The Sultan and the Mermaid Queen is a compendium of articles and essays on Asia written by Bangkok resident Paul Spencer Sochaczewski. Encompassing several decades of travel throughout the continent, they originally appeared in publications such as the International Herald Tribune ,Wall Street Journal CNN Traveller ,Geographical ,Travel and Leisure Golf and Destinasian .Sochaczewski has a knack for finding oddball characters and offbeat stories on his journeys. Within these pages we meet a homeless Hawaiian who claims to be the last real emperor of China, the last elephant hunter of Vietnam, and the Sultan of Yogyakarta who lends his name to the book's title and who professes his love for a mermaid queen.
We also learn how Burma's generals are using white elephants to justify their hold on power and ponder the disappearance of a modern day Swiss Robin Hood who disppapeared in the Borneo jungle while trying to stand up for the rights of Penan tribesmen, among many other interesting tales.
The author's enthusiasm for Asia is apparent throughout, as are his interests in conservation and golf. He combines all three with an article written in Bangkok which considers the ecological impact of Asia's obsession with a game that requires more land than some Balkan states.
As a non-tree hugger I found it a bit tiring trying to read all the eco-centric articles in one sitting, likewise reading about golf, which gets me about as excited as sitting at the lights at Asok on a Friday evening. In a thunderstorm. However,this is not a book to be read all at once, much less so in lateral order from cover to cover.
Dipping into TSATMQ is like eating squid on a stick with green chilli sauce. If you use too much then it becomes a bit overwhelming and could even make your eyes water, but applied sparingly it's a delectable and invigorating
Friday, October 2, 2009
A love-hate relationship with food
When Frank Bruni stepped on the scene as the chief restaurant critic for The New York Times more than five years ago,many industry insiders and observers thought the choice was odd.
Bruni had no previous experience reviewing restaurants. He hadn't sweated long hours behind a hot range in a well-regarded kitchen learning his craft. He knew how to shape sentences but what did he know about simmering sauces?
But even odder was Bruni's lovehate relationship with food - something he now acknowledges in his new memoir,Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater .The revelation isn't exactly shocking but it is unusual. Bruni, the man who had volunteered to eat out six nights a week, had obsessed about his weight for most of his life. He had battled bulimia briefly, toyed with laxatives and torpedoed many a diet - all the trimmings for his third book.
"I remember thinking if I look up after a couple of years and I am right,and I have figured out a better way to manage my relationship with food,it's probably a pretty interesting narrative how I got to this point," Bruni says about the moment he decided to take the job.
If waist size is an indicator of success then Bruni, with his close-cropped hair and athletic build, has been wildly successful curbing his prodigious appetite. After ballooning to around 275 pounds and sporting 42-inch pants while covering a presidential campaign in 2000, Bruni can now take a moment to brag.
He wears size 34 jeans and doesn't look round anymore - despite eating his way through approximately 700 restaurants in New York alone during his stint as critic that came officially to an end last month.
"I like eating, and I prefer eating in great volume to eating in minor volume," Bruni,44, said in an interview at a wine bar on Manhattan's Upper West Side near his home."No question.Having been through everything I describe in the book, I am fully aware and I struggle to remain conscious of the consequences."
The consequences have plagued Bruni throughout his life but they came to a head when he decided in April 2004 to leave his post as Rome correspondent and tackle restaurant reviewing in New York, perhaps the most important dining city in the world and one filled with know-it-all foodies.
For Bruni, danger loomed. A sea of calories awaited him. He took the plunge - one that has local restaurateurs now scratching their heads since learning Bruni's anguish over food.
"It's like an alcoholic becoming a winemaker," says John Fraser, whose New York restaurant Dovetail faired exceptionally well under Bruni's withering gaze, earning three stars.
Bruni knew the task ahead of him was great. He adjusted and learned on the job. He "ate more widely and in a much more inquisitive and thoughtful manner." He developed a "frame of reference" that was "extremely broad and unusual."
He not only wrote about places in New York but he also ventured across America and Europe, alerting readers to gems such as Alinea in Chicago.Bruni could at times be snarky in his reviews but he was mostly right when he decided to bring out the knives,according to chefs.
Sometimes, restaurants caught him;sometimes they did not. A well-worn picture floating around of a heftier Bruni aided his cause to slip into restaurants unnoticed.
"We had the fat picture. You would never guess that's the same person,"Fraser said about Bruni's most current photograph posted on the food blog Eater.com and the one found inside the cover of his book.
