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1pgmcc
I joined this group some months ago but due to work activities I have not managed to post anything. The news of Umberto Eco's death has prompted me to share a post that I had on another thread a couple of years ago. I have updated it to refer to his "last" book, Numero Zero.
Thoughts on the works of Eco:
I loved The Name of the Rose. It was my first Eco.
My second novel by Eco was Foucault's Pendulum which I believe suffered from an excess of 400 pages. The story didn't justify the length of the novel. I may reread this book as I believe I missed a lot in it the first time but then again, I may not read it again.
There was, however, a very humorous description of vanity publishing. The book was worth reading for that alone.
My next Eco was The Island of the Day Before. That suffered from a number of handicaps. Firstly, I had just read Longitude which was an excellent, straight forward account of the development of a means to determine longitude. (The clue was in the title.) Eco's book was therefore at a disadvantage straight away.
Secondly, Eco's book was soooo… boring. I dropped it about a third way through and was never tempted back.
Thirdly, The Island of the Day Before tried to include some almost supernatural/folklore methods, which struck me simply as a mechanism to give the story another dimension. Yawn!
A friend bought me Baudolino. For that reason I read it. I felt it dragged on quite a bit in the middle; too long for the story that's in it. However, I thought its content was very amusing and I was interested in its implications for the meaning of tales and relics from the Holy Lland and beyond. It conveyed a great sense of how the explorers/adventurers of the day conducted their business and explained a lot of how some myths and legends were generated. I was glad I'd read it, and enjoyed it, though it did take some effort to keep at it.
I next read, The Flame of Queen Loana. I really enjoyed this book. I learned a lot about Italian fascism and gained an insight into how Italians felt during the whole fascist episode. I was also fascinated with how Eco told the story through reference to books.
The Prague Cemetery is an excellent book. I will not say anything about the plot other than to state that Eco uses his skills to once more sew doubt in the minds of his readers about the validity and reliability of historical documents and the accounts of historic events that have been passed down to us. He has a wonderful way of leaving one with the view that we can believe nothing.
As you can see, I have positive and negative experiences with Eco's work. Some of it may be down to the translation; or Mr. Eco may just be up and down in the quality of the books he writes. He is someone I will always give the benefit of the doubt because I believe that when he's good, he's very good.
By the way, Umberto Eco is first and foremost an academic. I have several of his non-fiction books on semiotics and philosophy.
Since writing this piece I have read and enjoyed Numero Zero. He was at his conspiratorial best when writing this one.
He has left a great body of work behind for us to remember him by.
Today I saw a quote attributed him that explains his views on his literary success:
'I am a philosopher. I write novels only on the weekends.'
Thoughts on the works of Eco:
I loved The Name of the Rose. It was my first Eco.
My second novel by Eco was Foucault's Pendulum which I believe suffered from an excess of 400 pages. The story didn't justify the length of the novel. I may reread this book as I believe I missed a lot in it the first time but then again, I may not read it again.
There was, however, a very humorous description of vanity publishing. The book was worth reading for that alone.
My next Eco was The Island of the Day Before. That suffered from a number of handicaps. Firstly, I had just read Longitude which was an excellent, straight forward account of the development of a means to determine longitude. (The clue was in the title.) Eco's book was therefore at a disadvantage straight away.
Secondly, Eco's book was soooo… boring. I dropped it about a third way through and was never tempted back.
Thirdly, The Island of the Day Before tried to include some almost supernatural/folklore methods, which struck me simply as a mechanism to give the story another dimension. Yawn!
A friend bought me Baudolino. For that reason I read it. I felt it dragged on quite a bit in the middle; too long for the story that's in it. However, I thought its content was very amusing and I was interested in its implications for the meaning of tales and relics from the Holy Lland and beyond. It conveyed a great sense of how the explorers/adventurers of the day conducted their business and explained a lot of how some myths and legends were generated. I was glad I'd read it, and enjoyed it, though it did take some effort to keep at it.
I next read, The Flame of Queen Loana. I really enjoyed this book. I learned a lot about Italian fascism and gained an insight into how Italians felt during the whole fascist episode. I was also fascinated with how Eco told the story through reference to books.
The Prague Cemetery is an excellent book. I will not say anything about the plot other than to state that Eco uses his skills to once more sew doubt in the minds of his readers about the validity and reliability of historical documents and the accounts of historic events that have been passed down to us. He has a wonderful way of leaving one with the view that we can believe nothing.
