Traveller’s Comments (group member since Sep 15, 2013)

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

:)
I've updated Message 3 up to end of chapter 39 now, if anyone is interested.

LOL, Book title: 'Leopard Without Eyelashes' :D Eco has such a cute sense of humor.

Eco is quite clever with wrapping things he wants to chat about, into the folds of narrative; for instance, one of his themes is how human wishful thinking tends to pervade and even steer a lot of what we do. The vanity publishing is one example, and our perception of the existence of 'magic' is another; and Eco brings 'magic' in a lot doesn't he? Look how he even manages to slip it into the discussion of the 'Metals' book:

"Primitive medicine. Influence of the zodiac on the different parts of the body, with the corresponding curative herbs. And minerals, including metals. The doctrine of the cosmic signatures. Those were times when the boundary between magic and science was rather ill-defined."

Ugh, GR just swallowed my comment and I'm not going to retype..

In any case, please feel free to populate this thread a bit more, there's so much going on that it would take ages if I were to comment on everything, so I'm just commenting on snippets that interest me, but I'd like to see what you guys all find interesting. :)

In any case, thread 5 continues here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

For discussion of Chapter 39 to end of Chapter 53.

In Chapter 39, we have just realized that Manutius is a vanity press for SFA's, the equivalent of what today would be an SPA. And wow, doesn't Manutius's motto sound scarily close to that of Amazon's?

"Manutius isn't interested in readers.... The main thing, Signor Garamond says, is to make sure the authors remain loyal to us. We can get along fine without readers."

Just a quick aside: This->> Come and let the boss touch you; the boss's touch heals scrofula refers to the belief in the middle ages that the touch of a monarch could cure TB. (One of the names for TB was 'scrofula'.)

Okay, I give up. I can't find it, but honestly, I think it's just a very casual aside and not important at all to the plot. I'm sure people who were up to date on all the news in the 70's and 80's might remember what he is talking about, and since the book was published in 1988, people might at that time still have known what he was talking about, but, hey, I feel quite confident that at least 70% of people who read this book don't know what he is talking about at least 50% of the time...

Ruth, he seems to be talking about some bishop from the Northeastern region (Nordest) of Brazil, but unfortunately my knowledge of Brazilian history is not good enough. (It's basically at total idiot level, frankly :P)

However, I'm busy trying to track it down for you...

Oh golly, ROFL!!! This Umberto Eco person is funny funny, geniunely, sidesplittingly funny!

Are you saying, I asked, that a person has a breakdown not because he is divorced but on account of the divorce, which may or may not happen, of the third party, that is, of the one who created the crisis for the couple of which he is a member?

Wagner looked at me with the puzzlement of a layman who encounters a mentally disturbed person for the first time. He asked me what I meant. To tell the truth, whatever I meant, I had expressed it badly. I tried to be more concrete. I took a spoon from the table and put it next to a fork. Here, this is me, Spoon, married to her, Fork. And here is another couple: she's Fruit Knife, married to Steak Knife, alias Mackie Messer.

Now I, Spoon, believe I'm suffering because I have to leave Fork and I don't want to; I love Fruit Knife, but it's all right with me if she stays with Steak Knife. And now you're telling me, Dr. Wagner, that the real reason I'm suffering is that Fruit Knife won't leave Steak Knife. Is that it?

Hilarious, while at the same time eloquently describing the semiotic relationship between the signifier, referent and signified. :D Brilliant!

Cool Michele, I'm still working on it, and will add chunks of summarized updates to message 3 as I get them written out. :)

As I said, please feel free to suggest additions or explanations as you guys see fit. :)

How about something like this: (members must remember that a lot of what we learn is narrated from a 'future' point of view, while Casaubon is hiding inside the periscope in the musuem; but I'm attempting to tell the story in its 'correct' chronological sequence as it happened in 'reality' or, along a linear timeline, so to speak.)

Please feel free to tell me where I have left things out that you feel might be vital to the central 'present-day' plotline. I am specifically NOT including what happened in the past with the Templars and the Rosicrucians and whoever in the reconstruction of the 'current-day' plotline, for clarity's sake.

Plotline concerning CASAUBON, as chronologically re-arranged, as it is revealed up to end of Chapter 22:
(view spoiler)[
We meet Casaubon for the first time when he is a Milanese university student working towards his PhD, on a thesis dealing with the Templars. During this time, he meets Jacopo Belbo, a book publisher working with scholarly texts, at their favorite pub, Pilades. Belbo introduces Casaubon to Belbo's colleague Diotallevi, and asks Casaubon's advice regarding a manuscript written about a secret regarding the Templars, as presented to them by a man calling himself Colonel Ardenti.

Ardenti tells them that he had found a manuscript in the rooms of a man called Ingolf, which deals with some kind of secret regarding the Templars. Ingolf had disappeared under unknown circumstances. The next day, Belbo is informed by the police that Ardenti had also disappeared, during the night under mysterious circumstances, after being visited by two unknown men and had been reported murdered, although Ardenti's body had mysteriously disappeared after being seen lying on his bed by a member of the public. A certain Rakosky is suspected of having something to do with Ardenti's disappearance.
(hide spoiler)]

Up to end of Chapter 33 :
(view spoiler)[
In the meantime, Casaubon had met a dark Brazilian girl with a Western education called Amparo somewhere in Milan and fallen in love with her after which he follows her to Brazil. In Brazil, they meet a certain Mr Agliè, who is very knowledgeable about the occult, and who hints that he is the Comte de Saint-Germain, (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Count_of... ) who according to himself, had not died and would now be around 800 years old, since the original Count De Germain had claimed to be 500 years old.