His style of writing attracted many followers. Not everybody loved him but they definitely talked about him.As Bruni evolved, people noticed, chatting about him at cocktail parties, said Jennifer Baum, an influential restaurant publicist who has never met Bruni but had about a dozen of her restaurants reviewed by him.
"It stepped beyond the walls of the industry," Baum said, referring to his reviews. Baum, like other food publicists, kept a wary eye on Bruni,who once slapped around one of her celebrity chef clients, Bobby Flay, taking a star away from Mesa Grill in Manhattan. Baum wouldn't comment about her client's reaction to Bruni's takedown, but she said he was fair and honest.
"There are some restaurants that opened where people didn't pay attention and those restaurants should be shouted out," she said."He went into the venerable restaurants and made sure they were paying attention."
And the weight? Not only did Bruni beat back the calories through rigorous exercise and moderation, he also beat back the doubters in a city filled with them. Bruni, according to some of the toughest critics in town, prevailed.
"When he started out, Frank famously knew almost nothing about restaurant criticism, and it showed,"GQmagazine food critic Alan Richman said."He was saved by his writing which is exuberant and charming, by his indefatigable work ethic and by his instinctive ability to write brilliant criticisms of restaurants that he either hated or loved. I'm not sure if any restaurant critic has been better at praise."
Richman, who once eviscerated one of the most famous chefs alive, JeanGeorges Vongerichten, in a scathing article for his magazine, said it's too bad Bruni is giving up his reign as most feared critic in New York.
"What I regret about him leaving now is that he finally has that skill,something that comes with scrutinising thousands of plates of food," Richman said."He's at his peak."
Bruni isn't sorry. He can finally exhale after crafting about 270 reviews - visiting some spots more than once - for the newspaper that could turn a restaurant into a massive hit or major flop. He decided to end his run as critic because his "energy would fade or was fading."
Bruni says his old gig wasn't just about eating. It was also about coordinating the meals - all the time. He always dictated the schedule, calling himself a "bully."
Bruni had no previous experience reviewing restaurants. He hadn't sweated long hours behind a hot range in a well-regarded kitchen learning his craft. He knew how to shape sentences but what did he know about simmering sauces?
But even odder was Bruni's lovehate relationship with food - something he now acknowledges in his new memoir,Born Round: The Secret History of a Full-Time Eater .The revelation isn't exactly shocking but it is unusual. Bruni, the man who had volunteered to eat out six nights a week, had obsessed about his weight for most of his life. He had battled bulimia briefly, toyed with laxatives and torpedoed many a diet - all the trimmings for his third book.
"I remember thinking if I look up after a couple of years and I am right,and I have figured out a better way to manage my relationship with food,it's probably a pretty interesting narrative how I got to this point," Bruni says about the moment he decided to take the job.
If waist size is an indicator of success then Bruni, with his close-cropped hair and athletic build, has been wildly successful curbing his prodigious appetite. After ballooning to around 275 pounds and sporting 42-inch pants while covering a presidential campaign in 2000, Bruni can now take a moment to brag.
He wears size 34 jeans and doesn't look round anymore - despite eating his way through approximately 700 restaurants in New York alone during his stint as critic that came officially to an end last month.
"I like eating, and I prefer eating in great volume to eating in minor volume," Bruni,44, said in an interview at a wine bar on Manhattan's Upper West Side near his home."No question.Having been through everything I describe in the book, I am fully aware and I struggle to remain conscious of the consequences."
The consequences have plagued Bruni throughout his life but they came to a head when he decided in April 2004 to leave his post as Rome correspondent and tackle restaurant reviewing in New York, perhaps the most important dining city in the world and one filled with know-it-all foodies.
For Bruni, danger loomed. A sea of calories awaited him. He took the plunge - one that has local restaurateurs now scratching their heads since learning Bruni's anguish over food.
"It's like an alcoholic becoming a winemaker," says John Fraser, whose New York restaurant Dovetail faired exceptionally well under Bruni's withering gaze, earning three stars.
Bruni knew the task ahead of him was great. He adjusted and learned on the job. He "ate more widely and in a much more inquisitive and thoughtful manner." He developed a "frame of reference" that was "extremely broad and unusual."
He not only wrote about places in New York but he also ventured across America and Europe, alerting readers to gems such as Alinea in Chicago.Bruni could at times be snarky in his reviews but he was mostly right when he decided to bring out the knives,according to chefs.
