Umberto Eco: The Name Of The Rose

[Amoxcalli]

I've just finished reading this novel and I'm must say I'm quite deeply impressed. I must admit I had difficulty getting started, but once the plot started to "roll" I finished it in a couple of days, which meant zealously trying to fit it into an already packed schedule.

I had prepared myself for long and tedious descriptions of medieval architecture and similar subjects, but I was surprised by both the length, no more than a page or two on any single subject, and the tediousness, very readable, of these descriptions. I wouldn't say I'm a history nut (even though I'm only a couple of years away from being a historian), but the way the conflicts within the church were portrayed kept me interested throughout the novel and beyond.

A pleasant surprise, if a surprise. Very good novel. I assume at least some of you have read it, what are your thoughts?

[Bottle Rocket]

I liked it best of the four Eco books I've read.

I'm inclined to think that its success "liberated" him to get too show-offy and big-for-his-britches; IMO the later books tend to overdo the arcana.


BRocket

[SlowRain]

For me, this novel was about a lot of trade offs. There were some things Eco did well, and some things he did poorly. I thought the religious history of the novel was quite interesting, but he fumbled the setting a bit. I also thought the 'legal' discussion in the middle weighed it down a lot. I felt completely detached from the first half of the novel--disappointing considering the discovery of the first few bodies should have evoked some sort of reaction in me.

The last half of the novel was very enigmatic. The mystery surrounding the library was much more interesting than who the killer was and the motive behind the killings--again a plus and a minus for Eco.

Perhaps my biggest disappointment was with the characterization. For all Eco professes to love literature, both William and the narrator were quite two-dimensional. However, I am somewhat forgiving of this since it was his first novel.

I haven't read anything else by him, but I think Eco would make a better writer of non-fiction than he does of fiction. I think this novel would be classified as a 'novel of ideas'. However, I think the 'ideas' element takes precedence over the 'novel' element. I thought it was okay--especially for a debut novel--and would like to read something else by him. For people who like the themes and setting of The Name of the Rose, I recommend My Name is Red by Orhan Pamuk.

[sirena]

I enjoyed the book very much. It's rather good thriller. Eco pictured atmosphere in monastaries in the Middle Age, in my opinion, quite well; its gloominess, darkness, fear of God's punishments for the sins, waiting for the Apocalypse, self-punishments, fear of the Inquisition's tortures, etc.

In any case, I recommend you to watch the movie with the same title from 1986, with Sean Connery as William of Baskerville and Christian Slater as Adso of Melk. It won't be disappointed, I assure you. Of course, only if you haven't already done it.

[miercuri]

Perhaps my biggest disappointment was with the characterization. For all Eco professes to love literature, both William and the narrator were quite two-dimensional. However, I am somewhat forgiving of this since it was his first novel.

William of Baskerville is a clear reference to Sherlock Holmes, which, I believe, accounts for his characterisation.
I read the novel about five or six years ago and I only remember glimpses but I am rather fond of it. I think it was one of my first contacts with a postmodern author. I like Foucault's Pendulum just as much or maybe more. I can see why Bottle Rocket may find it overdone though. The novels follow a recipe, but it's Eco's recipe and it's quite clear that he was having lots of fun writing them. Personally, I love that fact that the Pendulum is so over the top. After reading it, all conspiracy theories you hear about seem to be taken right out of the pages of the Pendulum.

[johnw1]

I liked it best of the four Eco books I've read.

I'm inclined to think that its success "liberated" him to get too show-offy and big-for-his-britches; IMO the later books tend to overdo the arcana.


BRocket

Agree to some extent - The Name of the Rose gets the balance more or less exactly right between the plot progression and the philosophical/historical digressions whereas his other novels do veer to much towards the latter for my taste. I did, however, think that The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana was a good read - it started excellently, slowed a little in the middle, but then ended well. The others I've read - Baudolino and The Island of the Day Before - both had some good elements, rich in detail and lively and amusing at times. but I struggled with the slow pace and endless lists. All his novels do have interesting ideas at their heart but I think you're right that he does tend to be a bit overindulgent (at least for the enjoyment of the average reader).

