What do you think?
Rate this book
Derrick oder Die Leidenschaft für das Mittelmaß. Neue Streichholzbriefe.
Derrick oder Die Leidenschaft für das Mittelmaß. Streichholzbriefe 1990 - 2000.
- GenresItaly
Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
Umberto Eco
918 books12.2k followersUmberto Eco was an Italian medievalist, philosopher, semiotician, novelist, cultural critic, and political and social commentator. In English, he is best known for his popular 1980 novel The Name of the Rose, a historical mystery combining semiotics in fiction with biblical analysis, medieval studies and literary theory, as well as Foucault's Pendulum, his 1988 novel which touches on similar themes.
Eco wrote prolifically throughout his life, with his output including children's books, translations from French and English, in addition to a twice-monthly newspaper column "La Bustina di Minerva" (Minerva's Matchbook) in the magazine L'Espresso beginning in 1985, with his last column (a critical appraisal of the Romantic paintings of Francesco Hayez) appearing 27 January 2016. At the time of his death, he was an Emeritus professor at the University of Bologna, where he taught for much of his life. In the 21st century, he has continued to gain recognition for his 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism", where Eco lists fourteen general properties he believes comprise fascist ideologies.
Eco wrote prolifically throughout his life, with his output including children's books, translations from French and English, in addition to a twice-monthly newspaper column "La Bustina di Minerva" (Minerva's Matchbook) in the magazine L'Espresso beginning in 1985, with his last column (a critical appraisal of the Romantic paintings of Francesco Hayez) appearing 27 January 2016. At the time of his death, he was an Emeritus professor at the University of Bologna, where he taught for much of his life. In the 21st century, he has continued to gain recognition for his 1995 essay "Ur-Fascism", where Eco lists fourteen general properties he believes comprise fascist ideologies.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
Read
January 20, 2026As public intellectuals go, Umberto Eco is an interesting case: while his sympathies and sensibilities are distinctly left-leaning and at times even somewhat elitist, he enjoys – or at least enjoyed– a level of appreciation among centrist normies normally reserved for right-leaning reactionary centrists putting a pseudo-intellectual spin on petty, unexamined grievance and selling it back to their readers, reassuring them that their reactionary prejudice is correct and brave, actually.
Seeing how this latter brand of op-ed has become the norm in the age of resurgent fascism, reading a bunch of humorous Eco columns from the 1990s is a strangely edifying exercise. Sure, for all the ways in which these articles are dated now – Eco wrapping his head around the wonders of the "personal computer" and the nascent internet is a fascinating time capsule in its own right – it is kind of depressing to see how little popular discourses about immigration and minority rights have changed over the past 35 years, and, in some cases, have even regressed. (Eco's implicit confidence in the irreversibility of the progress made in queer rights, for example, is particularly striking to read in 2026.) And yet, the clarity with which Eco identifies the political apathy, racist attitudes, and generally fascism-adjacent thinking imbuing contemporary society is nothing if not refreshing; and even when he takes potshots at "political correctness," he is enough of a good-faith thinker to realise (and often state outright) that what he's complaining about is ultimately not all that serious, that "the excesses of PC culture" are mostly animated by a fundamentally laudable impulse that must not be equated with whatever reactionary garbage Italy's Lega Nord and their far-right ilk are coming up with. The benefits of having a historian/semiotician who grew up under Italian fascism write for your magazine, I guess.
Plus, it's just nice to read op-eds geared towards a general audience that are able to string together some coherent historical contextualisations, and that place enough trust in their readers' literacy skills to casually drop references to Dante and Augustine of Hippo.
Seeing how this latter brand of op-ed has become the norm in the age of resurgent fascism, reading a bunch of humorous Eco columns from the 1990s is a strangely edifying exercise. Sure, for all the ways in which these articles are dated now – Eco wrapping his head around the wonders of the "personal computer" and the nascent internet is a fascinating time capsule in its own right – it is kind of depressing to see how little popular discourses about immigration and minority rights have changed over the past 35 years, and, in some cases, have even regressed. (Eco's implicit confidence in the irreversibility of the progress made in queer rights, for example, is particularly striking to read in 2026.) And yet, the clarity with which Eco identifies the political apathy, racist attitudes, and generally fascism-adjacent thinking imbuing contemporary society is nothing if not refreshing; and even when he takes potshots at "political correctness," he is enough of a good-faith thinker to realise (and often state outright) that what he's complaining about is ultimately not all that serious, that "the excesses of PC culture" are mostly animated by a fundamentally laudable impulse that must not be equated with whatever reactionary garbage Italy's Lega Nord and their far-right ilk are coming up with. The benefits of having a historian/semiotician who grew up under Italian fascism write for your magazine, I guess.
Plus, it's just nice to read op-eds geared towards a general audience that are able to string together some coherent historical contextualisations, and that place enough trust in their readers' literacy skills to casually drop references to Dante and Augustine of Hippo.
October 11, 2022
Verschiedene Geschichten von überall. In jedem Fall sehr unterhaltsam und amüsant. An manchen Stellen ist die Rhetorik allerdings so gewählt , dass nicht hervorgeht , ob die Absicht des Autors ist eine Situation zu kritsieren oder nicht.
October 3, 2024
Bei manchen der Streichholzbriefe muss man ein wenig nach dem Zusammenhang suchen - aber die kleinen Gedankensplitter sind eine abwechslungsreiche Reise durch die Weltsicht eines klugen Menschen
February 25, 2015
Verschiedenes Weltgeschehen
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews