
The Irrepressible Lightness of Umberto Eco - lermontov
http://chronicle.com/article/The-Irrepressible-Lightness-of/235525
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patkai
While his novels are great, to know Eco you need to read his essays, columns
and dialogues with e.g. the archbishop of Milan. His warmth and love is
unforgettable.

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conjectures
_The Name of the Rose_ is the finest novel I have ever read, and that was in
translation.

Haters gonna hate on humanities academics. I suggest they go watch some
superhero films to cheer up.

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mcguire
Weirdly, I just got a text saying,

" _Arriving Today: Your Amazon package with Kant and the Platypus: Essays on
Language and Cognition will be delivered by 8pm._ "

Eco wasn't just a novelist.

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teawithcarl
An exceptional well-written article ... about pure intellectualism.

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erelde
Two weeks ago during the announcement of his death I saw a lot of negativity
on this site against what you call here _" pure intellectualism"_.

I don't understand that.

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lmm
Lightness? _Foucault’s Pendulum_ was possibly the meanest, least constructive
book I've read.

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Bootvis
Why? I was planning on reading it as was recommend to me as one of Eco's
better books.

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lmm
It's just an extended strawman of conspiracy theory. None of the major
characters is sympathetic. It felt very misanthropic. And it's bloated by
Stephenson-esque digressions, but they're somehow much less interesting than
Stephenson's - partly because the primary plot is too weak to sustain you
through them.

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selimthegrim
The end drags a little, but I thought Belbo was sympathetic. Really, I think
it's a book you get a lot more if you're swimming through academia and reading
half a dozen jargon laden over interpreting articles a day. It's a very
effective pastiche of Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer, and if there was any
justice should have killed their careers.

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lmm
> It's a very effective pastiche of Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer, and if there
> was any justice should have killed their careers.

That's exactly the mean-spiritedness I take the most issue with. Those guys
are fun. Why not let people enjoy them? Fundamentally _Foucault 's Pendulum_
fails as a pastiche of them because it doesn't capture their positive side.

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bshimmin
I personally think it was very clever of Eco to write a pastiche of _The Da
Vinci Code_ 15 years or so before it was published.

That aside, _Foucault 's Pendulum_ is undeniably quite hard work, but he
really does cover a fascinating breadth of material in there.

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mcguire
It's actually a pastiche of Brown's sources, the conspiracy theories that
Brown (and others) takes entirely too seriously. That's why I can't take him
seriously.

