langley, Virginia) give hints about the subject of this novel. 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." (See: Deception Point#Code solution)
  • He says that he currently has outlines for at least 12 future books, one of which involves a famous composer's "all factual" associations with a secret society. Speculation is that this may mean Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, who was also a Freemason.


Trivia

Wikiquote has quotations related to Dan Brown.
  • His bestseller The Da Vinci Code was his first hit and became the first to be adapted into a film. However, it is actually the second book in which Robert Langdon appears. The first is Angels and Demons.
  • The fictional Langdon's alma mater is Phillips Exeter Academy, the same school that Brown attended.
  • 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 friend Carla Ventresca. 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.
  • In a statement at trial in March 2006, Brown wrote that while he was growing up, on birthdays and Christmas, he and his siblings were led on elaborate treasure hunts to find their gifts, following cryptic clues and codes left by their father. This is the same event that he used to describe the fictional childhood of a character in his books.
  • Brown plays tennis, and does his writing in his loft, often getting up at 4 a.m. to work. He keeps an antique hourglass on his desk, to remind himself to take breaks.
  • Brown has 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.” [16]
  • There is a brief appearance of Brown and his wife in the 2005 film Be Cool, in the front row of the audience at the Aerosmith concert.
  • Although many claim Brown's books such as "Da Vinci Code" are anti-Christian, Brown himself is a self-proclaimed Christian who says the controversy is good to inspire "discussion and debate" that will ultimately lead to a more solidly defended faith.
  • In the film version of The Da Vinci Code, Brown and his wife can be seen in the background of one of the early booksigning scenes.

Disputed claims

Some interview statements by Brown have been brought into question:

  • In interviews, Brown has said that his wife is an "art historian" and "painter", though there was no record of her having worked professionally in this capacity. When they met, she was the Director of Artistic Development at the National Academy for Songwriters in Los Angeles. However, during the 2006 lawsuit over alleged copyright infringement in The Da Vinci Code, information was introduced at trial which showed that Blythe did indeed do a great deal of research for the book. [17] In one article, she was described as "chief researcher". [18]
  • Brown states that during his junior year at Amherst College, he went to Europe to study art history at the University of Seville in Spain, which is where he first began seriously studying the works of Leonardo da Vinci. [19] However, according to an article by Alvaro Sanchez Leon in the January/February 2006 issue of the Spanish-language magazine Epoca, "Ese señor nunca ha estado matriculado en esta universidad, a no ser que se apuntara a un curso de otoño de los que se dan en la "Facultad de Geografía e Historia" para alumnos extranjeros." (trans: That man was never registered at this university, unless he attended one of the Fall courses for foreign students at the Faculty of Geography and History.")

Other Dan Browns

There are other books which have been written and/or illustrated by different people with the name "Dan Brown":

  • Brown, Dan. Matter, 1996, Crosstown Books, ISBN 0964757113 - a book of poetry
  • Brown, Dan. Study Guide and Selected Readings for the American Experience, 1860-1976
  • Brown, Dan A. The Other Side of Pastoral Ministry, 1996
  • There is also an illustrator by the name of "Dan Brown", whose work can be seen in books such as, A Picture Book of George Washington Carver, 2000, Holiday House, ISBN 082341633X ; A Picture Book of Sacagawea, 2001; and A Golden Age: The Golden Age of Radio (Smithsonian Odyssey), 1996.

References

See also


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