[waalkwriter]

William of Baskerville is a clear reference to Sherlock Holmes, which, I believe, accounts for his characterisation.
I read the novel about five or six years ago and I only remember glimpses but I am rather fond of it. I think it was one of my first contacts with a postmodern author. I like Foucault's Pendulum just as much or maybe more. I can see why Bottle Rocket may find it overdone though. The novels follow a recipe, but it's Eco's recipe and it's quite clear that he was having lots of fun writing them. Personally, I love that fact that the Pendulum is so over the top. After reading it, all conspiracy theories you hear about seem to be taken right out of the pages of the Pendulum.

That kind of silly post-modern wordplay though is a strifle bit annoying to me. I've been known to close books for it before, in more extreme cases. Such as with The Crying of Lot 49, I ran across a character named, "Dr. Quackenbush" and immediately closed the book and donated it to Goodwill the next day. As a reader and a writer I don't find such wordplay clever or amusing, I find it insulting. If I want to laugh at shallow flighty references to familiar subjects or slapstick ridiculousness, I'll go watch Spy Hard or Airplane or Scary Movie.

[Bottle Rocket]

That kind of silly post-modern wordplay though is a strifle bit annoying to me. I've been known to close books for it before, in more extreme cases. Such as with The Crying of Lot 49, I ran across a character named, "Dr. Quackenbush" and immediately closed the book and donated it to Goodwill the next day. As a reader and a writer I don't find such wordplay clever or amusing, I find it insulting. If I want to laugh at shallow flighty references to familiar subjects or slapstick ridiculousness, I'll go watch Spy Hard or Airplane or Scary Movie.

Quackenbush is a perfectly regular name (Google it) ... I agree it has a goofy sound, but no stranger than Greenblatt, Blotnick, Hancock, Smucker -- I could go on.

For Pynchon it's very mainstream, actually -- I agree he can be juvenile or fey in naming his characters, but this is far from the best case in point.


BRocket

[waalkwriter]

Quackenbush is a perfectly regular name (Google it) ... I agree it has a goofy sound, but no stranger than Greenblatt, Blotnick, Hancock, Smucker -- I could go on.

For Pynchon it's very mainstream, actually -- I agree he can be juvenile or fey in naming his characters, but this is far from the best case in point.


BRocket

Perhaps its not the best example, but I haven't and don't intend to read Pynchon extensively. The first ten pages of Gravity's Rainbow gave me a headache, it was Pynchonesque post-modernism, plus a semi-tangent sort of writing, the two things I just can't handle reading, (and I can read anything else). I was later reading a fantastic essay by Gore Vidal called, American Plastic: Matters in Fiction, which basically derails the entire post-modernist philosophy back when it was at the heights of its popularity in the 1970s. Gore Vidal is utterly brutal, I've never seen someone use the authors own personal statements and own writing against them so horrifically. Vidal of course traces the American Po-Mo movement back to the French New Novel, or Nouveau Roman, which was initially spearheaded by French writers like Robbe-Grillet, which during our post-modernism debate here, several users mistakenly defined as a modernist writer, which he most certainly is not. Satre and Henriot were also somewhat into the Nouveau Roman, and later Camus brought a new wave of it to America which inspired the early American "Post-Modernists" like Barthelme, Barth and Pynchon to start up.

And please realize I have a more specific definition for post-modernist, otherwise it's pointless to discuss because post-modernism can be an incredibly vague term that simply means a style by which the author conveys tone and meaning through form, in which case everything ever written is in some way post-modernism, or it can be used to define those post-1950s writers who sought to destroy form in seeking to establish there was no universal truth in art and reject the previous aesthetic stance that there were universal human truths that were to be found and interpreted in art. In the end you simply have to decide which camp you were in. If you in mine camp, there is no better argument to read than Vidal's.

Anyway, Vidal stated that it took him a year to read Gravity's Rainbow, and that he was highly impressed, finding it "the perfect novel written to be taught," and he predicted it would be around for a long time, but that the presence of novels like it would actually, by being on the opposite extreme of what they were reacting against, again imprison the novel and its form, and that, "in the future, if there is actually someone who still genuinely enjoys to read, a college degree in literature will thoroughly break him of that uncouth habit," to paraphrase of course.

