Something something verbosity?
Quite.
Potkettle.
Amen.
I get it. So now you're feeling all self-conscious about using lots of words.
Well, no, not exactly. I mean, Name of the Rose is entertaining up to a point. And it's interesting up to a point. And I'm sure it's all metaphorical and shit. Hey, let's do some googling, that's the way you crazy kids start your homework assignments these days, right?
- Eco, being a semiotician, is hailed by semiotics students who like to use his novel to explain their discipline. The techniques of telling stories within stories, partial fictionalization, and purposeful linguistic ambiguity are all apparent. The solution to the central murder mystery hinges on the contents of Aristotle's book on Comedy, of which no copy survives; Eco nevertheless plausibly describes it and has his characters react to it appropriately in their medieval setting – which, though realistically described, is partly based on Eco's scholarly guesses and imagination. It is virtually impossible to untangle fact / history from fiction / conjecture in the novel. Through the motive of this lost and possibly suppressed book which might have aestheticized the farcical, the unheroic and the skeptical, Eco also makes an ironically slanted plea for tolerance and against dogmatic or self-sufficient metaphysical truths – an angle which reaches the surface in the final chapters.
A-ha. For those following along at home, Robert Langdon of Da Vinci Code fame is a "symbologist" because Dan Brown doesn't understand the paragraph above.
There's probably a lesson there: write a novel about an ancient mystery solved by a scholar and his young assistant and you can thrill and entertain. Write about "semiotics" and Hollywood will misinterpret everything you say and people will hail you for your obscurity. Write about "symbols" and you can wipe your ass with hundred dollar bills.
You yourself barely understand the paragraph above, shithead.
No, I understand it. I'm not sure I understand the point, though.
You often say that when you dislike something celebrated, though.
Okay, I understand it. But look: You know how you can use "framing devices" in order to better tell a story? Da Vinci Code uses a "symbologist" and a pseudo-cop as the Rocky and Bullwinkle who turn Holy Blood, Holy Grail into a work of fiction. Just there, I used Rocky and Bullwinkle as a framing device to insult Dan Brown. Right here, I'm using this fake interview as a framing device to present a critique of Umberto Eco.
Fourth wall, fucker.
Right. So The Name of the Rose is basically a bunch of framing devices used to support each other without anything to support, really. It's sort of a giant, elegant tower of sawhorses.
That is the worst metaphor ever.
I know, right? Let's google image search that bitch.
That's a strawberry trellis.
Right. For someone who really likes to water.
This has nothing to do with The Name of the Rose.
It does, though. Because you see, by talking endlessly in circles around something, I am providing further insights into that thing via framing device.
No, fuck you. You just free-associated something about sawhorses and now we're talking about watering strawberry plants. That has fuckall to do with Umberto Eco.
Fuckin' Eco has Adso burn a chapter describing a dream he had fifty-plus years previous in notes discovered by the author who lost them on the train in Prague and is now reconstructing them based on his memory.
Okay, but -
And then we burn another chapter while William of Baskerville interprets that dream as banned book from the 11th century that monks secretly used as a mnemonic device to remember the scriptures.
But-
So that we could mis-interpret the Book of Revelations in order to not arrive at the solution to the mystery correctly so that we can instead stumble upon the answer.
But-
And use that falsehood in order to arrive at our climax at exactly the right time.
Okay, but-
By the way, this is a metaphor.
https://cirsova.files.wordpress.com/2013/07/haft_library.gif
I relent. Do you have a point?
Sure. If you're after a mystery, there is one at the heart of Name of the Rose. It's sort of like interspersing "The Hound of the Baskervilles" in amongst The Confessions of Saint Augustine. Which isn't nearly as entertaining as David Rees' "The Adventures of Confessions of Saint Augustine Bear."
http://www.mnftiu.cc/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/adventures_252.gif
What is this I don't even
Right. See, if you come into The Name of the Rose expecting a mystery, you will be disappointed. Because it's talking about mystery. Except it isn't. It's talking about talking about mystery. Except it isn't. It's talking about talking about talking about mystery. Except
Shut up. Point made.
There's good stuff in there but it's kind of a tough slog. Imagine a box of Lucky Charms
No seriously stop
Where half of the marshmallows have been removed
Stahp
And of the half that remain, a third are infused with curry powder
Stahhhp
Which is an interesting flavor, but doesn't have much to do with
Next Up:
Well, I started A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole. Chapter 1, so far, isn't selling me. But my job ain't a job, it's a damn good time City to city, I'm running my rhymes...
This is one of the funniest things I've read. 😂 And I found it thru an Umberto Eco meme search after his name came up in my freewill astrology horoscope this week. Go figure. So long and thanks for all the laughs 🤘🏾✌🏻
The reasons I love this book: 1. There is only one person in the world who could have written it, I think, and luckily enough he did. 2. The prose is beautiful if often only semi-relevant. 3. The (very real) depiction of the medieval church and its infighting touches on one of my favorite branches of European history. 4. I positively eat up "philosophical fiction." (5. I have since read Anathem, which is Il Nomen in modern prose, with space, and am convinced it's the best book of the 21st century. And equally certain none of these are.)
I kinda liked "Diamond Age", but as usual, he didn't do that great a job wrapping it all up at the end. Like "Snow Crash", the concepts in that book stuck with me, though - and it's also short enough to not be too mind-numbing by the time you reach the end.
