Umberto Eco. 1932 to 2016

Mel u

Número Zero by Umberto Eco (2015, translated by Richard Dixon)

http://www.umbertoeco.com/

Posts on Umberto Eco

A post by Ambrosia Boussweau 

European Correspondent, The Reading Life

It has been five years since I read a novel by Umberto Eco (1932, Italy).  I first read his The Name of the Rose and then The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana.  Both of these works are highly regarded works of art.  Of the two my favorite is The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, about an antique book dealer.  These are challenging works that required serious attention.  

Número Zero, published in Italy in 2012 and a best seller there, is forthcoming in an English translation in November this year.  I was very kindly given an advance review copy.  

Numero Zero is set in Milan in 1992. The center of the story is a start up newspaper.  One of, perhaps the main, character is a writer who needs a job so he accepts an offer.  The work has a strongly noir feel in the shady world of Italian gossip and political scandal journalism.  We meet the several people recruited to work on the new newspaper.  Each person comes with their own baggage.  

The lead character is offered a big bonus to write an article in which he asserts that contrary to everything in the history books, Mussolini was not killed in 1945.  The person killed was Musolini's double.  We learn of various right wing plots to bring the real Mussolini back, in the story being pushed he was able to escape to Argentina with the help of the Vatican.   The writing of this story and his confusion over the possible truth and motivations behind it begins to take over the reporter's life.  

I am glad I was able to read this book.  It is only 208 pages and I find the Amazon prepurchase prize for a Kindle edition, $13.95, too high.  

This is a book for those eagerly awaiting anything new by the author, not for Eco neophytes.

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana by Umberto Eco ( 1985, trans by Geoffrey Brock, 445 pages.)

In March this year I read and posted in Umberto Eco's (1932-Italy) The Name of the Rose.     I enjoyed The Name of the Rose and learned a good bit about life in a medieval monastery in Italy from it.  The Name of the Rose is by far his most read  book.   Yesterday I finished his The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana and I  enjoyed it a lot also.    I really liked the subject matter of the novel as it deals directly with the role of books and remembered reading in the lives of book centered people, in theory the theme of my blog.

The main character and narrator of the book is a dealer in antique books in his sixties.   All of his remembered life he has loved books, literature and reading.    He has a stroke and he can remember nothing but the contents of the 1000s of books plus magazines and newspapers he has read.    He does not know his own wife, etc.    His wife fills him in on the bare outline of his life but there are still huge holes in his memory.   He goes to the ancestral country house of his family, a sprawling old mansion, and he finds a huge treasure trove of books, magazines, and newspapers along with all sorts of posters and such.   He begins to reread all of the books he appears to have read in his youth as well as magazines and newspapers from the 1930s and 1940s.   From these papers he is able to reconstruct the image of Fascist Italy.    He begins to reconstruct his own life from the books.    It is fascinating to see how Eco depicts this process.    

The book is  a love story about literature.    Many of the works referred to in the book are beyond my frame of reference but what matters is we can see the how literature shaped and enriched the man's life.    

This is a rich book with lots in it to entertain and edify us. Eco knows a really lot and it shows. The novel  is profusely and beautifully illustrated with all sorts of art works and poster reproductions that are integral to the story.      I would not classify it as a light read but I think those who give it the respect it deserves will be glad they read it.      I will, I hope, read more of his books.

Mel u