Sometimes, restaurants caught him;sometimes they did not. A well-worn picture floating around of a heftier Bruni aided his cause to slip into restaurants unnoticed.
"We had the fat picture. You would never guess that's the same person,"Fraser said about Bruni's most current photograph posted on the food blog Eater.com and the one found inside the cover of his book.
His style of writing attracted many followers. Not everybody loved him but they definitely talked about him.As Bruni evolved, people noticed, chatting about him at cocktail parties, said Jennifer Baum, an influential restaurant publicist who has never met Bruni but had about a dozen of her restaurants reviewed by him.
"It stepped beyond the walls of the industry," Baum said, referring to his reviews. Baum, like other food publicists, kept a wary eye on Bruni,who once slapped around one of her celebrity chef clients, Bobby Flay, taking a star away from Mesa Grill in Manhattan. Baum wouldn't comment about her client's reaction to Bruni's takedown, but she said he was fair and honest.
"There are some restaurants that opened where people didn't pay attention and those restaurants should be shouted out," she said."He went into the venerable restaurants and made sure they were paying attention."
And the weight? Not only did Bruni beat back the calories through rigorous exercise and moderation, he also beat back the doubters in a city filled with them. Bruni, according to some of the toughest critics in town, prevailed.
"When he started out, Frank famously knew almost nothing about restaurant criticism, and it showed,"GQmagazine food critic Alan Richman said."He was saved by his writing which is exuberant and charming, by his indefatigable work ethic and by his instinctive ability to write brilliant criticisms of restaurants that he either hated or loved. I'm not sure if any restaurant critic has been better at praise."
Richman, who once eviscerated one of the most famous chefs alive, JeanGeorges Vongerichten, in a scathing article for his magazine, said it's too bad Bruni is giving up his reign as most feared critic in New York.
"What I regret about him leaving now is that he finally has that skill,something that comes with scrutinising thousands of plates of food," Richman said."He's at his peak."
Bruni isn't sorry. He can finally exhale after crafting about 270 reviews - visiting some spots more than once - for the newspaper that could turn a restaurant into a massive hit or major flop. He decided to end his run as critic because his "energy would fade or was fading."
Bruni says his old gig wasn't just about eating. It was also about coordinating the meals - all the time. He always dictated the schedule, calling himself a "bully."
Top tabloid switches support from Labour
Britain's topselling daily newspaper dealt a blow to Prime Minister Gordon Brown's efforts to win a general election, declaring yesterday it had switched its support to the opposition Conservatives.
The Sun , part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp media empire, delivered a damning thumbs-down the day after Mr Brown's keynote speech to his ruling Labour Party conference.
"After 12 long years in power, this government has lost its way," the Sun said in a front-page article, featuring a picture of Mr Brown and the headline "Labour's lost it".
The Sun boasts a circulation of more than 3 million and a record of backing winners in elections. It switched its support to Labour before Tony Blair led the party to the first of three successive election victories in 1997.
Mr Brown replaced Mr Blair two years ago but faces a fight for political survival.He must call an election by next June and the centre-right Conservatives are ahead by 15 points or more in polls.
"The British people will decide the election, not a newspaper. I think people really want newspapers to report news and expect them to do so," Mr Brown said.
Ground down by recession and angered by a scandal over lawmakers'expenses, Britons appear ready to embrace the Conservatives.
"What this is signalling is that they [the Sun ] think their readers have turned,just as in 1996 when they switched support to Blair, a similar time out from the election," Ivor Gaber, professor of political campaigning and reporting at London's City University, said.
"They weren't saying 'we suddenly think New Labour is good', they were saying 'we know where our readers are at', and no newspaper likes to be behind its readers."
The Sun , part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp media empire, delivered a damning thumbs-down the day after Mr Brown's keynote speech to his ruling Labour Party conference.
"After 12 long years in power, this government has lost its way," the Sun said in a front-page article, featuring a picture of Mr Brown and the headline "Labour's lost it".
The Sun boasts a circulation of more than 3 million and a record of backing winners in elections. It switched its support to Labour before Tony Blair led the party to the first of three successive election victories in 1997.
Mr Brown replaced Mr Blair two years ago but faces a fight for political survival.He must call an election by next June and the centre-right Conservatives are ahead by 15 points or more in polls.
"The British people will decide the election, not a newspaper. I think people really want newspapers to report news and expect them to do so," Mr Brown said.
Ground down by recession and angered by a scandal over lawmakers'expenses, Britons appear ready to embrace the Conservatives.