[waalkwriter]

In the end it all comes down to what matter of aesthetic philosophy do you hold, I suppose. My good friend Brian and I have been arguing this for months now, and he is very elegant. But we still haven't found too much we disagree on, except that he has more open tastes and is far more irreverent to art than I am.

But as you know Bottle Rocket, I like for mine to be the Ubermeinung.

[Galatea92]

I was later reading a fantastic essay by Gore Vidal called, American Plastic: Matters in Fiction, which basically derails the entire post-modernist philosophy back when it was at the heights of its popularity in the 1970s. Gore Vidal is utterly brutal, I've never seen someone use the authors own personal statements and own writing against them so horrifically. Vidal of course traces the American Po-Mo movement back to the French New Novel, or Nouveau Roman, which was initially spearheaded by French writers like Robbe-Grillet, which during our post-modernism debate here, several users mistakenly defined as a modernist writer, which he most certainly is not. Satre and Henriot were also somewhat into the Nouveau Roman, and later Camus brought a new wave of it to America which inspired the early American "Post-Modernists" like Barthelme, Barth and Pynchon to start up.

And please realize I have a more specific definition for post-modernist, otherwise it's pointless to discuss because post-modernism can be an incredibly vague term that simply means a style by which the author conveys tone and meaning through form, in which case everything ever written is in some way post-modernism, or it can be used to define those post-1950s writers who sought to destroy form in seeking to establish there was no universal truth in art and reject the previous aesthetic stance that there were universal human truths that were to be found and interpreted in art. In the end you simply have to decide which camp you were in. If you in mine camp, there is no better argument to read than Vidal's.

Unfortunately, if you actually read Robbe-Grillet and Sarraute you will see that their writing styles resemble Virginia Woolf and Faulkner more than they do Calvino or Pynchon or anyone we would normally call post-modernist. And that isn't surprising as Woolf and Faulkner were two of their explicitly-named influences.

For some reason you seem to be under the impression that there was some kind of continuity between the traditional novel and the modernist novel that has somehow been betrayed by postmodernists. But the revolution, the big break, was made by modernist novelists like Woolf and Faulkner; it was they who rejected the artifice and constraints of the traditional novel in a search for greater verisimilitude. Postmodernists are merely swimming in their wake.

[Bottle Rocket]

Although arguably the first post-modernist was Laurence Sterne, with Tristram Shandy. The self-referentiality, the unreliable narrator, and many more elements we tend to believe first appeared in the 20th century actually predate postmodernism by two centuries.

The biggest difference is really that Tristram Shandy was for most of that time considered eccentric if not outright crazy and was all but unique; postmodernism came with all sorts of theoretical scaffolding and a critical mass of "avant-garde" practitioners. But as ever, there's nothing new under the sun.

I understand perfectly well why many readers find Pynchon and his ilk annoying; he often exasperates me. As a matter of taste I prefer him to, say, John Barth: I found The Sot-Weed Factor a terrible slog, and although I nearly always finish the books I've started, I never made it to the end of Giles Goatboy. However, I think it's important to be alert to the fact that -- to pick a representative but fairly random trio -- Anna Karenina, Mrs. Dalloway, and Gravity's Rainbow are working in different frames, on different scales, and with different ends in view.

Each is IMHO superb but none is flawless -- one of the great wonders of literature is that there's no single right way to do it: the proof is in the pudding. But I think that the kind of obiter dicta of which waalkwriter is fond ultimately end up by closing off whole areas of endeavor to wider appreciation. This strikes me as a shame.

Given that every life is a matter of triage -- how much time do we devote to reading for pleasure, how much to cultural breadth, and how much to simple curiosity -- we all draw the line in different places. Those for whom literature is work, whether in academe or business, have chosen to spend more time in the vineyards of language and of necessity learn to make finer distinctions; although I'm not very interested in them, "women's books" like Barbara Taylor Bradford, Danielle Steel, or Barbara Cartland are bestsellers for a reason, which is worth analyzing if selling books is what you do for a living. If what you do is appreciate them in the critical sense, the sort of distinctions which your calling demands can often turn into a kind of snobbery; personally I wouldn't trust a critic who wasn't equally comfortable with "chick lit" as with "high lit" in terms of being able to contribute something more than lofty dismissals. As a matter of preference, I'd rather do almost anything rather than spend my time on Bridget Jones's Diary or H.P. Lovecraft, but I believe that to be any good at my job I have to know how.


