Umberto Eco: Foucault's Pendulum

[Stewart]

Foucault's Pendulum is, I think, the book that turned me on to reading world literature when I read it early in 2004. I can remember picking it up because it looked quite interesting and then, once into it, I found myself taking weeks to get through it. Never before had I read anything so dense yet readable. Granted, a lot probably went over my head, but it has stuck with me and, because of it, I went on an Eco binge which didn't last long as, at the time, he only had four novels to his name.

If you don't know of this book - and where have you been? - then here's a quick summary:

Three Milanese intellectuals get a job in a vanity publisher (which deals with esoteric subjects) and can't help laughing at some of the crap that gets sent to them. One day a panicking guy comes to visit them with his manuscript to which we learn about the Knights' Templar and they laugh it off, send him packing. This, incidentally, is a small section of the book which pisses on the whole history in The Da Vinci Code, a book written almost 20 years later). The guy leaves but is soon found dead which leads our three intellectuals to wonder if, indeed, there is something in all this rubbish and they begin to create their own secret history of the world, developed from something found by the murdered bloke. And they create it and create it and you, as the reader, can't help but marvel at how they reconstruct the whole secret history of the world. There are, of course, others who would kill for this knowledge.

I think, once the upcoming Booker is out of the way, I will reread it because I remember it as a real gem, but then I don't remember much now, other than some set pieces, the conclusion, and a section set in Brazil that I scraped and crawled through. As an introduction to Eco, I had no idea what hit me - the masochist in me liked it though.

Have many others read it? Do you prefer it to, say, The Name Of The Rose?

[Colette Jones]

I read it. Funnily enough, it was recommended by a reviewer on amazon who didn't like The Da Vinci Code. Maybe that was you!

I know exactly what you mean by "dense but readable". I thought it was great, but I haven't ventured to more of Eco's books yet. I think I have the Flame something something one on the shelf.

[Bjorn]

There are four kinds of people in this world: cretins, fools, morons, and lunatics. The lunatic is all idée fixe, and whatever he comes across confirms his lunacy. You can tell him by the liberties he takes with common sense, by his flashes of inspiration, and by the fact that sooner or later he brings up the Templars.

I consider Foucault's Pendulum Eco's best book by far. I re-read it two years ago and loved it even more the second time around; it's such a brilliant combination of lecturing, autobiography and viciously gleeful satire - the final few chapters make up one of the most satisfactory endings I've ever read. Eco has been quoted as saying "when people no longer believe in anything, they'll believe in anything;" that's this book boiled down into one soundbite.

There are definitely some similar ideas in FP and TNOTR; both sprang, I believe, partly from the political turmoil in 1970s Italy as much as from any religious concerns. After all, absolute dogmatism looks remarkably similar regardless of whether it's directed towards Marx, Jesus or the New World Order. Both Belbo and William of Baskerville are agents of doubt, of always wanting to learn more rather than settle for one absolute indisputable truth - especially if that truth leads to thinking you're superior to everyone else. To quote Swedish writer Tage Danielsson, "without a doubt you can't be wise."

As for the similarities between FP and the Dan Brown Book Which Shall Not Be Mentioned, I saw Eco give a talk in Stockholm when The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana was released. He was asked whether he considered Dan Brown his literary son, and replied (paraphrased from memory): "I haven't read it, but I could probably put together a bibliography on it... I think the difference is that while I wrote about the people who believe in conspiracy theories, Dan Brown actually believes in them himself. In that way he's not my son, but possibly my bastard."

[nnyhav]

It is on my reread list as well. (But then so is Moby-Dick.) It is the conspiracy novel to end all conspiracy novels (no, The Illuminati trilogy doesn't count, this is at a whole different level) and I think Eco's best. One less obvious satirical level at which it works (to expand on what Bjorn says) is on the infighting amongst semioticians (at a time that the West was discovering Bakhtin and rediscovering Peirce, but that's just one side of the story), a topic Eco knows professionally as well as anyone. Which in turn makes for much epistemological play.

[Ellen]

That was one of the best parts Bjorn, thank you so much for posting it. I always felt with Umberto Eco's books that as soon as you passed the first 50-70 pages it is easy to read. Does anyone feel the same way?