As you can see, I have positive and negative experiences with Eco's work. Some of it may be down to the translation; or Mr. Eco may just be up and down in the quality of the books he writes. He is someone I will always give the benefit of the doubt because I believe that when he's good, he's very good.
By the way, Umberto Eco is first and foremost an academic. I have several of his non-fiction books on semiotics and philosophy.
Since writing this piece I have read and enjoyed Numero Zero. He was at his conspiratorial best when writing this one.
He has left a great body of work behind for us to remember him by.
Today I saw a quote attributed him that explains his views on his literary success:
'I am a philosopher. I write novels only on the weekends.'
2defaults
Foucault's Pendulum was IIRC the first "real" (non-youth non-fantasy non-detective non-horror) novel that I ever read, at age 14 or so, and it will always hold a special place for me. Its influence was probably the reason I got into convoluted Pynchoney stuff for a number of years. I, too, was disappointed in The Island of the Day Before, and so much so that he fell off my fiction radar and I know nothing of his later works.
I think he would have had many more lifetimes' worth of literary insight for the world.
I think he would have had many more lifetimes' worth of literary insight for the world.
3Limelite
Yes, I agree and share both your reading experiences with Eco -- breathtaking or boring.
"Rose" and "Baudolino" are my favorites so far. "Pendulum" went over my head and I've promised myself to read it again, a promise I made at the pendulum in Paris some years ago.
I dropped "Cemetery" being uninterested in Zionist conspiracies and I regret to say that I found "Numero" thin, disappointing, and un-novelistic. Instead, it seemed like a book outline and a coy and taunting "test" of the reader -- am I writing a novel, or am I writing a peroration?
My review of Numero Zero is here. I caution Eco devotees who worship the ground he walked on to think twice before reading it, and to remember I am an Eco enthusiast.
"Rose" and "Baudolino" are my favorites so far. "Pendulum" went over my head and I've promised myself to read it again, a promise I made at the pendulum in Paris some years ago.
I dropped "Cemetery" being uninterested in Zionist conspiracies and I regret to say that I found "Numero" thin, disappointing, and un-novelistic. Instead, it seemed like a book outline and a coy and taunting "test" of the reader -- am I writing a novel, or am I writing a peroration?
My review of Numero Zero is here. I caution Eco devotees who worship the ground he walked on to think twice before reading it, and to remember I am an Eco enthusiast.
5Meredy
>4 pgmcc: That is beautiful. In fact, I think heaven ought to look a lot like that, only with warmer lighting.
>3 Limelite: I read Numero Zero just last week, two days before Eco's death. I haven't quite gathered my thoughts about it yet, but they are certainly mixed. (And I'm not an Eco worshipper.) I'll look at your review after I complete mine.
>3 Limelite: I read Numero Zero just last week, two days before Eco's death. I haven't quite gathered my thoughts about it yet, but they are certainly mixed. (And I'm not an Eco worshipper.) I'll look at your review after I complete mine.
6Limelite
>4 pgmcc: and >5 Meredy:
Exactly my ides of heaven too, except I want a fireplace, especially if heaven has the climate of northern Italy. Still, an absolutely gorgeous room.
Please post a link to your review when it's ready, Meredy. Thanks.
Exactly my ides of heaven too, except I want a fireplace, especially if heaven has the climate of northern Italy. Still, an absolutely gorgeous room.
Please post a link to your review when it's ready, Meredy. Thanks.
7Cecrow
He's on my list of favourite authors. I read Name of the Rose in high school, and the movie version with Sean Connery is in a bin somewhere. That was a good mystery with a fantastic layer of academia overtop. But I thought Foucault's Pendulum was even more impressive; read some of the top-rated reviews here on LT, they explain why better than I can. I've also read Baudolino and thought it had some great metafictional elements to it. I'd definitely like to pursue more among his works, but with the understanding that I've probably read his best already.
8Meredy
>6 Limelite: Ok, here it is:
http://www.librarything.com/work/15650334/reviews/126797276
I usually manage to express my opinions with a little more confidence than this, but I felt a little like someone who really isn't sure how he's being ridiculed but knows that others are laughing at him. In this case, I felt as if the author were mocking his audience in ways I couldn't altogether articulate.
http://www.librarything.com/work/15650334/reviews/126797276
I usually manage to express my opinions with a little more confidence than this, but I felt a little like someone who really isn't sure how he's being ridiculed but knows that others are laughing at him. In this case, I felt as if the author were mocking his audience in ways I couldn't altogether articulate.
