Umberto Eco: Exploring Imaginary Lands With One of Italy’s Masters of Fiction

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/arts/international/umberto-eco-a-master-of-fiction-considers-historys-lies.html?hpw&rref=arts&_r=0

by espeed • 13 years ago

97 27 13 years ago

nytimes.com

astine• 13 years ago

This is just a rather superficial interview with Mr. Eco. He does touch on the medieval belief in a spherical world but they don't go into detail about such things. Interesting, but brief and not what the title promised.

mcguire• 13 years ago

But it does show some hints as to why Eco is so unbelievably great.

"Every writer, every artist, every musician, scientist is profoundly interested in the survival of his or her work after their death. Otherwise they would be idiots."

And, of course,

"In the States, they publish an enormous collection of books called 'The Library of Living Philosophers.' It started with John Dewey and Bertrand Russell and the last book was about Richard Rorty. For mysterious reasons — probably because there is nobody else is around — they chose me for the next one. These are books of 1,500 pages. I am supposed to write 100 pages of philosophical autobiography. And there are 25 people, working at this moment, each writing a paper on my philosophical activity. And I am supposed to read all of them and to respond to each of them with at least three or four pages each. I think I have two years to work on it, and I am hoping to die before I have to do it."

nraynaud2• 13 years ago

Why are there so many links towards this paywalled site? It's the only paywalled site that I see on HN, why is that?

kej• 13 years ago

Because it's the most prominent newspaper in the United States?

001sky• 13 years ago

answer> delete your cookies and the paywall is porous

nraynaud2• 13 years ago

I use private browsing.

bananacurve• 13 years ago

Non-paywalled link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/28/arts/international/umberto...

bradleyjg• 13 years ago

A terrific author whose philosophical work informs his fiction, but not in a heavy handed or didactic way. I only wish there were more novels.

If you haven't read anything by him, I'd start with In the Name of the Rose. The beginning is a little tough to get into, but if you persevere you are amply rewarded (in the afterwords it is disclosed that this was a deliberate literary choice, I won't spoil it by explaining the rationale, but it does make sense). Foucault's Pendulum is the magnum opus.

Edit: after In the Name of the Rose I'd probably go with Baudolino, but FP is a valid choice as well.

SaulOfTheJungle• 13 years ago

I've read _The Name of the Rose_ and really enjoyed it. What should I read next?

stevedub• 13 years ago

definitely Foucaults Pendulum. it's like the DaVinci Code but for medieval history buffs plus the plot is wickedly clever

cedsav• 13 years ago

I really liked the The Island of the Day Before. Truly fascinating. Foucault's Pendulum is good too, but like all his work, it's not an easy read. If you want something more intellectually rewarding than Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code), Eco is your guy.

cju• 13 years ago

Not a novel but the _Postscript to The Name of the Rose_ is really interesting. It has been written a few years after the novel and published at the same time as the english translation. It's a short book published independently. Eco writes there about the writing of the novel but also other topics.

http://umbertoecoreaders.blogspot.de/2007/11/postscript-to-n...

codelust2• 13 years ago

Foucault's Pendulum gets my vote too if you want to read something that is as straight forward as Eco can get.

The Island of the Day Before, Baudolino and The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana felt more like he was trying to test you, in each of those books, to see if you are worthy of consuming the entire book. Every time you feel you have a reasonable grasp of what is going on, he'll descend into a phase where you'll be lost again.

The Prague Cemetery, on the other hand, was utterly fascinating. Really enjoyed it.

lennel• 13 years ago

Your reading list for Eco is perfect, I can recommend his essays as well, his intellectual range is amazing. BUT, as you said, above all of this stand Foucoults pendulum. A book about being human and fearing, history, human believe system and and and. A masterpiece.

niuzeta• 13 years ago

Absolutely correct reading list.

For those who's giving Name of the Rose a try, just bear with the first 100 pages. It gets extremely better. I liked the first 100 pages anyways.

antiterra• 13 years ago

Much of Eco's work was translated by the great William Weaver who passed away earlier this month. I came to appreciate Weaver's translations through another Italian legend, Italo Calvino. Calvino had a way of incorporating scientific and philosophical concepts within passionate human drama. HN readers might enjoy his work as well.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/17/arts/william-weaver-influe...

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Weaver

vanderZwan• 13 years ago

He had a stroke several years ago that severely hampered his ability to speak — an especially difficult hardship, friends and relatives said, for a loquacious man who had built his life communicating in words.

That is sad to hear, but as Renoir supposedly said when asked why he spent three decades painting with painful arthritis: “The pain passes, but the beauty remains.”

Thank you for your translations, William Weaver.

http://www.openculture.com/2012/07/astonishing_film_of_arthr...

keithpeter• 13 years ago

"The fact is that the world is divided between users of the Macintosh computer and users of MS-DOS compatible computers. I am firmly of the opinion that the Macintosh is Catholic and that DOS is Protestant."

You need to read the whole column to get the joke[1]. I like to imagine that fully Libre Gnu/Linux would be Jain, and Android would be Baptist.

Eco's routine journalism can be really funny.

[1] http://www.themodernword.com/eco/eco_mac_vs_pc.html

meatsock• 13 years ago

if you like eco, check out 'Q' by luther blissett, which is given away for free on his website[1] along with all of his other works.

1: http://www.wumingfoundation.com/english/biography.html

Umberto Eco: Exploring Imaginary Lands With One of Italy’s Masters of Fiction

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