But, Dan, you made a sham of our song! Or tried to. Did you mean to do that, Dan Brown? Was yours a pragmatic decision to rattle Christianity by teasing light-minded readers into suspecting your book was more truth than fiction? Light minded readers are easy to fool, as are most readers of the spy, mystery genre because they choose to be caught up by something clearly fiction that can be put down and forgotten. Mentally stimulating, scary,   comfortably removed from reality. Nothing wrong with that. But, Dan, did you mean for your readers to be so carried away by newly-discovered interests in art history and theology, and intrigues of a forbidden mystery, that they believed they were unique scholars seeking truths no one had explored before? Are you that good a writer? And if that good, do you not perceive yourself as having a moral compunction to not use your talents to dupe your readers? Or, is all of this an innocent accident - a collision between an author's ambition and his readers' gullibility?  Truth is, since reading, or even hearing the plot of,  the Da Vinci Code some have come to   question their religious beliefs. They think they hear false notes. No matter that, as Andrew Greeley says, Dan Brown does not know art history, does not know Catholic history, does not know religious theory, he's written a good story.  A pity many don't recognize a story as a story.. What a phenomenon this is.  Guide books, discussion groups, churchly pronouncements, even damaging family conflicts.  The more disagreement, the better for book sales.  The better for movie profits.  And duped we are. Thanks to a recent New Yorker article (22 May, Peter Boyer, "The Da Vinci Decoy") we know Sony Pictures - the ones who produced the movie, sponsored the most popular anti Da Vinci Code  web site on the Internet, with solicited essays from prominent scholars bunking the art history and religious history in the novel as a strategy.  All the better for the box office.   So, Dan - you've made millions of bucks out of this.  Did you mean for it to happen this way? Of course you did! I have a friend who just finished a novel.  She asked if I knew how she could get it published. I told her she needs powerful literary agents who know how to manipulate PR. Her novel must fool readers into believing they are something other than they are - and her agents must seek movie rights from media enterprises that know exactly how to dupe the public to get the biggest bucks. Doesn't the novel also need literary merit?  Nah - The Da Vinci Code is so clumsily written I often couldn't bear to read it.   Go for it, girl. What harm's been done so far?   The discussion groups were beneficial. The publishing industry has benefited. Lots of Da Vinci Code bunking and debunking books, art history guide books and so on have sprung up. Tourist trade has benefited.  But the movie is already falling at the box office - so , cinematically speaking, we have quite naturally become wiser viewers than we are readers. The real harm is to our literary standards, and to our ethics as writers and publishers.