BRocket

[Liam]

Although arguably the first post-modernist was Laurence Sterne, with Tristram Shandy.

There is also Diderot's Jacques the Fatalist and His Master, which is one of my favorite "novels" of all time.

My professor was recently talking about this, and gave another early 18th-century text as an example, but as always, I wasn't really listening and so can't, for the life of me, recall the title (should probably email and ask).

It's a small novel about a country gentleman, but in the example given, two characters are walking by a lake in Chapter 2. One of them turns to the other and says, "This is the lake I fall in, in Chapter 12."

[waalkwriter]

Unfortunately, if you actually read Robbe-Grillet and Sarraute you will see that their writing styles resemble Virginia Woolf and Faulkner more than they do Calvino or Pynchon or anyone we would normally call post-modernist. And that isn't surprising as Woolf and Faulkner were two of their explicitly-named influences.

For some reason you seem to be under the impression that there was some kind of continuity between the traditional novel and the modernist novel that has somehow been betrayed by postmodernists. But the revolution, the big break, was made by modernist novelists like Woolf and Faulkner; it was they who rejected the artifice and constraints of the traditional novel in a search for greater verisimilitude. Postmodernists are merely swimming in their wake.

No, I don't believe there was continuity. There seems to be some difficulty among several people of understanding where I come from. I don't mind the modernist when they destroy form to convey a more realistic content, in fact I love it, I think it's literature at it's most brilliant. They have a point. The only difference between them and the post-modernists is that they don't have a point in my opinion; the whole point of PM is to completely free the novel from any sort of actual meaning or conveyance of universal human truths. You see i am all about art as a way to teach us about ourselves, and the modernists were too, that's why they broke form. The post-modernists sort of gave up on trying to display humanity realistically and qualified by saying, basically, 'Oh it's impossible so why try, no matter what words are always still just words on a page, they never mean anything universal so why try to use them to show some truth about being human.'

[Loki]

I've finished reading it last night. After reading some comments here and there about Eco's tediousness I was impressed by this book. It has been one of the few books in which I don't get bored or annoyed when the author is not writing about the main events. When he described the church, the various buildings of the abbey, Adso's visions or dreams, etc., I was still enjoying the book. The lists may well be annoying, but yet there were few of them.
The main plot is gripping, and the fact that the action takes place in a Medieval abbey and that the mystery revolves around a library make the novel appealing to me.
The only thing I didn't really like is the apocalyptic end: I would've preferred something more "sober".

This was my first Eco; in the summer I'm going to read some of his works about translation.

Oh, and I'll soon watch the film sirena advises.

[Loki]

As for the "difficulty" of getting through the first 100 pages, Eco himself commented on this. In my Italian edition there are some pages at the end where he talks about some aspects of the creation of the book and similar and more general question about writing novels.

[Mirabell]

After reading some comments here and there about Eco's tediousness

idiots, every one of them. there's nothing tedious about eco's novels.

[Rumpelstilzchen]

Oh, and I'll soon watch the film sirena advises.

But do not expect anything more than a solid adaptation of the murder mystery aspects of the book. Pratically everything else is completely lost. Ah, yes, and they gave the film a real shitty ending, but you will see...

[Loki]

But do not expect anything more than a solid adaptation of the murder mystery aspects of the book. Pratically everything else is completely lost. Ah, yes, and they gave the film a real shitty ending, but you will see...

I didn't particularly like the end of the novel, so now I don't want to imagine the one of the film...
I half-expected that they would render just the thriller plot, and honestly I don't blame them!

[Rumpelstilzchen]

I didn't particularly like the end of the novel, so now I don't want to imagine the one of the film...
I half-expected that they would render just the thriller plot, and honestly I don't blame them!

A review of the film with respect to the book can be found at the Modern Word page:
http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_film.html