Eco, Umberto

Italy: The Best Travel Writing from the New York Times

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italy !
Great Gift
Italy Coffee Table Book
Discovering/ Revisiting Every Corner of Italy: THE Book To Read Before Travel
A Song of Joy to Italy

Italy: The Best Travel Writing from the New York Times
Olivier Bernier , Frank Bruni , Shirley Hazzard , Alison Lurie , Jan Morris , William Murray , Frank J. Prial , Francine Prose , and Muriel Spark
Manufacturer: Harry N. Abrams
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0810959054

Book Description

Italy is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world, and this beautiful, useful volume is an ideal reminder for those who have been there and fallen in love with the country, as well as a book to stir the expectations of those who plan to travel there. Lavishly illustrated with photographs, this collection captures the local color of every remarkable corner of this richly diverse land-the clamor and vitality of Naples, the idyllic enchantment of Lago Maggiore, the intriguing cultural contradictions of Genova, the breathtaking (if terrifying) cliffside trails in Cinqueterre.

Contributors include Oliver Bernier, Rachel Billington, Frank Bruni, Shirley Hazzard, Paul Hofmann, Alison Lurie, Malachi Martin, Alastair McEwen, Michael Mewshaw, Jan Morris, Francine Prose, Barry Unsworth, Muriel Spark, and William Weaver. Essays full of history, philosophical ruminations, humorous anecdotes, cultural musings, and useful travel information-in short the best of The New York Times talent-will make you want to drop everything and fly to this land that continues to inspire writers, artists, and casual visitors alike. AUTHOR BIO: Umberto Eco is the author of four novels as well as numerous works of criticism, philosophy, and literary theory. His fifth novel, The Mysterious Flame, will be published in June. He is professor of semiotics at the University of Bologna.

Customer Reviews:

italy !.......2007-04-11

this book is superb. plenty of great photos and informative writing. if we get to italy we will feel comfortable in a foreign speaking country as we will have learned heaps about the people and more about this interesting destination. this book covers all the areas from top to bottom and places in between. thanks to amazon for this purchase as i could find nothing like it in new zealand with such interesting information ! yes it is a must weather you get to italy or not and has pride of place in the travel section of our library.

Great Gift.......2006-02-28

I got this beautiful book for two dear friends, brilliant musicians, who will be traveling to Italy soon. They were entranced, and have thanked me several times, saying the book makes them feel "as if we are already in Italy."

Italy Coffee Table Book.......2006-02-25

The book is beautifully photographed. It has pictures of some out of the way places that some of the other brochures and books don't touch on. If you are looking for information, this is not the book for you.

Discovering/ Revisiting Every Corner of Italy: THE Book To Read Before Travel.......2005-11-19

This is one of those books that defies description. Formed as a joint project between the Italian Tourism people and the New York Times, this generously illustrated volume covers all of Italy, not only photographically but also with immensely readable and helpful articles about the regions, the people and their idiosyncrasies, the culture, the history, the sights not to be missed, the foods, and an ebullient flow of gentle humor that makes this the first choice of reading in preparation for a visit to this popular country - or an invaluable memento for perusing once home from the pleasures Italian.

Not only are there superb 'articles' by NY Times staff writers about the famous places (Milan, Rome, Venice, Florence, Sienna, etc), but here are also vignettes about the tiny secrets of Italy like Posillipo, the Aeolian Islands, Trieste, Portofino and on and on. Forty articles do far more than describe a place: these articles are written by people who can define the flavors so clearly they leap from the page.

Keeping the book in the realm of art, the introduction is by none other than the brilliant Italian novelist Umberto Eco who puts a spin on the wealth of pleasures that follow, basking in Italy's history and the reasons the people are so unique. It is a joy to read. Highly Recommended for both active and armchair travelers! Grady Harp, November 05

A Song of Joy to Italy.......2005-05-02

An excellent collection of articles and photographs about Italy. This is ideal for travelers.

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A guide to Transitions in Art
Umberto Eco book
Excellent introduction to the Aesthetics of Beauty
A delightful catalog and tease
The beauty is easy to define: It's all what it desperates us!

History of Beauty
Umberto Eco
Manufacturer: Rizzoli International Publications
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0847826465
Release Date: 2004-11-13

Amazon.com

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but it also has a lot to do with the beholder's cultural standards. In History of Beauty, renowned author Umberto Eco sets out to demonstrate how every historical era has had its own ideas about eye-appeal. Pages of charts that track archetypes of beauty through the ages ("nude Venus," "nude Adonis," and so forth) may suggest that this book is a historical survey of beautiful people portrayed in art. But History of Beauty is really about the history of philosophical and perceptual notions of perfection and how they have been applied to ideas and objects, as well as to the human body. This survey ranges over such themes as the mathematics of ideal proportions, the problem of representing ugliness, the fascination of the exotic and art for art's sake. Along the way, the text examines the intersection of standards of beauty with Christian belief, notions of the Sublime, the philosophies of Kant and Hegel, and bourgeois culture. More than 300 illustrations trace the history of Western art as it relates, in the broadest sense, to the topic of beauty. </p> Yet despite its wealth of information, History of Beauty is an odd and unsatisfying book. Beginning with ancient Greece and ending with a too-brief chapter on "The Beauty of the Media," the text focuses exclusively (and unapologetically) on the Western world. Ultimately, it seems that "beauty" serves simply as a sexy peg on which to hang an abbreviated history of Western culture. Readers expecting a sophisticated treatment of the subject will be surprised at the textbook-like design, with numbered sections and boldfaced words keyed to small-type excerpts from writings by thinkers ranging from Boethius to Barthes. The main narrative (or perhaps the translation from the Italian?) can be ponderous and awkward. Only nine of the 17 chapters were written by Eco; the remainder are by lesser-known Italian novelist Girolamo de Michele. All in all, it looks as though someone had the bright idea of translating a textbook for Italian students into English, hoping to coast on the fame of Eco's name. --Cathy Curtis

Book Description

What is beauty? What is art? What is taste and fashion? Is beauty something to be observed coolly and rationally or is it something dangerously involving? So begins Umberto Eco's intriguing journey into the aesthetics of beauty, in which he explores the ever-changing concept of the beautiful from the ancient Greeks to today. While closely examining the development of the visual arts and drawing on works of literature from each era, Eco broadens his enquiries to consider a range of concepts, including the idea of love, the unattainable woman, natural inspiration versus numeric formulas, and the continuing importance of ugliness, cruelty, and even the demonic.

