[Bananafish] Book Brokers

[James Rovira]

Yes, I know the difference between fiction and non-fiction, Mike. I
also know that for fiction to work it has to suspend disbelief.
Getting basic, well known facts wrong makes the suspension of
disbelief very difficult for almost all readers -- you too, Mike --so
the only question is about what constitutes basic, well known facts
for most readers.

The more educated a reader is the more likely they are to have a hard
time suspending disbelief; in the case of Brown's book, this is
especially the case if the reader has any knowledge of church history
or Christian or Jewish sacred texts because the book is so freaking
ignorant.

Jesus as a human being has nothing to do with whether or not he was
married and had kids, as there are and have been plenty of real human
beings who never marry or have kids.

If Brown wanted to highlight the humanity of Jesus he should have
written a scene with Jesus taking a shit...using Brown's book for
toilet paper.

Most people ignore the fact that there's no sound in space when
they're watching Star Wars, or that you can't dodge -light- the way
Luke ducks under a blaster charge, but I bet at least some engineers
or physicists or other scientifically literate people get annoyed.
There's one article on the Metaphilm website that describes in great
detail just how wrong a film was about NYC streets and how often --
good example of carelessness making the suspension of disbelief
difficult.  But, I wouldn't have that same problem with the same film
because I'm not as familiar with NYC streets as this writer was.

However, most people would think a film was being careless if it
showed a person casually and normally driving on the left side of the
road through Wyoming -- unless there's some explanation for it.

Jim R