Subject: (urth) Eco's tic

From: m.driussi <m.driussi at genie.com>
Date: Tue, 25 Aug 1998 20:21:00 +0000

Rostrum,

Re: FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM (which incidentally ties in with PEACE by way
of NECRONOMICON).  I know what you mean in saying "we want more
mysteries, not answers," and I know you don't mean to be absolutist
about it--since there =are= limits: if an author keeps providing
mysteries without =satisfying= solutions, that's no good either.

But mainly I want to argue that FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM, which I didn't
like very much (agreeing with you, I'm guessing), is on second glance
rather a lot like THE NAME OF THE ROSE (which I liked better).  They
both in their conclusions involve a destruction of the "fiction"
which has been so carefully built up between the author and the
reader over the course of the novel.

This amounts to a visceral "thumbing of the nose" or sucker punch
from Eco to reader.  Very po-mo.

Or in a different harsh light, one might say it points to a failure
of artistic vision--at the very least, it suggests that Eco is a one
trick pony: the guy can't write an ending; he loses steam and takes
it out on the reader in his frustration.

So, IMHO, ILLUMINATUS! and HOLY BLOOD, HOLY GRAIL and THE CRYING OF
LOT 49 (to name just three works that cover similar territory) are
successful and satisfying where FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM is not; yet these
three works give plenty of answers to the mysteries they pose.

=mantis=

*More Wolfe info & archive of this list at http://www.urth.net/urth/

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From: Derek Bell <dbell at maths.tcd.ie>
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 15:55:24 +0000

>reader over the course of the novel.

	I think that _Foucault's Pendulum_ deals with matters of
interpretation and over-interpretation. At one point the narrator
mentions that Belbo had a list of 120 quotes from various people. I
noticed that there were 120 short sections in the book, each with a
quote at the start - hmmm... is Eco hinting that these are the quotes
in Belbo's list?

	On the other hand, it could also be read as a book about
reason being enslaved to an obsession with power.

	Derek - not a Knight Templar, honest!

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From: Michael Straight <straight at email.unc.edu>
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 14:29:29 +0000

> from Eco to reader.  Very po-mo.

Yep.  I think FOUCAULT'S PENDULUM is the only novel I've ever read that
deliberately bores the reader as a literary device.  But when something
finally happens near the end, it hit me like a thunderclap.  I'm not sure
the payoff was worth the rest of the book, which I made my way through
mostly crusing on goodwill from THE NAME OF THE ROSE.

THE NAME OF THE ROSE was sort of a Book of Gold for me.  I picked it up
either in late high school or early college expecting nothing more than a
good mystery with a novel setting.  At that time I had no interest in
"literature," disliking most books I had to read at school and prefering
SF along the lines of Asimov and Niven.  Eco's book introduced me to
pleasures I hadn't encountered in a novel before, and although I didn't
immediately seek out similar books, I think it had some effect on the
direction my aesthetic tastes went.  Had I taken other paths, I doubt I
would have enjoyed Wolfe when I met him in SHADOW OF THE TORTURER.

I think all the pomo stuff went completely over my head.  I have a vague
memory of thinking the end was weird and not entirely satisfying, but it
was overwhelmed by my love for the book as a whole.

I haven't actually reread NAME OF THE ROSE since then.  I really should. 
I wonder if I'll be disappointed?  (I know, I know, "You found the Book of
Gold and you only read it once?!?) 

-Rostrum

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From: Peter Grimes <grimes at waste.org>
Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 08:54:14 +0000

> three works give plenty of answers to the mysteries they pose.

Ugh, I just can't let this go by unremarked.  Illuminatus is garbage
writing.  There is not a single female character in the book who is not
there solely for the purpose of having sex with one of the male
characters.  This is a 1000+ page novel.  Pretty pathetic.

Plus, it has the opposite 'problem' of Foucault's Pendulum.  Every 40-50
pages you are basically told that everything you had been told before that
point was wrong and you are then given another 'explanation'.  While this
is effective the first couple of times it starts to lose its effectiveness
after the 700th time.

