More author contact!

At Waterstone's yesterday I cam across Secrets of Angels & Demons. Like Secrets of the Code, it examines the historical and theological underpinnings of Dan Brown's work. Unlike a lot of the books that have come out critiquing Dan Brown's work, the Secrets series isn't part of a project of rehabilitating the Catholic Church in the face of Dan Brown's challenge, which makes it resonate particularly well with me. I'm not really concerned about Dan Brown making the Church look bad. That bothers me only insofar as it's part of Dan Brown's unshakable habit of getting facts wrong. On that front, Secrets of the Code is right on target.

It also includes an essay by Geoffrey K. Pullum on Dan Brown's literary stylings. The essay mostly expands on the excellent series of posts that Pullum has written on Language Log about the damage that Dan Brown has done to the English language (here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).

I loved Pullum's essay so much that I e-mailed him to tell him as much. I also passed along my contribution to the dethroning of Dan Brown. Much to my surprise, Pullum e-mailed me back in just a few hours. I suppose I should stop being so surprised by these things... surely I'm not the only one who spends hours on the computer everyday and checks his e-mail more or less constantly.

In addition to expressing his thanks, Pullum also wrote, "I wish you had told me about your list of factual errors sooner. I would have passed along your name to Dan Burstein as a possible contributor to the book."

Whoa.