Professor Eco takes us from classical antiquity to the present day, dispelling many preconceptions along the way and concluding that the relevance of his research is urgent because we live in an age of great reverence for beauty, "an orgy of tolerance, the total syncretism and the absolute and unstoppable polytheism of Beauty."

In this, his first illustrated book, Professor Eco offers a layered approach that includes a running narrative, abundant examples of painting and sculpture, and excerpts from writers and philosophers of each age, plus comparative tables. A true road map to the idea of beauty for any reader who wishes to journey into this wonderful realm with Eco's nimble mind as guide.

Customer Reviews:

A guide to Transitions in Art.......2007-06-03

I have been a fan of Mr. Eco's work since I read 'The Name of the Rose'. This book is a great example of the devotion Mr. Eco has in the imagery he describes in all of his other work (fictional and Non-Fictional). The book is sincere and a great guide though work which exemplifies the Beauty in the transitions Art has evolved though. The hard cover version of this book is beautiful indeed.

Umberto Eco book.......2007-02-18

The panels in this book are wonderful. Umberto Eco is known for excelllent research. If studying cosmetic history is something you are interested in doing, I highly recommend this book. Excellent choice!

Excellent introduction to the Aesthetics of Beauty.......2006-11-23

Umberto Eco is one of the world's leading experts on aesthetics and art, as well as being an outstanding novelist in his own right.

This work on the history of beauty is aimed at a general audience rather than a specialised one, and as such it abounds more in beautiful works of art and illustrations rather than scholarly analysis of art itself. However, it still contains an excellent history of the idea of beauty, and how artists through the ages have tried to implement somewhat abstract ideas, while philosophers and theologians have abstracted from art to apply artistic and creative terms to entities such as Platonic Forms or God.

One of the most interesting developments in the history of beauty was the identification of beauty with reality as it was in itself. Platonists identified the beautiful with the Good or the One, and Christians planted these ideas onto God. The notion that God was the most beautiful entity that existed, that God could be represented in art, and also that the cosmos in many ways is God's work of Art, expressed itself in many great works of art, poetry and architecture in the medieval period.

With the Renaissance, the concept of beauty became more grounded in human and earthly realities, and one sees far more focus on the beauty of material objects, nature, and people, as they are rather than their ideal nature. Art becomes more and more focused on the material world until the 20th century when in the era of late capitalism, art itself has become a consumable commodity and the chief virtue of art seems to be to cause pleasant feelings to arise in the consumer (something Andy Warhol satirises a lot in his works of art). Yet even in this period, artists still manage to create works of creative beauty which capture both the beautiful and the ugly, as we now see them.

This work is essential reading for anyone curious about Art and its history, and its relation to abstract ideas.

A delightful catalog and tease.......2006-08-16

This wonderful collection of art work History of Beauty edited by Umberto Eco attempts to answer the questions: What is beauty? What is art? What is taste and fashion? and Is beauty something to be observed coolly and rationally or is it something dangerously involving? With literally hundreds of reproductions of fine art works speaking to these questions, this book would be a joy even without the words. But of course the words tell the deeper story and attempt to give at least partial answers - sometimes directly, more often indirectly.

The chapters cover such things as the aesthetic ideal in ancient Greece, light and color in the Middle Ages, magic beauty between the 15th and 16th centuries, and romantic beauty. The reader and observer sees that the depiction of beauty has both changed and remained constant over the centuries. The symmetry, the color, the poetry might change with the art form while it is clear that the characteristics of the human bodies (both female and male) have not changed.

History of Beauty would make a wonderful coffee table book in any home except maybe those who find the naked body distasteful.

The beauty is easy to define: It's all what it desperates us!.......2006-01-17

This clever statement of Paul Valery works out as magnificent frame to remark this passionate and fabulous journey through the times. Umberto Eco is withtout any shadow of doubt, a true Renaissance man. His erudition becomes him a stalker, a wise explorer of the most significative aspects about the beauty in all orders. Of course, this ambitious and succesful project includes a whole vision since the initial premise of The Greeks around this concept, the Middle Age, Renaissance until our days.

But the visual support enriches still more, this invaluable information, the search of the beauty as main motive for many artists of the Past; its alluring charm ignited the febrile imagination of Novalis when affirmed: "Truth is beauty; beauty is truth".

All the positive adjectives of any reviewer will still remain incomplete to describe in its intrinsic grandness, the importance and transcendence of this outstanding essay.

The Name of the Rose: including Postscript to the Name of the Rose

Average customer rating:

perseverance
Can be a difficult read
Medieval history in technicolor
difficil but enjoyable
Facinating parts, but overlong in my opinion ...

The Name of the Rose: including Postscript to the Name of the Rose
Umberto Eco
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0156001314

Book Description

It is the year 1327. Franciscans in an Italian abbey are suspected of heresy, but Brother William of Baskerville’s investigation is suddenly overshadowed by seven bizarre deaths. Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Customer Reviews:

perseverance.......2007-06-09

Not being fluent in Italian I had to read this book in translation. I first got the english one (later it was also translated in Greek). What gave me a really hard time reading it, was the fact that the english translator had left the latin parts untranslated. Were they assuming that we all know Latin?. I know that there is now a book named the Key to the Name of the Rose which provides those translations but fifteen years ago when I first attempted to read this book it was unavailable. Does all that sound whiny and bitchy? Perhaps it is, but if I had let myself be discouraged by those difficulties I would have missed out on a truly superb book. This one has so many layers, so many levels on which it may be read that it could in my opinion be highly enjoyed by both the most profound lover of religious philosophy and the most avid fan of Sherlock Holmes-like "whodunits". Not to mention that the description of the library embodies every bibliophile's wet dream. And referring to some previous reviewers' comments that it supplies too much unnecessary information I will only mention that as Kavafy says sometimes the journey to a destination is more important to achieving the goal itself. So trust me and stick with this book to the end and you will not be disappointed. I most heartily commend it

Can be a difficult read.......2007-05-16

This book had a fantastic story and was rich in characterisation and setting however the book often used difficult and rare words, latin and introduced a vast array of characters which at times was hard to keep track of.

