…everyone, that is, who is bleating to me about "just fiction" and sneering at me for engaging this cultural moment, here’s an excerpt from a 2003 interview that Dan Brown did with Linda Wertheimer. April 26, 2003, Weekend Edition. Thanks to Fort Wayne reader Marie for alerting me to this old interview – the text of which is available at Lexis-Nexis, for those who have access:

WERTHEIMER: This is the beginning of a sort of very exciting thriller-style art history lecture by Mr. Langdon on the paintings of Leonardo da Vinci, and he deals with the "Mona Lisa," with the "Madonna of the Rocks," with "The Last Supper." Why da Vinci?

Mr. BROWN: Because da Vinci was a man centuries ahead of his time. He was a prankster; he loved codes; and he hid symbolic messages in his paintings. And to art historians out there, this will not seem like new news, but to most of us, the idea that a painting as famous as the "Mona Lisa" or "The Last Supper," the idea that this has hidden meaning, this is intriguing. And when I was studying art history at the University of Seville, that was really the first time that I saw "The Last Supper" for what it truly is, which is a fresco full of codes.

WERTHEIMER: Well, now if we go into it, we’ll start giving away secrets.

Mr. BROWN: We don’t want to do that.

WERTHEIMER: But it is amazing. And you said some things about "The Last Supper," which, you know, I, like everyone else, studied when I was studying art history and I didn’t know some of that stuff.

Mr. BROWN: Without ruining the book, I will just say that "The Last Supper" has in it a disembodied hand clutching a dagger. It has a very famous historical character that nobody realizes is in the painting. And it has a very interesting architecture and arrangement of people around this table.

WERTHEIMER: There are a couple of times in the book when your hero, Mr. Langdon, delivers a little riff on what he calls ‘the sacred feminine.’

Mr. BROWN: Yes.

WERTHEIMER: Goddess worship.

Mr. BROWN: Absolutely.

WERTHEIMER: Now that sounds to me like something that I would like to know more about.

Mr. BROWN: Well, I’ll just preface this by saying that in pre-Christian times, we lived in a world of gods and goddesses. Mars, the god of war, had Venus and Osiris, the Egyptian god, had Isis. Today we live in a world only of gods. And it’s funny that the word ‘god’ in our language conjures images of piety and power, and yet, its counterpart, ‘goddess’ is a fantastical word. It doesn’t conjure much of anything except mystical games of some sort.

WERTHEIMER: Let’s hear one of these little lectures. Would you mind reading–there’s one on page 125 where Mr. Langdon is talking about how the sacred feminine has been suppressed by modern religions.

Mr. BROWN: Yes.

(Reading) ‘Women, once celebrated as an essential half of spiritual enlightenment, had been banished from the temples of the world. There were no female Orthodox rabbis, Catholic priests nor Islamic clerics. The once-hallowed act of hieros gamos, the natural sexual union between man and woman, through which each became spiritually whole, had been recast as a shameful act. Holy men, who had once required sexual union with their female counterparts to commune with God, now feared their natural sexual urges as the work of the devil collaborating with his favorite accomplice, woman. The days of the goddess were over. The pendulum had swung. Mother Earth had become man’s world, and the gods of destruction were taking their toll. The male ego had spent two millennia running unchecked by its female counterpart. The obliteration of the sacred feminine in modern life had caused what the Hopi Native Americans called koyaanisqatsi, life out of balance.

WERTHEIMER: Well, does this get you into any trouble with the great religions of the world?

Mr. BROWN: You know, I was a little bit nervous when the book came out because, yes, there are some very controversial ideas put forth in the book. And I’m pleased to say that I’m getting letters from priests and a lot of letters from nuns, letters from pagans, letters from feminists; and everybody is excited and positive about the ideas in this book.

WERTHEIMER: I know that you must be aware that people are using your most recent book before this one, "Angels and Demons," as a kind of a guidebook to Rome.

Mr. BROWN: Yes, I get–there’s a cybercafe somewhere near Bernini’s famous Fountain of the Four Rivers, and it seems every other day some tourists have stopped in there and said, ‘I’m in this cybercafe and I have your book, and I followed all these statues and paintings and buildings, and you’re right, they’re all right where you said they were.’

WERTHEIMER: How long does it take you to research a book like this? I assume that, among other things, you would hear from the world if you’ve got anything wrong.

Mr. BROWN: Certainly. And it takes me about two and a half years to entirely research and write a book like this. Before I even started writing a page, I’d spent a year in research, and a lot of the research for "Angels and Demons" that I did in Vatican City played into this book, as well as my art history training in Seville.

WERTHEIMER: You’re trying not to get too fictional with the facts here?

Mr. BROWN: Absolutely. 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.

WERTHEIMER: So is this going to encourage us all to get out there and re-examine da Vinci?

Mr. BROWN: I hope so. Da Vinci’s artwork is absolutely fascinating, and when you just look at the "Mona Lisa" and wonder she’s smiling, you’ve just scratched the surface. There’s a reason she’s smiling. There’s a reason "The Last Supper" is such an enigmatic and famous work. And paintings like "Madonna of the Rocks," "Adoration of the Magi" are just packed with hidden symbolic meaning.

Update: This thread rapidly devolved, and there is bad language in it, but I leave it as is simply to let the commentor , who has been banned, let his/her true colors show.