Foucault's Pendulum
2 journalers for this copy...
Typical of Eco's writing: dense prose, thousands of references that most readers - myself included - could never understand or decipher, or find the time to look up. Yet it is an entertaining novel that should hold your interest for its 600+ pages.
Mailed to another bookcrosser - Mojosmom - 3-17-03.
Just received this book. I really liked Name of the Rose, so I hope I'll like this one, too.
It certainly held my interest, though I admit it took a bit to get into it.
Our narrator, Casaubon, is a doctoral student, preparing his dissertation on the Templars. His friends, Belbo and Diotallevi, work for a publisher who has a side business in vanity publishing. One day, a man calling himself Colonel Ardenti arrives with a manuscript, one in which he has, he says, decoded the truth about the Templars, a truth that says they are still extant, with a deep secret. Casaubon and the editors decide that they will prepare a manuscript of their own, on similar conspiratorial lines. They will gather up all sorts of bits from hermetic theories, Rosicrucianism, Brazilian voodoo, and any other odd ideas they can come up with, feed them all into a computer, and come up with a grand scheme. But it appears they may have accidentally stumbled upon the truth . . .
Complex, confusing, brilliant, intelligent, a splendid skewering of conspiracy theorists (I broke into loud laughter when, in the midst of medieval crusaders and Kabbalah, someone cries out, "I'a Cthulhu! I'a S'ha-t'n!") and an interesting mystery. Well worth the trouble.
Our narrator, Casaubon, is a doctoral student, preparing his dissertation on the Templars. His friends, Belbo and Diotallevi, work for a publisher who has a side business in vanity publishing. One day, a man calling himself Colonel Ardenti arrives with a manuscript, one in which he has, he says, decoded the truth about the Templars, a truth that says they are still extant, with a deep secret. Casaubon and the editors decide that they will prepare a manuscript of their own, on similar conspiratorial lines. They will gather up all sorts of bits from hermetic theories, Rosicrucianism, Brazilian voodoo, and any other odd ideas they can come up with, feed them all into a computer, and come up with a grand scheme. But it appears they may have accidentally stumbled upon the truth . . .
Complex, confusing, brilliant, intelligent, a splendid skewering of conspiracy theorists (I broke into loud laughter when, in the midst of medieval crusaders and Kabbalah, someone cries out, "I'a Cthulhu! I'a S'ha-t'n!") and an interesting mystery. Well worth the trouble.
Send to friends of Truthteller, to replenish their Katrina-decimated library.