Eco's real good

sorabji.com: Best book you've ever read: Eco's real good
By Ecoplasm on Wednesday, July 29, 1998 - 12:20 am:
    Umberto Eco's "Foucault's Pendulum" is a huge but fantastic book. Filled with facts(?) and other strange things about cults.
By Quidam on Wednesday, July 29, 1998 - 05:25 am:
    I don't think I'd say it was the *best* book I ever read, but yeah, it was a fun read. It didn't hurt my head as bad as the Illuminati Trilogy, but Umberto Eco has a talent at...er...thick... writing. I found the storyline intriguing.

    tetrapyloctomy. the art of splitting a human hair four ways.

    something like that.
By Starchy on Wednesday, July 29, 1998 - 11:15 am:
    Illuminatus! was truly beautiful, aye. My personal favorite by Wilson, though, was "Wilhelm Reich in Hell", which starts with a fitty page introduction on "The New Inquisition" and the common usage of false syllogisms, then launches into Ionesco-esque theatre of the absurd. Truly beautiful.

    But, whatever you do, don't try to say "Ionesco-esque" out loud.
By Joe on Wednesday, February 6, 2002 - 10:32 am:

    Eco is a fraud & a buffoon. "Foucault's Pendulum" is a cheap gimmick: for 600 pages Eco panders to idiotic conspiracy theories (not that all conspiracy theories are cheap & idiotic, but Eco's are), and in the final pages Eco bursts the balloon & cashes in on the readers' awareness that it was all harmless nonsense all along. A cheap sleazy literary pinata for hypocrites and halfwits. A textbook for Inquisitor-wannabes. An entertainment for panhandler imbeciles & Schlemiels whose convoluted runarounds are the best they have to offer in the way of enlightenment & ecstacy. A bogey-man book for people who are 10 IQ points less idiotic than the fans of Stephen King. A single paragraph of "Foucault's Pendulum" is enough to remind me why Richard Feynman, when he wanted to make the kiddies scream with laughter, impersonated opera buffo Italian. Eco is a clown.

By Joe on Wednesday, February 6, 2002 - 10:44 am:

    I'm tempted to say that "Foucault's Pendulum" is the literary equivalent of "The Barber of Seville"---but I don't want to insult Rossini.

By heather on Wednesday, February 6, 2002 - 02:11 pm:

    cool

    what have you written? give us some titles and we'll give you a heartfelt review

By droopy on Wednesday, February 6, 2002 - 02:31 pm:

    i remember a "this american life" that was built around or based on an umberto eco essay. apparently eco had road-tripped through america visiting all the wax museums and other "historical" roadside attractions. it had something to do with the tasteless, history-less americans creating their own history and making it a commodity. or something like that, vaguely.