"What this is signalling is that they [the Sun ] think their readers have turned,just as in 1996 when they switched support to Blair, a similar time out from the election," Ivor Gaber, professor of political campaigning and reporting at London's City University, said.
"They weren't saying 'we suddenly think New Labour is good', they were saying 'we know where our readers are at', and no newspaper likes to be behind its readers."
Sunday, September 27, 2009
New novel, movies in the works
So many projects, so much success.That's the theme of the life of novelist Nicholas Sparks, whose latest novel,The Last Song ,(Hachette Book Group) was released in US bookstores earlier this month. If the title sounds familiar, that's because Sparks wrote the screenplay first after Miley Cyrus specifically said she wanted him to pen a movie for her.She's been filming the movie by the same name in Georgia.
That movie and at least one more, maybe two,based on Sparks' books will be released in 2010.The movie version of Dear John is scheduled for a February 2010 release, and The Lucky One could be on the big screen by next year, although filming hasn't started.
His personal life is going well, too, with a private school he started near top capacity for and the high school track team he has coached winning championships. He's moving back into a new, larger home that he built on the site of his previous home outside New Bern on the Trent River, some 180km southeast of Raleigh.
So, can he just humour the rest of us and give us a crumb about what's going wrong in his life?As it turns out, not really.
"All of these things are not straight-line-tosuccess things," he said in a phone interview."You have all the downs that it takes to get there.There are frustrations and struggles with the track team, frustrations and struggles with the school, and frustrations and struggles with the house. We just keep trying and trying and do our best."
Although The Last Song began as a screenplay,
Author Nicholas Sparks attends the 'Nights In Rodanthe' world premiere at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York.
That movie and at least one more, maybe two,based on Sparks' books will be released in 2010.The movie version of Dear John is scheduled for a February 2010 release, and The Lucky One could be on the big screen by next year, although filming hasn't started.
His personal life is going well, too, with a private school he started near top capacity for and the high school track team he has coached winning championships. He's moving back into a new, larger home that he built on the site of his previous home outside New Bern on the Trent River, some 180km southeast of Raleigh.
So, can he just humour the rest of us and give us a crumb about what's going wrong in his life?As it turns out, not really.
"All of these things are not straight-line-tosuccess things," he said in a phone interview."You have all the downs that it takes to get there.There are frustrations and struggles with the track team, frustrations and struggles with the school, and frustrations and struggles with the house. We just keep trying and trying and do our best."
Although The Last Song began as a screenplay,
Author Nicholas Sparks attends the 'Nights In Rodanthe' world premiere at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York.
Portuguese Nobel laureate gives up blog
Outspoken Portuguese novelist Jose Saramago, the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1998, has given up the blog which he launched a year ago at the age of 85 to concentrate on his new book.
"It has always been convenient that goodbyes be brief.... Goodbye therefore.Until another day? I sincerely don't think so. I have started another book and want to dedicate all my time to it," he wrote in his final blog entry.
The author of Blindness and The Cave , who lives in acliff-top house in Lanzarote on Spain's Canary Islands launched the blog on in September 2008 with a "love letter" to Lisbon.
He updated it regularly with lengthy entries in both Spanish and Portuguese on topics ranging from poverty in Africa to opposition to health care reform in the United States that have been published as a book in Portugal.
In Saramago's latest novel Cain , which will be published later this year, the author absolves the Biblical figure of the same name for the murder of his younger brother Abel and puts the blame instead on God.
Saramago left Portugal in the early 1990s after the conservative government in power at the time refused to allow his controversial novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ to compete for a European literary prize.
"It has always been convenient that goodbyes be brief.... Goodbye therefore.Until another day? I sincerely don't think so. I have started another book and want to dedicate all my time to it," he wrote in his final blog entry.
The author of Blindness and The Cave , who lives in acliff-top house in Lanzarote on Spain's Canary Islands launched the blog on in September 2008 with a "love letter" to Lisbon.
He updated it regularly with lengthy entries in both Spanish and Portuguese on topics ranging from poverty in Africa to opposition to health care reform in the United States that have been published as a book in Portugal.
In Saramago's latest novel Cain , which will be published later this year, the author absolves the Biblical figure of the same name for the murder of his younger brother Abel and puts the blame instead on God.
Saramago left Portugal in the early 1990s after the conservative government in power at the time refused to allow his controversial novel The Gospel According to Jesus Christ to compete for a European literary prize.
New tallest man has longing for love
The world's new tallest man,measuring 246.5cm, said he was looking for love as he was presented by Guinness World Records in London last week.
Sultan Kosen,26, blotted out the iconic Tower Bridge as he posed for photographs on the banks of the River Thames in his first ever trip outside his native Turkey.
He takes over the title from China's Bao Xishun, who stands "just" 2.36 metres.
The Turk also has the world's largest hands and largest feet, measuring 27.5cm and 36.5cm respectively.
And his giant hands dwarfed those proffered by amazed wellwishers as he turned heads in London, while reporters strained to get their microphones within reach of his head.
Kosen's record was unveiled to mark the launch of the Guinness World Records 2010 edition. The book, now in its 55th year, includes the world's biggest burger,made in the United States and weighing 84kg, and records for the dog with the longest ears and the world's biggest skateboard.
Kosen was unable to complete his schooling because of his extreme height,but works occasionally as a farmer to support his family.
He said he hoped his newfound celebrity status would enable him "to travel and see the world and have a car that accommodates my size".
"My biggest dream though, is to get married and have children - I'm looking for love," he said.
The extreme difficulty of squeezing into a regular-sized car is one of the main disadvantages of his height, but he says it comes in handy for replacing light bulbs and hanging curtains for his mother.
Kosen has three brothers and a sister,who are all normal-sized, but his rate of growth surged from the age of 10 because of a tumour which caused too much growth hormone to be released from his pituitary gland.
The tumour was successfully removed in surgery and he finally stopped growing last year. He uses walking sticks and tires quickly if he is standing.
Another pretender to the tallest title,Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk, who claims to be 10.5cm taller than Kosen, fails to qualify for the record because he refused to be measured by Guinness World Records officials.
Guinness editor-in-chief Craig Glenday travelled to Turkey to personally validate Kosen's height under strict guidelines, measuring him three times in one day because bodies expand and shrink throughout the day.
Glenday said:"Sultan's an imposing figure, but a gentle, quiet man who's totally relaxed and unfazed about his unique standing in the world."
Sultan Kosen,26, blotted out the iconic Tower Bridge as he posed for photographs on the banks of the River Thames in his first ever trip outside his native Turkey.
He takes over the title from China's Bao Xishun, who stands "just" 2.36 metres.
The Turk also has the world's largest hands and largest feet, measuring 27.5cm and 36.5cm respectively.
And his giant hands dwarfed those proffered by amazed wellwishers as he turned heads in London, while reporters strained to get their microphones within reach of his head.
Kosen's record was unveiled to mark the launch of the Guinness World Records 2010 edition. The book, now in its 55th year, includes the world's biggest burger,made in the United States and weighing 84kg, and records for the dog with the longest ears and the world's biggest skateboard.
Kosen was unable to complete his schooling because of his extreme height,but works occasionally as a farmer to support his family.
He said he hoped his newfound celebrity status would enable him "to travel and see the world and have a car that accommodates my size".
"My biggest dream though, is to get married and have children - I'm looking for love," he said.
The extreme difficulty of squeezing into a regular-sized car is one of the main disadvantages of his height, but he says it comes in handy for replacing light bulbs and hanging curtains for his mother.
Kosen has three brothers and a sister,who are all normal-sized, but his rate of growth surged from the age of 10 because of a tumour which caused too much growth hormone to be released from his pituitary gland.
The tumour was successfully removed in surgery and he finally stopped growing last year. He uses walking sticks and tires quickly if he is standing.
Another pretender to the tallest title,Ukrainian Leonid Stadnyk, who claims to be 10.5cm taller than Kosen, fails to qualify for the record because he refused to be measured by Guinness World Records officials.
Guinness editor-in-chief Craig Glenday travelled to Turkey to personally validate Kosen's height under strict guidelines, measuring him three times in one day because bodies expand and shrink throughout the day.
Glenday said:"Sultan's an imposing figure, but a gentle, quiet man who's totally relaxed and unfazed about his unique standing in the world."
"The Lost Symbol"
The mind of Dan Brown may be a cluster of codes, but in person he appears no more mysterious than your average tennis partner. He is that smiling, sandy-haired man with the dimpled chin you know from the jacket flap of The Da Vinci Code , the sporty looking fellow in blazer and slacks.
After six years of letting his work do the talking - a conversation that whispered and screamed across the globe he is back, at least briefly, to promote his new novel,The Lost Symbol , and to reflect on how The Da Vinci Code changed him from unknown thriller writer to a symbol in his own right.
"I wouldn't trade it for the world," he says, seated on a recent morning in a sunlit conference room at the headquarters of Random House, Inc."It's 95 percent wonderful. My life is much more multifaceted. My experiences have gotten to be much more interesting, the people I get to meet, the discussions I get to have."
The book is done and he beams like a father,"so pleased this day has arrived".His publisher has blessed The Lost Symbol , with a first printing of 5 million,oversized for virtually any writer except Brown, whose sales for The Da Vinci Code top 40 million.The Lost Symbol has been at or near the top of Amazon.com's best-seller list since the novel was announced in the spring.
The long wait for his new book, he says, is mostly due to the story,"mindboggling stuff" that required time to master. In The Lost Symbol , protagonist Robert Langdon returns from his European adventures of The Da Vinci Code .He has been summoned to Washington,D.C., and is quickly caught up in a fateful race against a murderous villain to find a hidden code that supposedly unearths an ancient secret to limitless knowledge and power.
Like The Da Vinci Code , the new book is thriller,puzzler, research paper and travelogue. Langdon hurries about from the Library of Congress to the National Archives to the Washington Monument, a capsule of the journeys Brown took in working on the novel,travelling first class all the way, like receiving personal tours of the Library of Congress and other buildings.
"Those things wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for The Da Vinci Code ," he notes.Library spokesman Matt Raymond confirmed that Brown had visited in April last year and had looked over some Bibles in the library's collection. He also met for about 30 minutes with Librarian of Congress James Billington for a "private discussion".
Fame's unwonderful 5 percent is the kind that other major celebrities face: a loss of privacy that Brown says makes it impossible to tour for his new book, a heightened self-awareness that briefly, just a couple of months, he says, made it hard for him to write The Lost Symbol .He was also delayed by the 2006 copyright infringement trial in which writers Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh claimed Brown's book "appropriated the architecture" of their own work. Brown and Random House prevailed.
"That was certainly a setback, mainly because it was a distraction and all that the energy that goes into a trial is not going into your work," he says."The worst part of it was having someone question my integrity, publicly."
He was attacked often for The Da Vinci Code ,especially for alleging that Jesus and Mary Magdalene conceived a child. Scholars scorned him, and religious officials were offended, but Brown stands by his theory, finding it "makes more sense than the story I was told in church".
Brown's new book is centred on the Freemasons,the secretive, centuries-old fraternity that has included George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman. He has great respect for the Masons, especially for their policy of accepting people of all religious faiths. But he wouldn't be surprised if someone gets angry.
"There will be a lot said, not all of it will be nice,"he says."And I'm just kind of used to it."
He doesn't talk a lot to the press, but Brown's history is as known as most authors' thanks in part to a mini-biography he never wished to produce a 69-page court document submitted for the London trial.
He was born in 1964 in Exeter, New Hampshire,and still lives near there. His father, Richard Brown,taught maths at Exeter Phillips Academy. His mother,Constance Brown, was a musician. The first treasure hunts he knew were the ones his father arranged at Christmas. Brown majored in English at Amherst College, but also liked music enough to debate after graduating whether he should write stories or songs.Choosing songs, he moved to Los Angeles and caught on with no one except for the woman who became his wife, Blythe Newlon, the director of artistic development for the National Academy of Songwriters.
As a young man, he compiled a list of "187 Men to Avoid", which proved amusing enough for the Berkeley Publishing Group to release as a book, in 1995, under the pseudonym "Danielle Brown". But his real breakthrough came two years earlier, on a vacation in Tahiti, when he read Sidney Sheldon's The Doomsday Conspiracy ."It held my attention, kept me turning pages, and reminded me how much fun it could be to read,"Brown wrote in his court papers."The simplicity of the prose and the efficiency of the storyline was less cumbersome than the dense novels of my schooldays,and I began to suspect that maybe I could write a
"thriller" of this type one day.
He debuted in 1998 with The Digital Fortress , an intelligence thriller, and followed with Deception Point (a novel he found boring to write) and Angels & Demons , which introduced at least a few readers to Langdon, the Harvard professor embodied for many by Tom Hanks' portrayals in the film versions of The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons .His sales were poor and by 2001 he was in the same rut as so many authors - handling his own publicity and even selling books out of his car,a process that would now require a convoy of trucks.
Brown changed agents, changed publishers (from Simon & Schuster to Doubleday, a Random House imprint), changed his luck and changed the industry.The Da Vinci Code , published in March 2003 was an immediate hit that "just parked", Brown says, remaining on best-seller lists for more than three years. He recalls an early sign of success - an appearance at a superstore in Washington, not longer after the book came out."We drove up and the store was surrounded with people and I thought there must have been a bomb scare."
Barnes & Noble Inc. fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley says she knew vaguely of Brown before The Da Vinci Code , but had never read him. Encouraged by a Barnes & Noble executive to try Brown's novel, she was immediately drawn to the "breathless pace, the intrigue - the science and art were fascinating".
"But I have to say my biggest takeaway from it was that I wanted to know more about everything he wrote about," Hensley says."I Googled my fingers off! It made me wish I had Robert Langdon or Dan Brown as a professor in my college years!"
Brown is far richer than he was a few years ago, but his working life remains steady, he says. He rises at 4am and writes until noon, seven days a week, even on Christmas. He is often too drained to read, so instead he will play tennis or go for a run on the beach. Mark Twain's religious critique Letters from the Earth is one of the few books he has read for pleasure lately.
Brown will talk and talk about Twain, Masons,pyramids, spirituality ("a work in progress", he says)and e-books (he reads them, and the paper kind,too), but some subjects repe. Ask about his next book and he will smile, in a nice way, and change the subject. Ask about politics, and he will cringe.
The Lost Symbol doesn't name names, but works in criticisms of waterboarding and religious intolerance,passages that suggest the author was not a fan of the George W. Bush administration."The people who have read the book have told me that the timing of the book seems preordained," he says."And they will cite, among other references, the president [Obama] and the change in attitudes toward religion."
Asked if the book was completed after Obama's election, he answers, thoughtfully, yes. Asked for his opinion of Obama, he declines comment, for the very future of his book.
"What I'm trying to what to do in this book is send a universal message, and the second I pick a side, it just undermines everything," he says, adding that he underwent a "transformation" on The Lost Symbol ."(It's) really two things. The idea that science is starting to show our true potential and that that potential is so much greater than most of us imagined.... Tangentially, I feel like we're entering a time where prejudice, prejudice of religion in particular, will start to evaporate."
After six years of letting his work do the talking - a conversation that whispered and screamed across the globe he is back, at least briefly, to promote his new novel,The Lost Symbol , and to reflect on how The Da Vinci Code changed him from unknown thriller writer to a symbol in his own right.
"I wouldn't trade it for the world," he says, seated on a recent morning in a sunlit conference room at the headquarters of Random House, Inc."It's 95 percent wonderful. My life is much more multifaceted. My experiences have gotten to be much more interesting, the people I get to meet, the discussions I get to have."
The book is done and he beams like a father,"so pleased this day has arrived".His publisher has blessed The Lost Symbol , with a first printing of 5 million,oversized for virtually any writer except Brown, whose sales for The Da Vinci Code top 40 million.The Lost Symbol has been at or near the top of Amazon.com's best-seller list since the novel was announced in the spring.
The long wait for his new book, he says, is mostly due to the story,"mindboggling stuff" that required time to master. In The Lost Symbol , protagonist Robert Langdon returns from his European adventures of The Da Vinci Code .He has been summoned to Washington,D.C., and is quickly caught up in a fateful race against a murderous villain to find a hidden code that supposedly unearths an ancient secret to limitless knowledge and power.
Like The Da Vinci Code , the new book is thriller,puzzler, research paper and travelogue. Langdon hurries about from the Library of Congress to the National Archives to the Washington Monument, a capsule of the journeys Brown took in working on the novel,travelling first class all the way, like receiving personal tours of the Library of Congress and other buildings.
"Those things wouldn't have happened if it wasn't for The Da Vinci Code ," he notes.Library spokesman Matt Raymond confirmed that Brown had visited in April last year and had looked over some Bibles in the library's collection. He also met for about 30 minutes with Librarian of Congress James Billington for a "private discussion".
Fame's unwonderful 5 percent is the kind that other major celebrities face: a loss of privacy that Brown says makes it impossible to tour for his new book, a heightened self-awareness that briefly, just a couple of months, he says, made it hard for him to write The Lost Symbol .He was also delayed by the 2006 copyright infringement trial in which writers Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh claimed Brown's book "appropriated the architecture" of their own work. Brown and Random House prevailed.
"That was certainly a setback, mainly because it was a distraction and all that the energy that goes into a trial is not going into your work," he says."The worst part of it was having someone question my integrity, publicly."