Casaubon and Amparo have many adventures regarding occult experiences involving the syncretized religious practices of South America, where African voodoo type religious practices mix with Roman Catholicism and Indian mysticism and magic.

At some point he receives a letter from Belbo, recounting an experience Belbo had had regarding a seance-like ritual involving a group called Picatrix, the object of which was to channel the spirit of an 18th century con-artist called Cagliostro. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alessand...).
There appeared to be some link in all of this to the Colonel Ardenti affair, as Belbo learns from Inspector De Angelis, after which the spirit medium involved in the seance whom Belbo had been wanting to talk to, disappears, yet again under mysterious circumstances.

Back in Brazil: While attending a seance-like ritual involving drums, chanting, dancing and ecstatic 'posession-type' altered states of consciousness, Amparo realizes that she has not, after all, managed to shake off her Brazilian roots as she had thought, and she and Casaubon part ways. After moping around Rio for roughly another year, Casaubon decides he's had enough, and ambles back to Milan. (hide spoiler)]

...to end of Chapter 39
(view spoiler)[
Back in Milan, Casaubon mopes around his old haunts like Pilades and the university, ruminating on his unemployed status. After a while, he realizes that he is suited to do culture-related research assignments on a more or less academic level for people such as students, writers and academics in general, and rents himself out as a 'cultural PI' ;) (The internet would soon have put him out of a job, had he been born a few years later, poor Casaubon).
He meets a girl called Lia, who does similar work, and they fall in love and move in together.

We are told, in a side narrative by way of Casaubon having read a file that Belbo had written, of Belbo's failed romance with a woman called Lorenza Pellegrini , and via the same file, are introduced to a psychologist by name of Wagner, in a section which contains some of the funniest passages I have ever read in literary fiction, even funnier than David Foster Wallace.
Casaubon starts to work for Garamond press, and finds out that they have a sister publishing company that is basically a vanity press which cons wannabe authors even more than today's SPA's tend to get conned. (hide spoiler)]

Hi everyone, some members have asked that we give more attention to the plot itself, and have asked for a separate plot thread. ..but I need some input regarding the format. The problem seems to be that the plot is presented in a non-linear fashion on top of the fact that there are so many distractions; so we want to write down a plotline somewhere (or perhaps two? :P ) that will help us focus on the main plotline (s).

I've started a separate thread here: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

I am happy to write out the plot, but am at a bit of a loss as to in which format to present it, since it is presented in a non-linear manner as the book progresses.

Wait, how about I do a plot progression post at the top of each thread?

Hmmm...

Input from members is welcome.

Goodness, Derek, my head was already hurting before I looked at this thread- how can you be so lucid this time of the year? I've found you out--you're actually a machine, aren't you? A cyborg! No, wait, I'm sure you'll point out to me that a cyborg is actually half-human.

*Trav casts her mind fuzzily back and tries to remember what was once said in a convo about vampires and werewolves and hairy backs...*

...but aaannnywaaayyy, to get back to the issues at hand...
I noticed that Eco mischievously lets certain characters make these huge leaps in and liberties with logic, yeah, but in any case, well-spotted on the detail there...

My brain is too much like cotton wool atmo to reply any more analytically than that right now, tho I actually thought that Ardenti was the one making the leaps in logic, but I'll have to look up that bit of text again...

Did Amparo imagine she could shake off her deep cultural roots and become "European"? ..and then, via the experiences at the umbanda, both she and Casaubon realized that her culture was too deeply ingrained in her for her to ever completely break it off? Did she then avoid C. because he knew this and it would always be a wedge between them bec. she knew he knew, and besides, his presence would be a reminder of her 'failure'? (in her eyes).

Yes, but that's what I mean. Wha..? How come their experiences at the umbanda had broken them up? I mean what had happened to them in an emotional sense?

Hmm, so exactly what happened in Brazil with Casaubon after Amparo's er... mystic experience? I had initially thought he'd actually liked that she was, you know, Brazilian deep down in her spirit, or, as they would say 'in her womb', in spite of having a Western education.

I feel like I'm missing something there.

Ruth wrote: "I liked the 'definition' of Hermes, including "the creator of writing, which is the art of evasion an dissimulation.""

Nice! I was probably a bit dozy there and missed that at the time, so thanks for lifting it out. Eco drops these witty little jewels of humor all over the show and one has to be awake to catch them, but they're so enjoyable if you do.

Btw, I love the way he discusses texts with us, by making it a discussion between Casaubon and Amaparo, with Amparo throwing in a bunch of barbed asides.

What is very interesting to me in this section, is the dominance of 'magic' in the syncretized religious practices of South America, and how well all these different belief systems have melded.

Yes, those few chapters are so ironical, aren't they? You can just see Eco's cheek bulging with the big tongue-in-cheek that he wrote it with. All those contradictions makes a person's head spin!

Ha!
"And the Rosicrucians themselves?"
"Deathly silence. Post CXX annos patebo, my ass. They watched, from the vacuum of their palace. I believe it was their silence that agitated everyone so much. The fact that they didn't answer was taken as proof of their existence.

Isn't that typical?