Kellyjosephc’s Comments (group member since Feb 19, 2016)

Kellyjosephc’s comments from the Foucault's Pendulum group.

Thanks! If anyone's interested, on my blog I tried my hand at taking the pendulum analogy further, and connecting it to other work by Eco: http://josephckelly.com/2016/02/21/ec...

Good thread here. I have a few reactions about the book that I thought I'd share:
1) The pendulum: I see this as the dominant analogy running throughout the book, it's everywhere from the very obvious: title, the plot's start at the Conservatoire, which then swings through the background before swinging back by the end of the book, a pendulum's anchor as source for truth and grounding; to the more subtle: the delicate swing from truth to conclusions from analogy, the geographic travels Casaubon takes to Brazil and back, Casaubon's own struggle with whether to believe in the Plan or not, etc.
2) Did anyone else note the random, purposeful misspellings of names? For instance, on page 534 Agliè is referred to as Angliè. A few pages later we learn about metathesis from Diotallevi (the replacement and swapping of letters). I had seen the name misspellings come up a few times earlier in the book, but only understood it after the part with Diotallevi. The discovery of this definitely led me to question our narrator's reliability.
3) The power of no: The password prompt and answer for Abulafia is a deeper joke and reinforces Eco's message around the importance of no by the very end. "Do you have the password? NO" This is the same as Agliè and the Diabolicals asking Belbo "Do you have the map?" "NO." No is also a critical element in semiotics and truth-seeking: in a world where everything can be related by analogy to anything else, the only way you can know something is distinct for sure is based on what it is NOT. The most clear way to define something and create real boundaries is through defining what it is not. For readers of Nassim Taleb's writings (which quotes Eco), this is the same as his "via negativa".

Related to the above, about whether the quotes at the start of each chapter are real or not: if they were false (just made up by Eco), I don't think the novel's joke would be as powerful. By supplying us with these seeds of "truth" (real things that were written outside of the FP universe), Eco can more ably swing us into the realm of conspiracy along with his characters.

I believe the time in Brazil is also a nod to a literal pendulum. Geographically, Casaubon leaves Milan and his theorizing with Belbo and Diotallevi to travel far away from it all. But his pendulum ends up swinging right back into the occult, then back home.