He was attacked often for The Da Vinci Code ,especially for alleging that Jesus and Mary Magdalene conceived a child. Scholars scorned him, and religious officials were offended, but Brown stands by his theory, finding it "makes more sense than the story I was told in church".
Brown's new book is centred on the Freemasons,the secretive, centuries-old fraternity that has included George Washington, Teddy Roosevelt and Harry Truman. He has great respect for the Masons, especially for their policy of accepting people of all religious faiths. But he wouldn't be surprised if someone gets angry.
"There will be a lot said, not all of it will be nice,"he says."And I'm just kind of used to it."
He doesn't talk a lot to the press, but Brown's history is as known as most authors' thanks in part to a mini-biography he never wished to produce a 69-page court document submitted for the London trial.
He was born in 1964 in Exeter, New Hampshire,and still lives near there. His father, Richard Brown,taught maths at Exeter Phillips Academy. His mother,Constance Brown, was a musician. The first treasure hunts he knew were the ones his father arranged at Christmas. Brown majored in English at Amherst College, but also liked music enough to debate after graduating whether he should write stories or songs.Choosing songs, he moved to Los Angeles and caught on with no one except for the woman who became his wife, Blythe Newlon, the director of artistic development for the National Academy of Songwriters.
As a young man, he compiled a list of "187 Men to Avoid", which proved amusing enough for the Berkeley Publishing Group to release as a book, in 1995, under the pseudonym "Danielle Brown". But his real breakthrough came two years earlier, on a vacation in Tahiti, when he read Sidney Sheldon's The Doomsday Conspiracy ."It held my attention, kept me turning pages, and reminded me how much fun it could be to read,"Brown wrote in his court papers."The simplicity of the prose and the efficiency of the storyline was less cumbersome than the dense novels of my schooldays,and I began to suspect that maybe I could write a
"thriller" of this type one day.
He debuted in 1998 with The Digital Fortress , an intelligence thriller, and followed with Deception Point (a novel he found boring to write) and Angels & Demons , which introduced at least a few readers to Langdon, the Harvard professor embodied for many by Tom Hanks' portrayals in the film versions of The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons .His sales were poor and by 2001 he was in the same rut as so many authors - handling his own publicity and even selling books out of his car,a process that would now require a convoy of trucks.
Brown changed agents, changed publishers (from Simon & Schuster to Doubleday, a Random House imprint), changed his luck and changed the industry.The Da Vinci Code , published in March 2003 was an immediate hit that "just parked", Brown says, remaining on best-seller lists for more than three years. He recalls an early sign of success - an appearance at a superstore in Washington, not longer after the book came out."We drove up and the store was surrounded with people and I thought there must have been a bomb scare."
Barnes & Noble Inc. fiction buyer Sessalee Hensley says she knew vaguely of Brown before The Da Vinci Code , but had never read him. Encouraged by a Barnes & Noble executive to try Brown's novel, she was immediately drawn to the "breathless pace, the intrigue - the science and art were fascinating".
"But I have to say my biggest takeaway from it was that I wanted to know more about everything he wrote about," Hensley says."I Googled my fingers off! It made me wish I had Robert Langdon or Dan Brown as a professor in my college years!"
Brown is far richer than he was a few years ago, but his working life remains steady, he says. He rises at 4am and writes until noon, seven days a week, even on Christmas. He is often too drained to read, so instead he will play tennis or go for a run on the beach. Mark Twain's religious critique Letters from the Earth is one of the few books he has read for pleasure lately.
Brown will talk and talk about Twain, Masons,pyramids, spirituality ("a work in progress", he says)and e-books (he reads them, and the paper kind,too), but some subjects repe. Ask about his next book and he will smile, in a nice way, and change the subject. Ask about politics, and he will cringe.
The Lost Symbol doesn't name names, but works in criticisms of waterboarding and religious intolerance,passages that suggest the author was not a fan of the George W. Bush administration."The people who have read the book have told me that the timing of the book seems preordained," he says."And they will cite, among other references, the president [Obama] and the change in attitudes toward religion."
Asked if the book was completed after Obama's election, he answers, thoughtfully, yes. Asked for his opinion of Obama, he declines comment, for the very future of his book.
"What I'm trying to what to do in this book is send a universal message, and the second I pick a side, it just undermines everything," he says, adding that he underwent a "transformation" on The Lost Symbol ."(It's) really two things. The idea that science is starting to show our true potential and that that potential is so much greater than most of us imagined.... Tangentially, I feel like we're entering a time where prejudice, prejudice of religion in particular, will start to evaporate."
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