"the name of the rose" by umberto eco

foucaults pendulum is the best

actual truth

dope book. also dope movie, mostly because Christian Slater is such a fucking babe in it and you see his bits for a few brief seconds.

foucaults pendulum is the best

-- and what, Tuesday, December 25, 2007 1:04 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

^^

What is this about? In class we were talking about eco/this book, the later not in detail though. It peaked my interest enough to consider reading it though.

yeah foucaults pendulum is amazing, too

by about I mean, the story and impressions, as so I can decide whether I should read such a book.

the basic plot structure is abt an english franciscan monk and his apprentice visiting a benedictine abbey with a legendary library in italy where a mysterious murder has just taken place (against the backdrop of the avignese papacy and controversies over poverty, heresy and inquisition)

what its "about"... like a million things. eco is an italian semiologist and apparently a casual medievalist and large portions of the book are taken up with various theological/philosophical/political conversations, speeches and debates

the edition i just read has a terrific postscript by the author that provides a little insight into his process and what he thinks the book is "about" and some ways to read & think about it

Agreed on high worth of book and even betterness of _Foucault's_ and etc.

i first read this in 7th or 8th grade and still loved it--i think i just skipped over a lot of the long theological debates. going back and re-reading it with even just an undergrad's grasp of both medieval thought and the kind of poststructuralist semiotics eco engages with in his academic work made it even more interesting and gripping. now i gotta go back and re-read foucault's pendulum, too; i probably missed even more stuff in that one.

i read foucault's twice! i'll never do that again. good book tho.

I prefer Name to Foucault, but they are both great. The movie is surprisingly decent IIRC, but I don't remember it having much to do with the book.

its about as faithful an adaptation you can expect... a lot more mystery, a lot less discussion of the poverty of christ and the political situation of minorite friars. sean connery is pretty good.

i never actually saw it!!

almost had dinner with him once tho

sean connery or umberto eco

THEY ARE THE SAME PERSON!

ya, didn't you read till the end? that's the whole thing.

i lol'd but good

I've read Foucault's Pendulum probably 4 or 5 times. It is my favorite book by miles and miles. I have a collection of "secrets of the unknown" and "mystical cults and societies" type books to refer to...all the connections that are made in the book are made all the more believable when you realize he's drawing from "real" history.

i love the 1-2? chapter sequence that is basically an eco lecture on the templars, which is HOT SHIT

...in foucault's, that is, not rose, which i haf not read

guys seriously if you love foucaults you gotta check out name of the rose!!! less conspiracy-nerd but no less obsessively intellectual or professorial and still totally gripping. like FP its starts slow (this is an issue for some people, i almost broke up with my girlfriend when she wouldnt read past the first 20-30 pp of notr) but its great.

name of the rose is good.

too bad that besides those two i find the rest of his fiction pretty unreadable... island of the day before... baudolino... don't yank my crank.

the name of the bros.

I need to dig through this and FP again. I'm not feeling any nostalgia for The Island of the Day Before, though.

baudolino has its moments but isnt nearly as good.

the opening chapter of baudolino is amazing. i just finished the book; it's got a shitload of great ideas but yeah it's not carried off as well as the others

it gets sort of away from itself w/out the tight central mysteries that fp and notr have

I watched Robinson Crusoe on Christmas Eve and that's the first time I've had any fond memories of Island of the Day Before. I'd kinda like to re-read it with the Crusoe story in mind, which I never thought about at the time. I was too busy looking for the MacGuffin, which is probably not the point.

It's not a patch on the first 2 tho. I think NotR is the tighter book, but I find myself comparing real-life idiocies to FP on a regular basis.

baudolino has its moments but isnt nearly as good.

Best book ever. The erudition is toned down a bit compared to Name of the Rose but the fun levels are through the roof. Haven't read FP though.

i dunno, i thought jacopo belpo was pretty non-compelling. i still have time for the beginning where causabon is wandering through the museum but for such a highly-rated work i thought the causabon/amparo and belpo/lorenza love interest plots were very very boring.

i rate "name of the rose" higher because it gets to the point in a much more straightforward way.

of course borges does everything eco does and then some with like 100x more economy but for some people that's not the point of reading i guess.

hey man no one here is ripping on borges, we're just loving on name of the rose!!

I rate Borges much higher than Eco but I don't think they're doing exactly the same thing. Eco rips Borges in NotR, undeniably, but his agenda seems more explicitly political to me.

I have loved FP but last time I reread it I found an air of smugness about the whole thing which was a little offputting.

eco names his blind library jorge of burgos, which to me is a pretty explicit acknowledgment of this book's debt to jlb. but yea nv is right this isnt exactly the same thing, even if a lot of the themes and motifs overlap.

*blind librarian

I didn't get (into) Pendulum, but Name was ace.

I have loved FP but last time I reread it I found an air of smugness about the whole thing which was a little offputting.

-- ledge, Wednesday, December 26, 2007 12:46 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Link

there's an air of smugness to everything eco writes, you really just gotta roll with it or not.