9Limelite
>8 Meredy:
Enjoyed reading your review that reflects the fractured purpose of Eco by 'echoing' it with a fractured response.
I still think about this work, wondering why Eco wrote it and what it's really about. And I think you hint at it wisely. Eco is delivering a sermon about the eternal inscrutability of Truth. The narrator is the outermost layer in this nest of nested eggs. He represents the Historian -- the person who can spin the facts any way he chooses because of his omniscient p.o.v. and have the result be the acknowledged official record of the Truth. Eco lets us see not only is the historical record suspect but so are the events reported therein.
Further he warns us that modern media is the least Truth-centric entity and that it created itself to be believed in as the reliable reporter of "only the facts, ma'am." In fact, the media is self-serving, or serving for hire. The Truth is now a variable commodity whose price rises and falls against the basis of what the powerful will pay for a version they want and approve.
The narrator's colleague who is trying to save his nonentity of a career by scooping the "real" story of Mussolini's final days and extermination is no more than a contestant on Italy's Biggest Liar "reality" show, which is what all reporters have degraded into, Eco says. Think of the American experience under the Bush Administration when paper after paper and news anchor after news anchor, passed off as news to the reading and viewing public the press releases from the Oval Office and nary a reportorial inquiry was made as to their "factualness." Never a challenge, never an investigation, never a single question, not a breath of professional skepticism.
Eco wants us to know that the control of the message (which can never be the Truth) belongs to power hungry politicians in Italy who manipulate information for personal gain. I think we should extrapolate that to apply to corporate ditto in America, as well.
Numero Zero is a grim alarum and really, an entirely appropriate summation of Eco's career as a novelist. If one of the finer functions of fiction is to reveal the Truth about ourselves by creating "lies" about nonexistent others, then he's done so in this book. He's laying it on the table that all his previous novels have been attempts to drive this lesson home to us -- the Truth is not real, it is indeterminate and the one who tells the best story wins.
I guess it is a better book than I give it credit for, if it offers so much to mull over and chew on.
Enjoyed reading your review that reflects the fractured purpose of Eco by 'echoing' it with a fractured response.
I still think about this work, wondering why Eco wrote it and what it's really about. And I think you hint at it wisely. Eco is delivering a sermon about the eternal inscrutability of Truth. The narrator is the outermost layer in this nest of nested eggs. He represents the Historian -- the person who can spin the facts any way he chooses because of his omniscient p.o.v. and have the result be the acknowledged official record of the Truth. Eco lets us see not only is the historical record suspect but so are the events reported therein.
Further he warns us that modern media is the least Truth-centric entity and that it created itself to be believed in as the reliable reporter of "only the facts, ma'am." In fact, the media is self-serving, or serving for hire. The Truth is now a variable commodity whose price rises and falls against the basis of what the powerful will pay for a version they want and approve.
The narrator's colleague who is trying to save his nonentity of a career by scooping the "real" story of Mussolini's final days and extermination is no more than a contestant on Italy's Biggest Liar "reality" show, which is what all reporters have degraded into, Eco says. Think of the American experience under the Bush Administration when paper after paper and news anchor after news anchor, passed off as news to the reading and viewing public the press releases from the Oval Office and nary a reportorial inquiry was made as to their "factualness." Never a challenge, never an investigation, never a single question, not a breath of professional skepticism.
Eco wants us to know that the control of the message (which can never be the Truth) belongs to power hungry politicians in Italy who manipulate information for personal gain. I think we should extrapolate that to apply to corporate ditto in America, as well.
Numero Zero is a grim alarum and really, an entirely appropriate summation of Eco's career as a novelist. If one of the finer functions of fiction is to reveal the Truth about ourselves by creating "lies" about nonexistent others, then he's done so in this book. He's laying it on the table that all his previous novels have been attempts to drive this lesson home to us -- the Truth is not real, it is indeterminate and the one who tells the best story wins.
I guess it is a better book than I give it credit for, if it offers so much to mull over and chew on.
10Cecrow
>9 Limelite:, "He's laying it on the table that all his previous novels have been attempts to drive this lesson home to us -- the Truth is not real, it is indeterminate and the one who tells the best story wins."
