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In his 2005 University of Maine Commencement Address, best-selling author Stephen King put Dan Browns work and Jokes for the John on the same
level, calling such literature the intellectual equivalent of Kraft Macaroni and Cheese. The New York Times, while reviewing the movie based on the book,
called the book Dan Browns best-selling primer on how not to write an English sentence. The New Yorker reviewer Anthony Lane refers to it as unmitigated
junk and decries the crumbling coarseness of the style. Linguist Geoffrey Pullum and others posted several entries critical of Dan Browns writing, at
Language Log, calling Brown one of the worst prose stylists in the history of literature and saying Browns writing is not just bad; it is staggeringly, clumsily,
thoughtlessly, almost ingeniously bad. Roger Ebert described it as a potboiler written with little grace and style, although he did say it did supply an intriguing
plot. http:www.rbooks.co.ukproduct.aspx?id
2.4 Context of the Novel
The context of the story will be seen through the biography of the writer and the setting of the story. The biographical approach is used to show us the life of
Dan Brown that inspires himself to write about thriller novels.
Dan Brown Danielle Brown was born and raised in Exeter, New Hampshire, USA. Brown grew up on the campus of Phillips Exeter Academy,
where his father, Richard G. Brown, was a teacher of mathematics. Browns interest in secrets and puzzles stems from their presence in his household as a
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child, where codes and ciphers were the lynchpin tying together the mathematics, music and languages in which his parents worked. When he was young Brown
spent hours working out anagrams and crossword puzzles, and he and his siblings participated in elaborate treasure hunts devised by their father on birthdays and
holidays.
After graduating from Phillips Exeter, Brown attended Amherst College. Brown spent the 1985 school year abroad in Seville, Spain, where he was enrolled
in an art history course at the University of Seville.
In 1991 he moved to Brown graduated from
Amherst in 1986.
Hollywood to pursue a career as singer-songwriter and pianist. To support himself, he taught classes at Beverly Hills Preparatory School
but in 1996, Brown quit teaching to become a full-time writer.
The Da Vinci Code was released in 2003 and received immediate attention
from critics. It was the book that achieved lasting literary success and popularity for Dan Brown. All of his books are about thriller. He used his experience about
codes in writing his novel. We can see the same theme in Digital Fortress, one of the novels written by Dan Brown.
The story takes place in Paris. It starts off with the murder of Jacques Saunière one of the Grand Masters of Priory of Sion. Sauniere’s body is
positioned as “The Virvituan Man”, Leonardo Da Vinci’s famous painting. Around his body, there are codes written with his own blood. There is a message