Dan Brown sez: The only thing fictional in “The Da Vinci Code” is the characters and the action that takes place. All of the locations, the paintings, the ancient history, the secret documents, the rituals, all of this is factual.
YES! YES! YES!
One of my favorite books is being released as a blockbuster movie - The Gates of Thermopylae . The movie will be called 300 - the supposed number of Spartans who held the narrow pass of Mt. Thermopylae for a number of days knowing they would eventually be smashed and killed to the last man, giving the Greek civilization a time to amass an organized defence from the well nigh million-strong marching force of Persians seething into the region. It's said that the events at Thermopolae were a hinge on which human history itself turned on for a day. Greek thought, very much a part of our foundation as Westerners - rationalism and belief that man is a logical being and can recognize the Truth through correct use of his noodle - survived the attempted murder by superstitious barbarism. You can read up on the Battle of Thermopylae here . It's probably one of the most inspiring stories I know. Told the Persian archers numbered so many that their arrows would blot out the sun, a so...
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The point is that even after his shit has been shown without question to be false, he's still claiming the core part of his book is "true." He's only saying the action, the characters, etc. are fanciful interpretation.
A lot of the more questionable "this shit doesn't really exist" stuff is NOT in the book. It is merely discussed and alluded to.
Granted, there are things he implies are true in the book that have been declared false by pretty much everyone (although once again I imagine he'd say this fits right in with his argument). But you've got to interpret his statement on facts from the proper angle. You've got to figure out what parts of the story count as "characters and actions" and what parts are real, identifiable parts of our world.