Tres intelectuales que trabajan en una editorial de Milán establecen contacto con autores interesados en las ciencias ocultas, las sociedades secretas y las conjuras cósmicas. En un primer momento, dicha relación se mantiene estrictamente profesional, pero, poco a poco, van estrechándose los lazos. Editores y autores inventan juntos, por puro juego, un complejo plan, urdido supuestamente por los templarios siete siglos atrás. Pero alguien toma demasiado en serio el juego, y todos ellos se verán inmersos en una inquietante pesadilla.

Read this several years ago while traveling through France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria. Perfect matching of time, place, and book. The Eco-esque conductor / philosopher on the train from Thun to Genoa stepped directly out of the book. ( )

hardback

Lately I’ve been slipping into the trap of resemblance, the feeling that everything is somehow the same or at least connected. Dissonantly, it has also seemed (seems) obvious that nothing is the same, or ever could be. This book may have rescued me from the depths of connectedness, returning me to the plateau of knowing-nothing.

What is the meaning of meaning? As I understand it, meaning can only be understood as the connection(s) I create between two things. Anything more than that, and I find too many exceptions to my definition too quickly. There are no inherent meanings, there are only meanings I subjectively assign or accept. From this premise stems the expansive world of connectedness. Why not connect the number 5 with the patterns of traffic? Further, I figured, is not my spontaneous creation of meaning an ongoing force of creativity, and thus beauty?

But there is apparently little art in these raw acts of creation. Creativity is not necessarily artful, beautiful, or even useful. The wrong creativity can produce significant negative externalities on the producer, the people around them, the world around them. Anyone can produce meaning (in fact, everyone DOES produce meaning, constantly), but a lazy, cynical, disordered batch of production is just that, nothing more.

So I appreciated that about this book, very much. Nothing else before this had been able to change my mind on this topic.

But, I think the book lacked in form. Much of the content of the middle sections (like, the 400 middle pages out of 520 total pages) was tedious and tiring. It wasn’t old info, which was nice, but it was just a lot of no-movement, a lot of listing of names and dates and places and texts. This meant that the experience of reading was itself tedious and tiring, at least some of the time.

It also was frustrating to have to spend so much time on Google Translate. I think there were at least 5 or 6 different languages used in this.

Many of the references flew over my head too, especially references to Jewish spirituality. Eco neared that Joyce, Nabokov, Borges territory of intertextual genius.

It was overall a positive experience, but I’ll be taking a break from Eco for a while. I did preemptively buy The Name of the Rose, which I look forward to eventually reading. ( )

Okurken epey miktarda not aldım. Sadece onları araştırmam hayli zamanımı alır kanaatindeyim. Bu yönüyle değerlendirdiğimde çok dolu dolu bir kitap “Focault Sarkacı”.
Satır satır incelenecek yeri çok. Üzerine okumalar yaptıktan, zihnimde konular iyice demlendikten sonra kitaba bir daha başlamak istiyorum.
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Tercümedeki öztürkçe çabası beni çok yordu. Defalarca TDK sözlüğü karıştırdım. Kitabı biri kaldığım yerde, biri sözlükçede, biri de notlarda olmak üzere üç ayraçla okudum. Zaman zaman sözlükçe yetmedi, ansiklopedi karıştırdım.
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Daha önce bir arkadaş, 106. bölüm sonundaki paragraf eksikliğinden bahsetmiş. Elimde 23. baskı mevcut. Maalesef aynı eksiklik halen devam etmekte. İngilizce edisyona başvurmak durumunda kaldım. ( )