To be fair, it's pretty easy to tear Tolkien a new asshole. He was a linguistic genius, and he created a world, history and creation story in full technicolour, but he wasn't very good at talking about it. I think if someone else had taken his source material and written LOTR it would actually be a much better book.
Haven't gotten around to this bad boy, but he derives a bunch from Baudrillad here and I assume everywhere else, as this seems to be aesthetically drawn from that continental grab-bag and some say Simulacra was the high water mark for semiotics (please don't ask me to elaborate, cause I can't). Don't read any of that, though, read this.
Hmm, I'd been eyeing this one on my shelf as a good-ol' fiction read after a stint of non-. The word semiotics alone, instantly makes me think of strange hipsters though.... If one were to give not a fuck about symbolism, would this still be a good book? I thoroughly enjoyed the movie adaptation.
It was the mid '90s. I was watching the news. And some local anchor talked about how a man had attempted to board an airplane with a semiotic weapon and I just about fell out of my chair laughing, and then decided that was maybe the best band name I'd ever heard. Now, of course, it's a Tumblr, a Wordpress and a Twitter handle and near as I can tell, none of the above understands semiotics. I'll bet that's why Dan Brown writes about Professor Langdon, the "symbologist", rather than Professor Langdon, the semioticist. If I say "symbologist" you're likely to figure it's somebody who studies symbols and their meanings, right? But if I say "semioticist" you're likely to figure it's some egghead so far up his own ass that he turns the act of opening a can of cat food into performance art. Near as I can tell, that's an occupational hazard when your field of study is literally the meaning of meaning - when there's a tautology in the title you're kinda fucked from the get-go. FULL DISCLOSURE: I went into this book having enjoyed the movie and having no real handle on what I was getting myself into. I was expecting "literary murder mystery" - a sort of Cadfael with philosophy. And it's that, kind of the way Godel Escher Bach is about a turtle racing Achilles. I've burned through three or four histories of the renaissance, actually had heard of Waldensians and Cathars prior to reading this, and had seen the movie three times. And it got really dry for me. As I listened (did the audiobook), I started to get a nagging feeling that narrative was being sacrificed for capital-M Meaning. This reached a fever pitch in the last quarter of the book, wherein we solve the mystery by applying three or four layers of Meaning to casual things people said while also demonstrating how things would have been solved much sooner if three or four layers of Meaning hadn't been applied to other casual things people said. You know that scene in Fiddler on the Roof where Tevye says "there IS no other hand!" and acts all decisive and shit? After spending the whole movie arguing with himself? In The Name of the Rose, Tevye never says "there is no other hand." He just argues with himself and then says "Tradition!" Lemme put it this way: if you enjoyed the movie, as I did, imagine the novel as if the movie were intercut amongst a 46-hour-long reenactment of the Nicene Council. Your enjoyment of the new movie is heavily dependent on your interest in early Christian canon and how it got to be that way. Does that make sense?
I'd just like to add that I went back and re-read The Da Vinci Code and oh mah gawd it's like Brown has never been in a University lecture hall in his life. Everyone is just gaping and oohing and awwing and asking questions and being so engaged - not even the most dedicated of majors does that shit.
that's your criticism of The Da Vinci Code? For me, it starts with the dude who stopped talking to his last-bloodline-of-Jesus granddaughter for 20 years over a misunderstanding but then spends his last 20 minutes stumbling from room to room writing secret messages in his own blood and entrails that only she can interpret. But again, it's basically a framing reference for Holy Blood, Holy Grail, thereby tricking a whole new generation of the gullible to read illuminati conspiracy theories and profiting off the process. I mean, Brown went as far as naming the antagonist, Leigh Teabing, after an anagram of Holy Blood, Holy Grail authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh. "It is typical of my unregenerable soul that I can only see this as a marvellous theme for a novel" - Anthony Fucking Burgess, setting up Da Vinci Code in 1982
Hey now, not my only criticism, but the first one I noticed re-reading, especially being in school right now. I don't think I can knock Dan Brown, though. He knew what was gonna get him some bank, that's fo'sho. I hate "secret messages in blood." Fucking Dead Space has "Cut off their limbs" written in blood on a wall. Tutorial messages in blood? "Hang on a sec, I know I'm bleeding out, but I better write this message for the player first. It's creeepy and atmospheric...and I'm on a tangent now.
Well you didn't go to my English classes, then, did you jerk. (Other students probably found me annoying. There was very little ooohing and aahhhing but the second two, I hang my head as guilty. That's when I was there of course. We can assume about a 50% chance of me having attended a given class session, though.)
Never seen it Sort of, I don't really give a toss about symbolism in literature, as long as it is ignorable in favor of the story. Word from another friend is that the book included more political commentary than the movie, which I am okay with. From the above, I'll probably make a hesitant foray into the book, but only because audible will let me return it unfinished for free.You know that scene in Fiddler on the Roof...
Does that make sense?
Before you read Name of the Rose, watch Fiddler on the Roof. I generally dislike musicals but I consider Fiddler to be one of the finest examples of staged entertainment there is. I enjoy it so much that I actually broke my streak of never doing anything with the drama club in high school because it was rumored they were doing Fiddler (I ended up playing Prospero instead which is a whole 'nuther story). I was talking to a bunch of actors up in Vancouver and the subject of musicals came up. The unchallenged consensus was that Fiddler was the best musical ever made.