That would definitely be an echo of Baudolino ... oh, and Foucault's Pendulum, for sure ... The Name of the Rose I don't remember as well so I can't say how related it is.
That would definitely be an echo of Baudolino ... oh, and Foucault's Pendulum, for sure ... The Name of the Rose I don't remember as well so I can't say how related it is.
11Meredy
>9 Limelite: Thank you. I enjoyed yours, too, and gave it a thumbs-up. I don't know that the book is any better than you thought it was. The only other Eco novel I've been able to get through is The Name of the Rose; I've tried two or three others and failed. So you have a better perspective. But in the few days since I finished Numero Zero, it's fading rapidly from mind, and only my extensive review notes are holding onto it. The specifics of news media's jockeying with the truth may be revealing, but there's nothing new about the idea.
Here's an interesting line in a book I just read for ER: "The words that competitors use in a contest are shaped by their need to eliminate truth" (Reclaim Your Brain, page 79). The author is speaking of adversarial patterns in any unequal relationship and not just news or politics. It's a concept that has broad potential application.
Here's an interesting line in a book I just read for ER: "The words that competitors use in a contest are shaped by their need to eliminate truth" (Reclaim Your Brain, page 79). The author is speaking of adversarial patterns in any unequal relationship and not just news or politics. It's a concept that has broad potential application.
12geneg
I, much to my continuing shame, have not yet read a work by Eco., however, from other things I have read, let me say that the closer we come to objective truth (I know, there's no such thing) the more stable our social system remains. As truth becomes truthiness, and truthiness becomes whatever the strongest proponent of a pov says it is, the less stable the system becomes. When politicians lie to us and themselves, as BushCo did, the more likely we are to get our responses to reality wrong, the more likely we bring trouble down on our heads. We should be striving diligently to get as close as possible to the objective truth.
It's because of its central conceit that nothing is what it is, only what it appears to be that makes me despise the entire post-modern project. Whitewashing BS only leaves funky looking BS.
It's because of its central conceit that nothing is what it is, only what it appears to be that makes me despise the entire post-modern project. Whitewashing BS only leaves funky looking BS.
13elenchus
>9 Limelite: The Truth is now a variable commodity whose price rises and falls against the basis of what the powerful will pay for a version they want and approve.
That's a pithy neologism, truth as a variable commodity.
That's a pithy neologism, truth as a variable commodity.
14Limelite
>10 Cecrow:, >11 Meredy:,>12 geneg:, >13 elenchus:
Thanks all for your thoughtful comments that keep me thinking about Eco, his purpose as a novelist, and the impact his seminal theme has on how we view his oeuvre and think about, as geneg says, "objective truth."
These are the kinds of discussions I come to LT for, and why I enjoy posting here. All of it helps me find out what it is I think. Without this place and its fine commenters I'd probably not know or go through the rest of my life with a very foggy view of my own mind.
I'm thinking I should re-examine "Rose" and "Pendulum" with my newly acquired way to think about what I'm reading. And probably with an increased appreciation of the novelist, Eco. In spite of how hard he is on his readers. He's certainly not among the most accessible of authors! He makes Tolstoy seem a breeze to wrap one's brain around.
Thanks all for your thoughtful comments that keep me thinking about Eco, his purpose as a novelist, and the impact his seminal theme has on how we view his oeuvre and think about, as geneg says, "objective truth."
These are the kinds of discussions I come to LT for, and why I enjoy posting here. All of it helps me find out what it is I think. Without this place and its fine commenters I'd probably not know or go through the rest of my life with a very foggy view of my own mind.
I'm thinking I should re-examine "Rose" and "Pendulum" with my newly acquired way to think about what I'm reading. And probably with an increased appreciation of the novelist, Eco. In spite of how hard he is on his readers. He's certainly not among the most accessible of authors! He makes Tolstoy seem a breeze to wrap one's brain around.
15elenchus
Agree about LT helping clarify my own thinking and reading. This thread is motivating me to work in a reading of Rose in the first quarter of 2016: it's been years on my TBR pile, and I think it's the right time.
16Cecrow
>15 elenchus:, I don't know how fast you read, but you might like our TBR Challenge group. It's low demand and just the right speed for me, with a special emphasis on reducing those pesky TBR titles that never seem to get read. https://www.librarything.com/groups/tbrchallenge