Medieval history in technicolor .......2007-05-06

This will be a difficult novel for anyone that does not have an academic background in the Middle Ages. Luckily, I have spent the past 3 years preparing with excellent surveys such as Norman Cantor (The Civilization of the Middle Ages), Joseph Strayer (The Middle Ages, 395-1500) and Morris Bishop (The Middle Ages). There is hardly a sentence that does not connect with a scholarly topic on the Middle Ages, which should come as no surprise as Eco was foremost a medieval scholar before he wrote this his first novel. The first 100 pages of the novel are like reading a medieval manuscript, trying to piece together what is known of Medieval history and figuring out what Eco is talking about, not unlike what happens with the characters in the novel. With that said, the novel can still be enjoyed by anyone without a medieval history background because of the excellent plot and Gothic atmosphere. The novel needs extensive annotations to fully appreciate (such as The Key to The Name of the Rose, although I found it lacking in many ways).

'Rose' works on many layers and can be approached from many perspectives. It's impossible to cover all the permutations in a single reading, indeed I have read it only once primarily a "reading for the plot" to understand the sequence of events. The movie helps in this regard, although it has some substantial "Hollywood" changes at the end and is much less subtle and interesting - recommend reading the novel first.

Most valuable for me was Eco brought to life the Guelphs vs Ghibellines dispute in color, shape and form that only fiction can achieve. It's the difference between intellectually understanding history versus emotionally experiencing, and for this alone the novel is priceless, the best of what historical fiction can achieve.

difficil but enjoyable.......2007-03-29

I am not going to include the plot and story of the novel, since it has already been done by many reviewers, quiet eloquently.
I finished this book in a grand total of 5 days which i unfortunately did not have. I say this not ostentatiously, nor do i mean that i skipped many parts. I read every thing. But to read this book, and to thoroughly enjoy it, one needs ample time. Again, as already stated before in other reviews, it is a difficult read especially if the reader is a "novice". 1. because i openly admit that i needed a dictionary( which i loved) and 2. because a reader has to distinguish between important passages that actually contribute to the story, and some passages that are merely there to dissuade the reader from attempting to brave this epic book.
The book is great, and is highly recommendable but i also had certain reservations. I did not understand why Mr. Umberto insisted on repeating many things in the novel. I can see why he would go over certain things to accentuate their importance,but certain times, i found it annoying as the same topic was expressed, only in different ways.
I dare say this is a pseudo mystery book. As Umberto himself says, the mystery in the book is only half , if even, as important to the actual story. The mystery, though, also plays an important part in giving this novel an actual shape.
Over all, excellent read. Read and revel in your intellectual glory.

Facinating parts, but overlong in my opinion ..........2007-03-07

This book gets rave reviews internationally. Unfortunately, I feel more lukewarm about it.

Don't get me wrong, it has a lot going for it.

It's a murder mystery, with insight on the beginnings of philosophy and also on religion during the Middle Ages. As stated in other reviews, Eco gives detailed historic accounts of catholicism specifically centering on different monastic orders, among many other things and, bizarrely, on whether or not Christ laughed. I was scratching my head on that one ... until I got to the end.

Clever, Eco, very clever.

The problem? Wading through the details, to GET to the end.

The story is narrated by a now old Adso of Elk. He recounts his time as a novice monk while accompaning William of Baskerville to an Abby where strange things are a going on!

William, the elder Monk, uses logic to solve a murder mystery, as well as reveal the secrets of the huge library at the Abby where the murders took place. And he does so in a manner that smacks of Baskerville alum, Sherlock Holmes. From the beginning, William displays great powers of deductive reasoning, especially thru syllogisms. He becomes the sane voice in a world ruled by insane greed and old ideas. (The other monks aren't nice on the subject of women. And thus William becomes a hero in my eyes with his defense of the fairer sex- from the BIBLE no less!)

The library and it's books are central to the Abby, and thereby are central to the story. Believe me, there are many secrets to be revealed. Sex- homosexual and straight- all over the supposedly celebate Abby, hidden passageways, strange deaths- which all point to the oddly laid out library and those who control it.

Yes, there is a compelling mystery in it, but, as I said, the book takes too long to solve it. Too much information dumping, however interesting it is at times, slows the story down. Also the untranslated latin phrases, somtimes entire paragraphs, becomes frustrating as well. (Although it made me appreciate Harry Potter and all the little latin terms Rowling uses to cast her characters' spells!)

The eventual resolution- the revealing of the actual murderer, rocks, I'll give it that, even if the motive was strained, at best. Too bad we have to wade through so much obsecure information to get there.

::shrug::

OH, the big discussion between factions of monks on whether or not "Christ was poor" fascinated me. Not the overlong blathering of the monks, but the one line that summed it all up by the wise William:

The debate about Christ (and thereby the Church) being poor is not about the having of property,

"but about keeping or renouncing the right to legislate on earthly matters."

In other words- it's all about POWER.

Ah the more things change, the more things stay the same.

Average customer rating:

Great
An Epic Occult Novel of Immense Proportions!
Everything I was looking for
Worth the journey
Intimate view of a Mediteranean mind, intoxicated with history.

Foucault's Pendulum
Umberto Eco
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 015603297X

Book Description

Bored with their work, three Milanese editors cook up "the Plan," a hoax that connects the medieval Knights Templar with other occult groups from ancient to modern times. This produces a map indicating the geographical point from which all the powers of the earth can be controlled—a point located in Paris, France, at Foucault’s Pendulum. But in a fateful turn the joke becomes all too real, and when occult groups, including Satanists, get wind of the Plan, they go so far as to kill one of the editors in their quest to gain control of the earth.

Orchestrating these and other diverse characters into his multilayered semiotic adventure, Eco has created a superb cerebral entertainment.

Customer Reviews:

Great.......2007-06-23

Buy a copy and settle in during your next plane trip. You will be unhappy if the plane ride is done before the book.

An Epic Occult Novel of Immense Proportions!.......2007-06-16

Eco has created a classic and the man knows how to do it! This work is a great piece of his genius. The amount of information that this book covers and the style (fictitious novel) that it is written in is a mind blowing task. The historical & occult references that are covered extend from time immemorial to present day. The story line is only secondary to the historical and elusive meanings behind it. One could go on forever about this book and one could write a whole book on a single chapter of Foucault's Pendulum, but if you like to read between the lines and cross reference the subjects that are covered in this book, then you will have a field day.
Foucault's Pendulum is no "supermarket paperback"... You have to be devoted to understanding and being on the same level as the audience it was intended for. This book is analogous to an aircaftcarrier as to Dan Brown's junk being a rubber dingy.

Everything I was looking for.......2007-06-02

This is my first Eco novel, and it is certainley not going to be my last. This book had everything I was looking for in a novel the Templars, Conspiracies, The Occult, and Brazil. Please take the time to read this outstanding literary work for yourself.

Worth the journey.......2007-05-28

I will admit that it took me 2 years, an Oxford Dictionary, and an internet connection to read this book. I picked it up the first time and put it down after the first chapter. The second time, I made it halfway through. It was on the third try that it captured me and I couldn't put it down (except to grab my dictionary and highlighter).

I can attest that the theme is worth the read, although the theme is almost ironic in lieu of what it takes to read the novel. After finishing the novel, I bought the intellectual must-read The Name of the Rose. In two short years, I will write a review of that book as well.

Intimate view of a Mediteranean mind, intoxicated with history........2007-05-14

I can't believe anyone else in the world would bother to read this book but me--I am looking for the origins of science in Masonry. Yet it was a bestseller! Go figure!

For the duration of reading this book I felt I was incarcerated inside the other--the Mediterranean mind. Not the transparent geometric mind of the Anglo-Saxon, but the drunk-with-words, intoxication-with-cultural-reference, of a southern European. If you don't value that confrontation, I would advise, don't read this book.

This is a novel, but not the usual man-and-woman, glory-in-battle type of novel. It is written as fiction, but really it a dense treatise on hermetic wisdom. Frequent quotations from the literature persuade me it is sound and scholarly. Extraordinarily, at the same time it also relates the experience of a man living in today's world, how it feels, what its issues are. References to modern pop life intermix with references to 17th C illuminati. I found the representation of a modern consciousness confronting history, though a Mediterranean consciousness, convincing and exhilarating. This is one of the ways to be, that I am usually not.

The account of the origin of mystical literature starts a little late for my taste, with the fall of the Templars in the 14th C. I lean on "The Religion of Technology" by David Noble for the origin of the mystical tradition behind the rise of modern science. That's not the theme here, though the author does include Baconianism as one of the threads of his playful "plan."

Part of the Mediterraneanism is that the novel ends up meaning nothing, amounting to nothing. It is whimsical intellectual play with history, it is someone sharing their intoxication with the parts of history that made no sense, that went nowhere. It is history as souflee.

I thoroughly enjoyed it, I enjoyed the company of the narrator, I felt in expert hands throughout, it's a leisurely romp that doesn't take itself too seriously. It creates a bubble of ontological mystery in which I found my wife and our cat snuggling up together very profound. For a while, on finishing it this evening, anything seems possible, pregnant with wisdom. I'll be better tomorrow.

Average customer rating:

The snapshot images speak for themselves in this captivating compilation

Libraries
Candida Hýýfer
Manufacturer: Schirmer/Mosel
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 3829601867

Book Description

For almost 30 years Candida Höfer has photographed interiors, mostly representational spaces accessible to the public, such as staircases, lobbies, reading halls or exhibition spaces. Rather than staging them, she takes their picture in the state she finds them, with great discreetness and a touch of humour.

Libraries are a book producer's dream. Since nobody photographs libraries as beautifully as Höfer, it seemed only natural for Schirmer/Mosel to dedicate her next publication to the splendid and intimate cathedrals of knowledge across Europe and the US: the Escorial in Spain, the Whitney Museum in New York, Villa Medici in Rome, the Hamburg University library, the Bibliothèque nationale de France in Paris, the Museo Archeologico in Madrid, and Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, to name just a few. Almost completely devoid of people, as is Candida Höfer's trademark, these pictures radiate a comforting serenity that is exceptional in contemporary photography.

Customer Reviews:

The snapshot images speak for themselves in this captivating compilation.......2006-08-06

137 color plates distinguish Candida Hofer Libraries, beautifully capturing seats of knowledge around the world from the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York to the Bibliotheque nationale de France in Paris, the Villa Medici in Rome and others. Aside from a brief introduction, no essays intersperse the eye-catching plates, each of which takes up a whole page with a blank page opposite in a two-page spread. The snapshot images speak for themselves in this captivating compilation highly recommended for bibliophile's coffee tables and photography shelves.

Average customer rating:

Interesting collection of essays
Reader from Israel
Amorphous Lump o' Eco
Does Disney Own The Planet?
on travels in hyperreality

Travels in Hyperreality (Harvest Book)
Umberto Eco
Manufacturer: Harvest Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Book Description

Eco displays in these essays the same wit, learning, and lively intelligence that delighted readers of The Name of the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum. His range is wide, and his insights are acute, frequently ironic, and often downright funny. Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Customer Reviews:

Interesting collection of essays.......2004-01-23

Many readers will probably be attracted to books like these after reading and enjoying Eco's novels, especially The Name of the Rose and Foucalt's Pendulum. If so, be warned. As I discovered, the Eco of the essay is NOT the Eco of the novels. Both Ecos are eccentric, clever and witty. However, the Eco of essays is a more radical and postmodern thinker. His topics can be seen by some as mundane. He's interested in pop culture and some of his theories are a tad obscure.

This collection is a series of loosely connected essays by Eco. It's an interesting book to read not cover-to-cover but to read an essay once in a while until the book is finished. That way the attitudes can sink in. The biggest fault I found with the book is certain essays to do with semiotics have arguments that are complex and hard to follow. This is understandable as they're taken from more specialised publications whereas in the novels, he strives to bring his ideas to the general public.

The essays I found to be most likeable are Travels in Hyperreality (about the proliferation of wax museums in the US and the general obsession with replicas in society), Reports from the Global Village (a series of essays on media), an analysis of Casablanca and In Praise of St Thomas (Eco's PhD was on Thomas so his views can be seen as fairly authoritative).

A good read but not brilliant.

Reader from Israel.......2003-08-08

Well this was my third book by Mr. Eco and dthe continue to get worse. The Rose was excellent and made me hungry for more but after the Pendulum and this Hyper-Realty bit I'm going to have to call it quits. The author has the ability t oput together a great novel such as the Rose, I wish it were mine, but the other stuff is just not happening.

Amorphous Lump o' Eco.......2003-03-17

Umberto Eco is clearly a genius - his fictional works testify to that. I assume his reputation as a semiologist is well earned (since I know little about the subject beyond what Walker Percy digested).

Unfortunately, I found "Travels in Hyperreality" to be a hastily pasted collection of observations and commentary that is not really worthy of Eco's growing portfolio. The book was sometimes interesting, but dry and tasteless. I thought the whole lot of it could be encapsulated in Eco's strange observations concerning "the wearing of blue jeans." That is, if you're really, really, really into Eco and want to soak up everything he says, then this book will not disappoint. If, on the other hand, you have limited time on your hands, then Eco's fictional works, or "Search for the Perfect Language," are far better temporal investments.

