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Tetrapyloctomy and other things
Sep. 24th, 2021 06:50 pmBook Review: Foucault's Pendulum, by Umberto Eco
The first time I read this, I believe it took me three years (with several other books in-between). This time I have got it down to three weeks. The first 70 or so pages offer a less than promising start, and are still quite turgid. This time round there are many references I can see that I would have been unaware of in the 1990s, and in combination with vaguely already knowing the plot, it makes more sense. Specifically, it makes sense to treat everything as somewhat absurd and satirical.
You can make something up, however outrageous, and some people will believe it. Although - philosophically speaking - is The Plan strictly made up? The characters go to pains to point out their accumulation of historical facts. The fabrication is the leaps and connections, the unjustified inferences, the constructed numerology. Perhaps it is just a laundry list, but Believers can be very dangerous people.
The accumulated mess of truth and falsehood springs to mind Putin's modus operandi, and the Trump era of post-truth and alternative facts. When you can't tell these things apart, it's like entering recursive occlusion. Eco makes our heroes quite likeable, although they all suffer miserable fates.
I do recall feeling that The Name of the Rose had a more conventional - and conventionally satisfying - plot. The journey in Foucault's Pendulum can be fun, but the ending seems rather empty. Of course that emptiness might be the purpose of Eco's writing.
The first time I read this, I believe it took me three years (with several other books in-between). This time I have got it down to three weeks. The first 70 or so pages offer a less than promising start, and are still quite turgid. This time round there are many references I can see that I would have been unaware of in the 1990s, and in combination with vaguely already knowing the plot, it makes more sense. Specifically, it makes sense to treat everything as somewhat absurd and satirical.
You can make something up, however outrageous, and some people will believe it. Although - philosophically speaking - is The Plan strictly made up? The characters go to pains to point out their accumulation of historical facts. The fabrication is the leaps and connections, the unjustified inferences, the constructed numerology. Perhaps it is just a laundry list, but Believers can be very dangerous people.
The accumulated mess of truth and falsehood springs to mind Putin's modus operandi, and the Trump era of post-truth and alternative facts. When you can't tell these things apart, it's like entering recursive occlusion. Eco makes our heroes quite likeable, although they all suffer miserable fates.
I do recall feeling that The Name of the Rose had a more conventional - and conventionally satisfying - plot. The journey in Foucault's Pendulum can be fun, but the ending seems rather empty. Of course that emptiness might be the purpose of Eco's writing.