AND the prose is just plain poor.  Wolfe is probably my favorite prose
writer (along with a few others) and Eco is definitely in the same league.
They are both interestingly in a stylistic sense.  Robert Anton Wilson and
his co-conspirator are just not terribly good writers.

I agree, Crying of Lot 49 is a great book, although I preferred Foucault's
Pendulum.  Pynchon can be a bit self-indulgent in his writing and I get
tired of his showing the reader how clever he is every few paragraphs
(This got really annoying about 400 pages into Gravity's Rainbow, at which
point I just gave up).

So what if Foucault kills the conspiracy at the end?  That's more or
less the point of the book.  Its about how an obsession with conspiracy
leads someone to see them everywhere and in fact contributes to their
creation.

-Dave

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From: J. Schultz <jschultz at wcnet.org>
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1998 02:22:30 +0000

Apples and Oranges
or if I may say so....   Golden Apples and Oranges

Illuminatus is "garbage" only if you are looking for an Eco book or a Woolfe
book.  Or if your looking for anything other than what it is.

I'm a huge fan of RAW.  Do I think he has the command of language that
Woolfe has?  Not on your life.  RAW's purpose in his 1000 pages is to play
with ideas and he invites you along.  The book DOES NOT continually rehash
things that the reader has already been told WITHOUT looking at the events
with a different world view.

As to your comment that all the women are present only to have sex....
All the main female characters are aspects of the Godess.  Whose religious
role is one that is sexual (as the first mother-goddess religions arguably
were)  ---This doesn't get him off the hook completely because he still is
refusing to deal with women as other individuals.

The story in Illuminatus is secondary, the characters are simply vehicles
for ideas.
RAW has the ability to write a book that causes many readers to question
their own dogmas and beliefs.  RAW deals with how we cope with the confusing
world around us by constructing our philosophies.

Eco's 'trip' is the study of 'how' we attack the unknown.  What we as humans
employ to understand the confusing world around us.  There is a slight
difference here.  The moral of Focault's P is a simple one.  If we act as if
there is a huge and ancient conspiracy then it becomes reality.  The BIG
mystery in FP is that THERE IS NO BIG MYSTERY!  However, since all those
involved BELIEVE and ACT as if there is a huge conspiracy it might as well
be true.  (If you believe there is a monster in the basement it doesn't
matter if there really is one or not.  You will act as if there is a monster
in the basement.  You will never enter the basement.  If you ever got the
courage to go in the basement every shadow would be that monster comming to
get you.  Any noise you heard would be the monster shuffling his feet.)  FP
simply says that if we believe that there is a deep, dark secret that people
will kill for---  then, people will start killing to find out the deep, dark
secret-- wheter it really exists or not.  To put it in RAW's terms  -  if
everyone believes that paper money is really worth something, then it
becomes so.  If everyone thinks that RED means stop.  Then it does.  I don't
know if Eco is asking us to question the government's authority over us, or
question the Federal Reserve, but both writers are approaching the same
subject.

Focault's P. and Illuminatus! are both warnings against dogma.
FP is not satisfying because we want to know the truth.  FP tells us what it
is not.  Illuminatus fabricates an ellaborate story that we know is not
true, but it's an answer.

Our drive to know the truth, even when applied to fiction, is so strong that
we even set up discussion groups to analyze and over analyze a piece of
fiction as if it were something in the real world that could be tested with
the Scientific Method.  : )
(last statement is not an insult, I include myself in this group)