Perhaps I didn't get it, or perhaps it was a mistake reading much of it in a bar in Santa Clara, but I would assert that this is only a book for the Eco purist.

Does Disney Own The Planet?.......2003-02-01

A deliriously funny trip through the mad places the earth's inhabitants call home. Eco skewers like "kitsch-ka-bob" the artificial pseudo paradises we have created with all our so-called modern conveniences. What have we turned our cities into, by the way? Do we really understand art?

If you've ever driven through rural Arkansas or Texas and wanted to capture with words the seemingly inexplicable, paradoxical sights along the way, it's been done for you and can be enjoyed in these side-splitting pages.

Lots of fun.

on travels in hyperreality.......2001-04-20

i got this book because of the essay by which it is entitled. it is a great work, and a basic reading for those interested on the topics of hyperreality, simulated or thematized environments, and the like. quite contemporary tho Eco's work is Baudrillard's la precession des simulacres. so they are from the 70's and much more has been written on the topic, but these texts are, as i said, basic to understand all the rest. eco's work is quite openning ranging from xanaduswax museums, the theming of nature, etc. it is worthy.

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Mystical, intelligently shaped novel
She moves in mysterious ways
Are we merely the sum of our memories?
Madeleines and Rosebuds
Where's the Flame?

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
Umberto Eco
Manufacturer: Harcourt
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Binding: Hardcover

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History of Beauty
Baudolino
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The Island of the Day Before
On Literature

ASIN: 0151011400

Amazon.com

The premise of Umberto Eco's The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, may strike some readers as laughably unpromising, and others as breathtakingly rich. A sixty-ish Milanese antiquarian bookseller nicknamed Yambo suffers a stroke and loses his memory of everything but the words he has read: poems, scenes from novels, miscellaneous quotations. His wife Paola fills in the bare essentials of his family history, but in order to trigger original memories, Yambo retreats alone to his ancestral home at Solara, a large country house with an improbably intact collection of family papers, books, gramophone records, and photographs. The house is a museum of Yambo's childhood, conventiently empty of people, except of course for one old family servant with a long memory--an apt metaphor for the mind. Yambo submerges himself in these artifacts, rereading almost everything he read as a school boy, blazing a meandering, sometimes misguided, often enchanting trail of words. Flares of recognition do come, like "mysterious flames," but these only signal that Yambo remembers something; they do not return that memory to him. It is like being handed a wrapped package, the contents of which he can only guess.

Within the limitations of Yambo's handicap and quest, Eco creates wondrous variety, wringing surprise and delight from such shamelessly hackneyed plot twists as the discovery of a hidden room. Illustrated with the cartoons, sheet music covers, and book jackets that Yambo uncovers in his search, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana can be read as a love letter to literature, a layered excavation of an Italian boyhood of the 1940s, and a sly meditation on human consciousness. Both playful and reverent, it stands with The Name of the Rose and The Island of the Day Before as among Eco's most successful novels. --Regina Marler

Book Description

Yambo, a sixtyish rare-book dealer who lives in Milan, has suffered a loss of memory-he can remember the plot of every book he has ever read, every line of poetry, but he no longer knows his own name, doesn't recognize his wife or his daughters, and remembers nothing about his parents or his childhood. In an effort to retrieve his past, he withdraws to the family home somewhere in the hills between Milan and Turin.There, in the sprawling attic, he searches through boxes of old newspapers, comics, records, photo albums, and adolescent diaries. And so Yambo relives the story of his generation: Mussolini, Catholic education and guilt, Josephine Baker, Flash Gordon, Fred Astaire. His memories run wild, and the life racing before his eyes takes the form of a graphic novel. Yambo struggles through the frames to capture one simple, innocent image: that of his first love.

A fascinating, abundant new novel-wide-ranging, nostalgic, funny, full of heart-from the incomparable Eco.

Customer Reviews:

Mystical, intelligently shaped novel.......2007-06-16

An older book dealer suddenly and unexpectedly holds in his hands Shakespeare's first folio from 1623 and the shock of the discovery triggers a coma from which the narrator is attempting to recover his memory and re-discover himself. It's an intriguing premise as the book dealer revisits an attic to dig through boxes of his old books to learn what light they can shed on his remembrance of lost time. The books, dating from his childhood, trigger memories of life in Fascist Italy, as he re-learns who he is by what he has already read, including children's tales, religious works, advertising, comic books, paperback novels and war propoganda. I admire the intelligence of Eco, a scholar whose style is fluid, clear, articulate, erudite and engaging. I also admire the translation of the novel, which reads beautifully and flows naturally. This novel seems self-indulgent in places and has a great many cultural and historical references, which will elude readers outside Italy. Of all the works referenced in this novel, there didn't seem to be enough of the real masterpieces here. Perhaps, that's the tragedy that any reader may risk by overcommitting to reading time squandered upon the works of lesser literary lights. By the way, this novel is masterfully illustrated by the publisher. I was intrigued by Eco and am well into Foucault's Pendulum, which is more impressive for the wit and sheer intellectual luminosity of the writing but that's another story for another day. I may well end up giving Eco's list a run for its money, if the rest of his work is as good as these two very fine but not quite great novels. Time spent reading Eco clearly is time well spent.

She moves in mysterious ways.......2007-06-10

Fictional narrative is a strange thing. It can be changed and re-organized as the writer wants. The reader has the passive role of accepting the pre-arranged. Exceptions exist, such as Cortazar's "Hopscotch" and other books. Come to think of it, Umberto Eco's latest "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" is a book about the power of fiction and it handles an unorthodox form of narrative. It is a illustrated novel - for grown-ups.

The pictures come as a bonus and as a curse. The colorful book is easy to the eyes, but at the same time, not always is the writer able to articulate image and text. There is a connection most of the time, but not most of the time the picture is so fundamental for the narrative, it is just a plus.

The plot is about a man who lost his memory and while trying to recuperate it finds the books that were important to him when he was a kid and adolescent. Both writer and narrator, Giambattista Bodoni, try to elicit the connections. On the other hand, they aren't that interesting.

Eco is one of the most important semiotician working today, and this is always there in "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana". The book is loaded with symbols and messages, and never fails to deliver an essay throughout the narrative. This at the same time is provocative and frustrating. While the readers starts thinking about many topics, one has to recognize that such lectures never come at the right time.

