When asked why there is no sex in his novels, Dan Brown replies that it would be a dirty trick to capture readers: good novels should be emptied of all that is redundant and gratuitous. In order to stress the idea, he chooses a quote by Alfred Hitchcock – unhappy choice indeed.

Drama is life with the dull bits cut out. (1) 

Vittorio Zucconi, the interviewer, seizes the moment replying that, in his humble opinion, there is nothing boring with sex.

It is the only Dan Brown’s answer which violates the typical script we are accustomed with.

The interview opening “La Repubblica delle Idee” is housed in the Hall of the 500 in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence. The reader of the novel Inferno perceives a strange loop: in the same room, the protagonist Robert Langdon locates one of the clues that Dan Brown included on the cover of the book – a tiny writing on the fresco by Vasari that today many try to capture with their mobile camera. This loop is also one of the basic elements of its enormous publishing success.

When Samuel Coleridge wrote about “willing suspension of disbelief”, he referred to the disposal of those willing to enjoy a work of fiction – as in a theater, when you forgive a backdrop painted in a summary manner, accepting that it is a forest, or reading about Little Red Riding Hood you temporarily accept the existence a wolf who speaks.

Stage magic is the only art not to request such suspension: the magician using a wire to make an object fly, must be clever enough not to make you see the trick. It is his job to suspend disbelief of the spectator, and it succeeds only when it is really good. During a poor performance, the thread may be seen. In this case, in order to enjoy the show, the audience would be forced to ignore it voluntarily. When everything is running smoothly, the one observing a magician in action is able to witness the impossible without actively suspend his critical spirit. (2) 

Dan Brown has a similar approach to writing. The passionate reader can travel the streets of Florence with his book in hand and check the manic topographic accuracy. The same precision is found in most of the historical elements with which the protagonists of his novels have to deal. With The Da Vinci Code we were all surprised by the effeminate face of John the Evangelist on the Last Supper by Leonardo, and the suspicion that it was Mary the Magdalene – raised in the novel – captured also us, living outside the novel.

When the author invites us to observe the fresco by Vasari, we must not suspend any disbelief, but just look up at the words “CERCA TROVA” on the fresco, which are just before our eyes like before those of Robert Langdon.

The gap, the thread to hide, is between the roles of that fresco in our world and in the one of the novel. In the pages of Inferno, it is a clue on an exciting treasure hunt. In our world, the words have more prosaic origins and meanings (wonderfully analyzed by Alfonso Musci (3) .)

Dan Brown offers an augmented version of our world, adding a level made of riddles, conspiracies and clues towards cursed treasures. Integrating them in the intricate toys that his novels are, the writer reenchants systematically city squares, artworks, fragments of “La Divina Commedia” and even – in The Lost Symbol – the dollar bills in our pockets, hosting on their surface obscure Masonic references. Even with a popular language and a style far from refined, Dan Brown compels us to look at reality with different eyes, exclaim “Aha!” and participate with him to the game of conspiracies, treasure hunts, and finally saving the world from the clutches of the wicked.

And when the author confirms to seek inspiration by hanging upside down – to oxygenate better head, but also to see the world from a new point of view – it is impossible not to think about Dale Cooper: the bizarre and asexual protagonist of Twin Peaks – birth from David Lynch’s visionary genius – practiced every morning the strange ritual, declaring the same willingness to look at things in unusual ways and questioning about the conspiracy around John Kennedy’s assassination.

Obviously not everyone is able to perceive (and appreciate) the gap. Internet is full of conspiracy theorists, according to which Dan Brown’s novels would reveal – in the form of fiction – otherwise unprintable truths. The discomfort expressed by the Catholic Church for The Da Vinci Code emerged, in part, by the desire to “protect” naive readers by blasphemous thoughts expressed by the author in novelistic form.

Since it is difficult to estimate how many readers enjoy a “naive faith” in his stories, and how much, however, participate in the game in a conscious way (4) , the script of Dan Brown’s interviews is quite standard. When Zucconi asks him if he really does believe that Jesus married Mary Magdalene, he openly nods, explicitely saying that – yes, he does. After having reassured the naive believers, he may spend some words for the others, specifying and providing better evidence – for those who are able to understand his ironic tone – that basically it is just a game.

The same pattern is repeated when the journalist tries to catch him in the corner:

Do you really believe in what you write?

The answer is again a strict yes. Followed by a lucid analysis of the tendency to look for (and find) patterns and conspiracies even where there are not, thanks to a natural frame of human mind. But during the entire conversation he runs with the hare and hunt with the hounds. Try to interview any contemporary mindreader after a show (“Is it true what you do?”) and you will get the same mixture of ambiguity, at the core of the personal branding of every magician.

Yet, I am grateful for the quotation by Hitchcock. It reminds me of another one by Edward Gorey, suggested me by an article written by the best mindreader in the world – Max Maven. If Clarke’s advice is based on a bit rough categorization of what we live every day, Gorey better captures a paradoxical aspect of human existence – and the resulting difficulty in translating it into fiction. According to the American illustrator,

Life is intrinsically, well, boring and dangerous at the same time. At any given moment the floor may open up. Of course, it almost never does; that’s what makes it so boring. (5) 

Notes