It’s still uncertain to what extent the Recluse of Exeter will emerge from the high-tech security of his rural New Hampshire home to help publicize The Lost Symbol. Dan Brown’s long-awaited follow-up to The Da Vinci Code goes on sale Sept. 15; so far, publisher Doubleday has confirmed that Brown will appear on The Today Show, and talk to the Wall Street Journal and USA Today. There is, of course, no compelling practical need for Brown, who vies for the title of world’s most famous author with Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling, to do anything at all. The Da Vinci Code has sold more than 80 million copies in 50 languages since its 2003 release. Doubleday claims it’s been read by about 10 per cent of all the adult humans who can read. No matter how much effort author and publisher pour in this time, the new novel is hardly likely to equal those once-in-a-lifetime sales figures.
On the other hand, having printed a record first run of five million hardcover copies of The Lost Symbol, Doubleday clearly expects something on the order of the second-highest-selling novel of all time. The publisher and its marketing partners, especially Amazon—which has some 70,000 copies on pre-order—have been ramping the buzz up to fever pitch. No more than 10 key personnel at Doubleday’s various offices have been allowed to read the novel. Plus one outsider: Today Show host Matt Lauer, who signed—possibly with his own blood—a non-disclosure agreement, so that he could sprinkle daily clues during the final pre-release week about sites mentioned in The Lost Symbol. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, in an unintentionally hilarious letter posted on its site, declared the online retailer was moving heaven and earth to keep its stash secure, including “24-hour guard in its own chain-link enclosure, with two locks requiring two separate people for entry.” (What, no death rays? No three-headed dog named Fluffy?) Leaving nothing to chance—in marketing as well as security—Doubleday also sent a memo to librarians, warning them they will surely encounter “a few crazies hovering around the desk a couple days early, inquiring about copies, then inquiring again, then trying to peek around the desk, etc. But please, please don’t lend them out early.”
Even Brown’s best post-publication efforts can’t make much of a difference to all that. But there is still an expectation—a demand, actually, in our celebrity-obsessed age—that he respond to widespread curiosity, and talk about himself and his work. That’s probably not a congenial idea for the very private author. He complained, in the early days of the Code’s success, that he could no longer fly on commercial aircraft because of the crowds of autograph-seeking fans, waving everything from well-thumbed copies to air-sickness bags. And Brown can’t have enjoyed the escalating attacks from disgruntled scholars and militant Catholics, both enraged by the novel’s Jesus-marries-Mary-Magdalene-and-founds-the-royal-family-of-France backstory, or by the vicious comments from lovers of good prose.
So, as the Code soared into the pop culture firmament, Brown sank below the radar in the New England woods, emerging rarely—and on his own terms—into the public eye. In October 2005 he agreed to address the New Hampshire Humanities Council only if the media were banned from attending. Although one of the council’s announced goals is “forging long-lasting partnerships with the media,” its star-struck members agreed to the author’s condition. The cult of celebrity has saved the day for him on other occasions, too. Brown once dashed to the airport in Boston, only to realize that he had left his driver’s licence at home. “Fortunately,” he later recalled, “the guy behind me in line had a copy of The Da Vinci Code. I borrowed it, showed security the author photo and made my flight.’’
Brown’s eventual seclusion left behind an assortment of contradictory impressions. He was a believer in alternative history, the conspiracy-soaked secret-society version of Western civilization, and hence—in an era when large numbers of Americans think their own government brought down the Twin Towers—someone who was simply taking part in the contemporary national conversation. He was a cynic who parlayed the Roman Catholic Church’s pedophile scandal in the U.S. into commercial gold. He was an ingenious if childlike puzzle-maker who had no idea how large a hornets’ nest he was about to kick over. Or just another guy who believes everything he reads on the Web.
Yet even Brown, who has earned $250 million from his books and their film versions, was once a struggling artist, as eager to court the media’s attention then as the media is to return the favour today. Brown used to talk to journalists, including about his childhood. Now 45, he grew up in New Hampshire near his present home, the son of Dick, an award-winning math instructor, and Constance, a music teacher. He attended—for free, since his parents taught there—Phillips Exeter Academy, a U.S. equivalent to Upper Canada College. It was during his education alongside the children of America’s elite, Brown once said, that he learned the true power of secret societies: “I grew up surrounded by the clandestine clubs of Ivy League universities, the Masonic lodges of our founding fathers and the hidden hallways of early government power.”
Inheriting his father’s fascination with numbers and his mother’s talent for music and art—and living in a TV-free house—young Dan became fascinated with magic tricks, puzzles, riddles and codes. On Christmas Day, the family tree offered not presents but cryptic maps and verses leading the three Brown children on a treasure hunt through the house; Dan, the eldest, would always be the first to crack the codes.
After graduating from Amherst College in 1986, the mild-mannered piano player headed to Los Angeles to become a singer-songwriter—music, not writing, was Brown’s first choice of career. He began with a children’s album called SynthAnimals, but what he really wanted to be was an easy-listening pop star. In 1990 Brown put out his first adult album, Perspective, followed by a self-titled CD that featured the faintly sado-masochistic Sweet Pleasure in Pain and 976-LOVE, a bizarre ballad about phone sex: “Now when I’m feeling small / You’re the one that I call / I know you understand / I take you to bed/ I push the phone to my head / And you make me feel like a man.” Hits, for whatever reason, were elusive. “Do I really look like someone cut out for MTV?” Brown later asked wryly. “The world isn’t ready for a pale, balding geek shaking his booty—not a pretty picture.” But if he didn’t find stardom, he did find a wife, who became crucial to his later success.
