101 Reasons to Stop Writing

The revised cover for
The Da Vinci Code 1.5

New York — Author Dan Brown and Stephen Rubin, president and publisher of Doubleday, announced today that they would publish a fully revised version of the mega-selling 2003 novel The Da Vinci Code. The new edition, dubbed 1.5, would be "like re-reading the book for the first time," said Brown.

"The Da Vinci Code has been the publishing success story of the decade, second only to, well, you know who," said Rubin. "It’s sold more copies than we thought there were adults who still read books. But there were some minor errors in the original edition, little mistakes that slipped through the rigorous program of fact-checking that Dan did on his own work. So, now that the book’s been out there for five years, and the sales finally seemed to have dropped off, we felt this was the perfect time to bring out a revised edition, with absolutely bullet-proof historical detail. The Da Vinci Code 1.5 provides that and more, with some new characters, more chase sequences, and a completely revised conspiracy."

"It’s true that I let a few little mistakes go in the first edition," said Brown. "Factual errors about Biblical history, early Christianity and Judaism, Catholic theology, Egyptian mythology, Mithraism, the origins and language of the New Testament and Gnostic Gospels, the Nicene Council, Emperor Constantine, the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi texts, the history and modern organizational structure of Opus Dei, the history of the Vatican, interpretations of Leonardo’s Last Supper and Mona Lisa, Leonardo’s sexuality, the history of the Knights Templar, the history and architecture of Rosslyn Chapel and the Church of Saint-Sulpice, the history and geography of Paris, the location of Versailles, the position of Curator of the Louvre, the design of the Louvre Pyramid, the French education system, the French language, Andorra’s rail system and propensity for seismic activity, the geography of London and the procedures of the Metropolitan Police, the astronomical position of Venus, the feasibility of a button-sized GPS tracking device, the number of female victims of the Inquisition, the existence of a professorship of religious symbology at Harvard University, the existence of a scholarly discipline of religious symbology, the origin of the word ‘minstrel’, the ratio of male and female bees in a hive, the secret agenda of Disney films, the number of words in Job 38:11, the existence and supposed history of a Priory of Sion, the physical characteristics of people with albinism, to name a few — and, umm, the divinity of Jesus, and the notion that there is any historical evidence, at all, that Jesus had a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene.

"These are all minor errors," said Brown, "but a few people have complained about them since the novel was first published. We’ve corrected a few errors over the years in different editions, but Doubleday and I felt it was time we had another bite at the apple, and release a new edition with enough changes that people would want to buy it again."

When asked if the revisions made substantive changes to the plot of the novel, Brown replied, "Oh sure. When you take out all the factual errors, baseless conjecture and flawed reasoning, the whole storyline basically collapses. All you’re left with is a guy who’s good at solving puzzles running around Europe for no reason. I don’t even like Europe. The new version is entirely set in Connecticut, so I could fact-check everything myself without having to drive more than two hours."

Doubleday president Rubin added, "I have personally verified every single fact in this new edition, which doesn’t reference anything that happened before 1985. It took most of a weekend."

"It’s still called The Da Vinci Code, though,"said Brown, "even though the only reference to Leonardo — Vinci is the town he was from, did you know that? I didn’t — is a print of the Mona Lisa in Robert Langdon’s bedroom. I know for a fact that he has a bedroom."

Brown refused to be drawn on the revised conspiracy plot of the new edition, saying only that "It involves aliens. Let’s see the bastards at Wikipedia disprove that."

The Da Vinci Code 1.5 goes on sale on April 31st, according to Brown.