Are we merely the sum of our memories?.......2007-06-08

At first, I had trouble getting into this novel, but once I realized that the narrator is a stroke victim trying to reconstruct his memories and figure out who he is, it was easy to float in the swim of things. His memory is a wild jumble of all the novels, comic books, songs, and movies from his childhood. Once I realized it was not necessary to identify every quotation (We can leave that to the grad students into semiotics), it became an easy read. What makes the novel delightful is page after page of full-color illustrations of the books, comic books, match covers, movie posters, cigarette pack labels, and record album covers that he is discovering in the boxes and closets at his grandfather's old house. (He makes his own Proust references.) If you like Art Deco, you will love all of these colorful little pictures. As the narrator slowly pieces together his past as a boy in WW II Italy, things build to a great climax. Because of all the pictures alternating with short paragraphs, this book quite literally does become a fast page-turner in the final chapter. This is not a light breezy read. It's going to take some intellectual committment on the part of the reader, but the ultimate rewards will be worth it when you hit the payoffs of the final chapters. I certainly will not forget this book.

Madeleines and Rosebuds.......2007-05-31

This is a minor book by a major writer, but a fascinating one. Proust had his madeleine, Citizen Kane his Rosebud; Eco has a treasure trove of period artifacts ranging from cigarette packets to fashion magazines, all reproduced here in full color. On that level, it is like visiting a junk store or thumbing through the catalogue of a museum of popular culture.

The premise is promising. The narrator, Giambattista Bodoni, nicknamed Yambo, is an Italian dealer in rare books. As the result of a stroke, he has lost all memory of things that have happened to him at first hand, but retained all the knowledge he has gained from others, for example in the course of his copious reading. As he attempts to recover his past, he has only his books to guide him, together with various objects salvaged from his youth. Will one of them be the key to unlock all his memories at once, or will he find himself in a series of small ephiphanies, or not at all?

The book falls into three parts. The first is the most interesting in a conventional novelistic sense, in that it deals with his personal relationships: with his wife Paola, his daughter Nicoletta, an old friend Gianni, and his young assistant Sibilla. But it is quite unusual in the way that Yambo juggles references to a vast range of literature in an attempt to make sense of this revewed life. It also raises philosophical questions about the way we tend to "write" our lives as we live them. Yambo has no idea, for instance, whether he has ever had an affair with Sibilla; he can certainly imagine several ways the relationship might have gone, but these are literary scenarios; he has no idea whether any of them took place in real life, or if so whether the "real-life" attraction was not merely the acting out of a previous literary scenario.

In the second and longest part of the book, Yambo goes back alone to his childhood home in the foothills of the Savoy Alps. Looking for his particular Rosebud, he hunts through childhood comics, adventure stories, children's encyclopedias, school readers, and records of popular music. Together they tell the history of Italy from 1935 to 1945. The objects themselves are interesting, and Yambo's discoveries about what it felt like to live during the heyday and fall of fascism may contain much that is new for the reader also. But, even for Yambo, it is mostly a third-party interest; the artifacts seldom elicit the intense emotional reactions that would unlock the past on a personal level. Although we can share experiences that are common to every growing child, such as the discovery of sex, true Rosebuds are personal, private, unique, and non-transferable.

It is curious that the two themes which come to dominate the latter part of the book -- Yambo's search for his first love and his specific memories of the last days of the war --- occur almost without visual correlatives at all. The catalogue approach of the second section of the book (almost exactly half the total) in the end gets nowhere. The final part takes an entirely different tack. It contains some wonderful material, especially a gripping wartime incident with the Partisans, and ends with a beauty of its own. But the illustrations, which had hitherto fascinated by their authenticity, ultimately give way to third-rate montages by the author. Fortunately, this visual let-down is in no way matched by Eco's prose, which remains as virtuosic as ever.

Where's the Flame?.......2007-03-31

I started out an avid Eco fan. I read Focoult's Pendulum. Twice! Name of the Rose, Island... and Misreadings. Loved the first two, learned a lot from all of Umberto's books. Brilliant man and tireless writer.

But when I read The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, I kept glancing ahead to see if it would get better. Quite a bit went into the pictoral essay of 20th Century book art. I gave Eco the benefit of a doubt; after all, when has he ever let me down before? Though I commend his errudition...isn't it dreadful when the word comes up in a review? It isn't enough to bring a promising premise out of the flatline of death (no pun intended). The final act of the book just plunges into an absurd pagent of kitsch, that must have been a tribute to pop-culture icons, but in the end the payoff was miniscule.

My overwhelming aftertast of The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana was disappointment. It seemed the book had promise to deliver the kind of excitement and intrigue of Focault and Name...but instead, ended up reading like a bibliography catalog of Out-of-Print/Permanently Discontinued books that died on dusty shelves, now long forgotten.

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Roberto/Umberto's "forest of invented nature"; "island of solitude"
The Blush is Off The Rose
Sumptuous, galactic, star-clustered... literary beauties like the seas of eternity
Tedious stuff
His second-best book

The Island of the Day Before
Umberto Eco
Manufacturer: Harcourt
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Foucault's Pendulum
The Name of the Rose: including Postscript to the Name of the Rose
Baudolino
The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana
On Literature

ASIN: 0151001510

Book Description

In 1643 a castaway comes upon an abandoned ship anchored off a desert island. As he explores the vessel’s mysterious cargo, he revisits the events of his tempestuous youth-and limns his era’s obsession with science and navigation. Translated by William Weaver. A Helen and Kurt Wolff Book

Customer Reviews:

Roberto/Umberto's "forest of invented nature"; "island of solitude" .......2006-11-15

"This was his forest, where he went as unhappy lovers go into forests; here was his invented nature ..." (106).

Like most people, I fell in love with Umberto Eco's writings after the beautifully stimulating medieval novel, the Name of the Rose. Foucalt's Pendulum only added to my esteem with its esoteric, occult labyrinths of secret wisdom, Templar knights, conspiracies, detective-religious mystery, computers, philosophy and psychology. What next; where could the aging, but burgeoning author of novels possible go from there? The Island of the Day Before. It's a semiotic island-jungle; and good luck!