I think it comes across in FP more though - the characters themselves are so self-congratulatory. That whole vanity publishing business Signor Garamond has set up, purely so they can get a rise out of the poor deluded authors - it's so mean.

there's an air of smugness to everything eco writes, you really just gotta roll with it or not.

yeah fuck this guy
of course he seems to have basically doomed to an air of smugness when his parents named him "umberto eco"

dope book

-- max, Tuesday, December 25, 2007 1:03 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

foucaults pendulum is the best

-- and what, Tuesday, December 25, 2007 1:04 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

actual truth

-- BIG HOOS aka the steendriver, Tuesday, December 25, 2007 1:07 AM (Yesterday) Bookmark Link

Was anyone able to read this exchange without flashing back to "Google Maps is the best," etc.?

xpost one wonders you got saddled with when your parents named you el tomboto

Are there any decent links to articles/essays about the historical, theological and critical issues surrounding The Name of the Rose, that I can read to familiarise myself with the background without actually spoilering the book?

I fear I may have already accidentally spoilered the name of the murderer :(

What a fantastic book. Took me forever to read though

is there a reason in particular you want to do so matt? i dont think its strictly necessary for the enjoyment of the book, plus a lot of the in-book discussion of politics and theology is fairly expository; hes writing for a general audience so he doesnt make anything too obscure (he doesnt dumb it down either)

Basically I find myself skimming over arguments featuring a wealth of proper nouns referring to various groupings or sects that may or may not be heretics. I'm about 140 pages in and still unsure how important it may be to actually know what they represent.

oh... yeah. in terms of the basic mechanics of the plot its not terribly necessary to know the details of minorite politics except generally who's good and who's bad, but id think a better understanding of the historical context would probably deepen yr enjoyment of the book (obviously)... unforch i dont really know any sources. i got most of my info from wikipedia.

Will knowing who did it spoil my enjoyment of the book?

Still kicking myself.

depends on what you enjoy about the book--if youre reading it just as a straight mystery than yeah it might, if you like it as a period piece/vaguely philosophical tale about the nature of literature/narrative/libraries i dont think it will

also WHY the murderer murders who is does and how is pretty important so dont sweat it too much

Never made it through this one. Bogged down in the details. Which is odd 'cuz Focault's Pendulum is one of my favorite books ever, read it three times, and it's WAAAY boggier.

i have tried to read this twice

One of the finest endings ever.

I loved this, but weirdly not enough to ever pick up any of his others. Obviously the consensus here is that I should try "Foucault's Pendulum", so perhaps I will do that soon.

did this book invent the historical murder mystery genre or was that around already

Ellis Peters' Cadfael books (medieval detective monk) pre-date NotR by some years. I'm sure there are much earlier examples, that was just the first one that came to mind.

Matt: these two might be too much, but they give a decent summary of the background to the book:

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/08431a.htm

http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-91397731.html

right i was wondering about those but i couldn't remember the writer's name!

what if tv detective "monk" teamed up with a real monk!!!

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/512RZXZQJ5L._AA280_.jpg

xpost

lol yeah I thought that when I was typing it.

Actually double-checking reveals that NotR was published in Italy earlier than I thought, so the first Cadfael book is only a couple of years older.

i hadn't read this since '89 (i used to write the dates when i finished a book on the inside back cover when i was a teenager) but i just finished re-reading it. i can barely imagine what i made of the intricacies of the themes in the book at such a young age. much of it still goes over my head now.

to what extent do you think the book is about the modern world, or the early 80s world when eco wrote it? there's quite a bit about semiology towards the end of the book (without calling it that, obviously).

also, what real function does the prologue serve in which the author or translator describes the circumstances of finding the manuscript and attempting to verify whether it was written by adso, was written by someone else at some later date as a fake or, of course, was written by someone not called umberto eco in italy in the early 1980s?

the depth of knowledge of the circumstances of europe in the early 14th century is absolutely mindblowing. how can someone know so much and employ it so intricately in a novel? it's staggering.

i'm halfway through foucault's pendulum...i can't believe i never read this. it is fucking rad.

rereading foucauls pendulum on the train right now this book is so gnarly

foucaults

i was really jetlagged when i started this thread i apologize for using the phrase "poststructuralist semiotics"

hey, we've all been there.

there are still moments in foucault's that i don't get, should reread it. there's a party? with an alchemist? and there's glowing animals in jars? what? funny, all the crazy conspiratorial shit about the past is crystal clear to me but what actually happens in it or who the characters are is totally gone.

apologize for using teh word "gnarly"

i was gonna say "RAD" but then i say that lindsay had just used it

saw

read FP when I was in high school, I think, loved it at the time but mabye didn't 'get it'? I should revisit that. I've had Name of the Rose since then as well and it continues to sit on my shelf, the friar on the cover mocking me

I enjoyed Name Of The Rose ultimately but that was despite wanting to shout 'ARGH STFU MONKS!' every few pages.

not a good book to read if you're not into monks.

there's glowing animals in jars?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus

as I said above, a little research while reading FP goes a long way, like 90% of that stuff wasn't made up, or at least were already existing myths.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_of_St._Germain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cagliostro

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosicrucians

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