---

From: Jim Jordan <jbjordan at gnt.net>
Date: Mon, 07 Sep 1998 00:58:54 +0000

>quote at the start - hmmm... is Eco hinting that these are the quotes

	The Foucault of FP is not only the inventor of the famous pendulum, which
swings back and forth, but also the Foucault of deconstructionism, Eco's
enemy. Eco agrees with the decons to this extent: that the role of the
reader is very important. But he also insists that any text creates a
reader who can get it right, if the reader allows the text to speak to him
(See *Six Walks Through the Fictional Woods*). Literary criticism swings
back and forth between the supreme authority of the author and the role of
the reader.
	Now, in FP, the various post-Christian actors deconstruct their own lives
as they deconstruct the text. The Jewish actor gets cancer, as his own body
deconstructs. Belbo, the post-Calvinist, winds up generating the conspiracy
he has invented. Thus, in this fantasy novel, the errors men make come to
life and kill them. Against this Eco, a devout Catholic, posits the "public
gnosis" of the Christian revelation.
	Both *The Name of the Rose* and FP are very concerned with modern
approaches to texts, though there is clearly more in both. Especially in
FP, it is the women who have common sense and are grounded in reality --
perhaps reflecting a Catholic doctrine of Natural Law, women being more
close to nature because of their biology (childbearing, lunar cycles,
etc.). (I'm not arguing that this is correct, only seeking to understand Eco.)
	Eco's point in *Name* is that the world CAN be understood, something
Baskerville's disciple fails to learn, but that it cannot be COMPLETELY
understood until we come to the eschaton -- which is why there is something
right about Burgos's keeping a book of joy reserved until the end of
history. Well, one could discuss both Eco books at length, but:
	Like to Wolfe: Jorge Luis Borges as an important character as the
librarian in *Name* and in *Shadow of the Torturer.* Borges is much like
Eco, and in *Name* is not quite as evil as a superficial reading of the
book might lead the reader to think. 

Nutria (James B. Jordan)

---

From: Derek Bell <dbell at maths.tcd.ie>
Date: Mon, 07 Sep 1998 18:40:13 +0000

Also, I'm not claiming to have a definitive argument or interpretation
of _FP_ or even just a consistent one, I'm just speculating out loud.

In message <199809070603.XAA00263 at lists1.best.com>, Jim Jordan writes:
>	The Foucault of FP is not only the inventor of the famous
>pendulum, which swings back and forth, but also the Foucault of
>deconstructionism, Eco's enemy.

	Yep - Michel Foucault, IIRC. I know a little of Foucault's
work: he was interested in how power produced the subject and I think
he tried to write a genealogy of power, similar to Nietzsche's
genealogy of morals.

	This also brings up the subject of how power is
dealt with in the novel - Causabon spends ages trying to figure out
the password to Belbo's computer, which asks him "Do you know the
password?" (The password is "No".) Similarly, Aglie pretends to have
powers of a supernatural nature (well, that's my interpretation) and
uses this as a hook to lead the authors down the garden path, so to
speak and lead them into a trap. (Framing them for the bomb on the train.)

	I think Eco's taking on several postmodernists at once -
Diotavelli seems like a parody of Derrida. I've heard several comments
on how cabalistic Derrida's work is and Derrida is from a family of
assimilated Jews. (I can't remember if Diotavelli is actually of a
similar background to Derrida, but there were comments from the other
characters on Diotavelli's obsessive interest in Jewish life - he
seemed to live vicariously by watching the lives of Jewish men.

>Eco agrees with the decons to this extent: that the role of the

	Eco doesn't believe in a "Death of the Author", he believes in
a two-way relationship, right?

>	Now, in FP, the various post-Christian actors deconstruct
>their own lives as they deconstruct the text. The Jewish actor gets
>cancer, as his own body deconstructs. Belbo, the post-Calvinist,
>winds up generating the conspiracy he has invented. Thus, in this
>fantasy novel, the errors men make come to life and kill
>them.

	This notion of the power of words being cabable of altering
nature itself seems quite cabalistic! (I know it works on a
psychological level, the characters either interpreting what befalls
them as a result of their "Plot" or they start seeing the agents of
the "Plot" working against them.)

	Another Caballistic reference - Belbo named his computer
"Abulafia", after Abraham Abulafia, a 12th century Jewish philosopher
and Calallist.

	Derek