I'm still not quite sure how to reckon with this one: Is it really a "novel" at all? Some reviewers & Eco fans find it to be exotically, inter-galatic; others, simply a dry, humorless mess - one of Eco's least attractive novels (although it appears from a quick glance of reviews that the same split has occurred twice more with Baudolino & Queen Loana). I guess I'm in the middle on this one, slightly leaning towards giving Eco the benefit of the doubt. Although I read it a few months ago (too often with a glass of wine in hand) I still haven't come to terms with it; partially because having read a few, generally insipidly pedantic, but informative, essays from Rocco Capozzi's "Reading Eco" (1997) I learned a little bit more about semiotics, confirming my original thoughts while reading the Island of the Day Before that the book is a palimpsest; there are several layers - often to be reckoned with simultaneously - and the book must be re-read.

Ostensibly there's a story there. It's taken from the journal (each of Eco's previous novels derrive from mysterious manuscripts) of a 17th century Italian noble named Roberto who fights in the 30 Years War, ends up in Paris, hob-nobs with other noblemen, as well as the Cardinals Richlieu and Mazzarin and winds up shipwrecked on a ship at the international date-line. In fact, the whole story/stories is/are really his creations and/or Eco's wanderings in time.

There's lot's of interesting 17th century marginallia, characters, ideas, thoughts, art, and so on. Eco captures the spirit of the age, as far as I can tell, with his use of technologies & ventures of the day such as the search for longitude, medicines (although, I'm not sure about the wounding of the dog episodes), diving bells, telescopes, weapons, and so forth. He also incorporates an amazing amount of material from the literature of the period, expressing philosophy, poetry and science through various characters. On the flip side, Eco doesn't really capture 17th century speech patterns, in my opinion. Maybe I'm off here and people in the 17th century did speak like this, but the language sometimes comes across as pretty modern to me; I hear Eco more than his characters. It's as though he can't keep himself out of the novel. But maybe I'm on to something that's intended. I guess I'm becoming an Eco-apologist! The love story is somewhat romantic, but what captivated me more-so were insightful lines like: "Love makes us the enemy of ourselves" (117), or "Presence takes the edge off hunger, and distance sharpens it" (124). What would be really, really helpful would be a "key" in the vein of Haft & White's "The Key to the Name of the Rose" (1997) - there's plenty of potential here for Eco scholars.

Anyway, let me warn the masses here. The VERY heavy, covert doses of semiotics (signs & symbols) as well as overt verbosity (have a dictionary nearby, preferably the OED!) threaten to get in the way of the story and is going to be off-putting to most readers looking for a "good story" to delve into. You won't make it through. That said, if you're even remotely interested in semiotics, philosophy, the 17th century, or the post-modern novel, you'll find a gold mine here. And, as a bonus, you'll probably get (or at least appreciate) the symbolism of the mysterious orange dove. Something to let seep into your soul...

This is a book I simultaneously liked and disliked many times in the reading it. This is why 3-stars seems appropriate and honest here: the book was not always enjoyable to read, took some work, and came across as pedantic & even narcissistic at times. Eco's name, afterall, is larger than the title and that bugs. But Eco has a scholarly reputation which pre-dates his novel writing by decades, and whose ever met a PhD without an eco, I mean "EGO" :-) Overtime, I've found the book to be thought-provoking and rewarding in varying ways. I'm still trying to figure out how exactly, but I am glad I finished it. At the very least it was a unique adventure into the 17th century.

Eco will be read many, many years hence and will probably go down as one of the greats of our times. I'm looking forward to Baudolino and other Eco works.

"...he made the wounded city into the Land of his personal unsated Tenderness, an island of his solitude" (124).

The Blush is Off The Rose.......2006-07-28

"The Island of the Day Before" is a sad relic from a talented and brilliant author. Certainly people will go on praising Eco (as they should), but TIDB remains a flacid exercise in overplotting. Eco has become a sort of literary Andy Warhol - selling his name more than his work. In trying to achieve a Kafkaesque "portrait of an instant", Eco merely puts on display what was better left as a study or exercise to be burned after his demise.

The Island of the Day Before lacks virtually all of the elements that make a story worth reading. Indeed, Eco's inversion of the rules of good fiction is the main attraction for his works. But in The Island of the Day Before, the reader must trudge through all of Eco's autoerotic complexity solely for the sake of that complexity. Following is a parody of the sort of nonsense that permeates this book:

"Robert opened the door to the cabin, and was confronted with the object of his dread. From the planked ceiling hung a hemp rope, knotted every three inches with an inverted half-stitch, each pinned through by a tortoiseshell ladypoker scented with ambergris. At the end of the rope, approximately four feet from the floor, and thus fourteen hands from a point bisecting a line drawn between Robert's right elbow and the cleft of his chin, was a metal hoop. The rope was fastened to the metal hoop with an overwrapping style, which Robert immediately recognized as the "Bosun's Burgher" favoured by the Patagonian fishermen. The metal ring was welded to a torus, and the center of the torus circumscribed a small teak box with a brass hasp and seven lotus shaped inlays. Each of the inlays contained a tiny portrait of one of the seven sybils standing on one of the seven hills of Rome, but only five of the sybils were depicted with their hands upraised. The other two sybils hand their hands clasped behind their backs. The first of the sybils with upraised hands was holding a rod, which twisted along its own length, with radial spikes of hexagonal cross section, each of which was terminated by an inverted cusp which was in turn pierced by a crescent. The ends of the crescents spiralled back in upon themselves, but they alternated, with some facing right and some facing left, and still others, in a trick of the artist's skill, facing directly toward the viewer's navel, no matter where one stood..."

Sumptuous, galactic, star-clustered... literary beauties like the seas of eternity.......2006-05-22

Let me start by saying that I consider Umberto Eco the finest writer of this century.

His mastery of words, his elegaic visions translated into prose, his character depth like bottomless wells, his intricate plotlines and signposts of erudite information... above all his love of symbology in conjunction with his love of words woven into his overwhelming ability to create riveting storylines endears his writing to me so that rumours of a new "Eco" makes me almost breathless.

That said, let me explain the sort of readership who will enjoy this cartwheeling extravaganza of hope, loneliness, isolation, history, intellectualism and richness of detail.

1. You will need a larger vocabulary than that necessary for the reading of "Harry Potter", or you will willingly embrace the opportunity to increase your word-store by keeping a dictionary nearby. By doing this, you will be following in the great tradition endorsed by Tolkien and Samuel Johnson.

2. You will need to enjoy a storyline that is anything but straightforward. In this novel in particular, Umberto Eco takes many streams of narrative, delves also into the purely descriptive, and weaves it all into a story that is not limited by the linear.

3. You will need to find beautifully phrased writing and well-coloured choice of words intoxicating and delicious.

4. You will need not to be put off by a storyline that moves between different time periods in the life of the main character.

5. You will need to be ready for something that is more demanding than genre fiction.

6. You will need an explorative excitement in fiction.

If you feel the above points could describe you, take the plunge into the wild and star-canopied oceans stirred up by the ferris wheels of imagination. The story, as much as I can describe it briefly, concerns a young man who, semi-conscious, washes up near a ship-wreck some little distance off an island. What led to his being there, the story of the ship itself, the young man's past, the elements of history that paint a part of his history too, considerations of meaning, solitide, companionship, swordsmanship, sieges, elegance, naive eagerness, the meaning of a dove flame-orange in colour, the meaning of this island "of the day before", courage, foolishness, wisdom, speculations and wonders are like clusters in the great galaxy of Umberto Eco's writing. It's vivid, exciting, rich with the sort of descriptiveness that tumbles hastily, one word or phrase chasing another in an endless dance of cataclysmic wonder.

This novel was so immensely satisfying for me that I sighed as though replete after a banquet when I finished it. I find the images created by the words coming to my mind often. Some reviewers have said it's not one of Umberto Eco's best novels; I disagree. It was delight after delight after delight.

For those willing to drown and be reborn within the delicious writing of this work... enjoy!

Tedious stuff.......2006-02-28

I'd have to say this is pretty tedious stuff. I searched and searched in vain for some spark of greatness, but it simply isn't there. Many of the comments from other reviewers about the twists and turns of the plot, and the depth of Eco's knowledge are probably accurate. However these alone do not make great writing.

If I am honest I'd have to say that this is fairly badly written. It is barely coherent in places and, at the end, I am not entirely sure what the point of the novel was. Unless the point was to peer inside the mindset of a provincial Italian from a few centuries ago. However is that kind of subject matter worth an entire novel?

As noted much of the fanfare seems to surround Eco's evident knowledge base, but this has not been put to good use in this attempt. The character seems very cartoonish at times, and the style of writing (jumping from past to present amongst other things) is clunky.

If this were not attached to a great name I reckon we'd see many more negative comments and, indeed, it is so bad I doubt it would have been considered worthy of publishing.

His second-best book.......2005-09-27

I guess I have a different attitude to Umberto Eco than most Amazon readers, because I thought this book was superb--not quite as good as "The Name of the Rose," but better than either "Baudolino" or "Foucault's Pendulum." Parts of this book are simply wonderful, both when Eco is flashing back to Roberto's former life as well as when he's describing Roberto's life on the marooned ship. As usual, Eco tends to go off on plenty of philosophical, religious and scientific tangents. Some of these are delightful, some a tad irrelevant, depending on your individual proclivities--but as a reader, you can easily choose to skim through those that don't interest you, while paying more attention to the ones that catch your eye.

The one thing that disappointed me a bit was the ending. Mainly, I was a victim of my own expectations--one of the earlier reviews led me to believe that there was some great revelation to be found at the end of the book. There is, I suppose, but not on the scale that I was expecting.

If you've only read "The Name of the Rose," you might find this book slightly perplexing; but if you're read other books by Eco, and enjoyed them, I can't imagine that you won't like this one. It's classic Eco, and in my opinion it's his most successful novel after "The Name of the Rose."

Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (Advances in Semiotics)

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What does it mean to mean something?

Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (Advances in Semiotics)
Umberto Eco
Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0253203988

Customer Reviews:

What does it mean to mean something?.......1997-11-14

If you want to know what meaning 'means' in linguistics inquiry then this is an incredible volume. Eco's discussion of theories of meaning based on dictionaries and encyclopedias and the relationship between the two shoud be read by linguists and computer scientists alike as this debate (which is really the heart of much of the book) has direct bearing on theories of grammar and artificial intelligence (much to the detriment of most modern theories of the latter). The only real complaint I have is that the initial chapter is quite dense and definitely not understandable for the reader not versed in at least some of his concepts--I had family members who wanted to know what I study and so I gave them this volume and they could not get past the first chapter to the meat of the book, which is very well written.

Theory of Semiotics (Advances in Semiotics)

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never again will words be the same
Symbols: Development of a Methodology of Communication

Theory of Semiotics (Advances in Semiotics)
Umberto Eco
Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
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Binding: Paperback

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Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language (Advances in Semiotics)
Semiotics: The Basics
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The Role of the Reader: Explorations in the Semiotics of Texts (Advances in Semiotics)
The Limits of Interpretation (Advances in Semiotics)

ASIN: 0253202175

Book Description

'Eco's very erudite and provocative book draws on philosophy, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, and aesthetics and refers to a wide range of scholarship, both European and American. It raises many fascinating questions which merit considerable probing.'-Language in Society

Customer Reviews:

never again will words be the same.......2003-07-24

I stepped off the edge of normal thinking and rose to new heights of awareness. I have appreciated Mr. Eco as an author of great books, but I see him now as Dr. Eco, the man who makes words speak new meaning. When I listen to people, friends, family, (yes and God forgive me, TV talking heads) I no longer hear what they say, I see they are trying to express ideas with words they do not control. I just wish I could control them, the words, as Dr. Eco does. An excellent read, and excellant study and a great way to build your mind. Thank you Dr. Eco, mille gracie, mille, mille gracie.

Symbols: Development of a Methodology of Communication.......2000-10-27

The Italian Umberto Eco is a towering figure. A literary critic, novelist, and semiotician (studying symbols and symbol systems), he gained international recognition with "The Name of the Rose" (1980) in which he brought the study of semiotics to fiction. In this book, "Theory of Semiotics", he makes his contribution to the theoretical study of signs encompassing all cultural phenomena. His focus is on the development of a methodology of communication.

Like Roland Barthes, Eco starts from the foundations of semiotics in Saussure (Course in General Linguistics: who developed the idea of sign-systems and the sign/signified distinction, as well as the distinction between langue/parole - language and speech) and Claude Levi-Strauss (Structural Anthropology). Yet Eco surpasses this tradition to move into new territory, recognizing the limits to structuralism and Saussure's ideas. He recognizes, for example, that meaning is not merely governed by structure, but also interactively constructed by the reader/interpreter, who often inserts or fills-in missing meaning to construct a coherent picture.

Those interested in an introductory work to this fascinating field should be pointed to Eco's work "Semiotics and the Philosophy of Language" which is easier to start with.

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