Foucault’s Pendulum in On Paths Unknown

Dec 27, 2011 Traveller rated it really liked it

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Descartes said: Cogito, ergo sum.
Eco says: I seek meaning, therefore I am human.

It's very hard to succinctly describe exactly what this novel is. From looking at the plot description, you may be forgiven for assuming that it is a book like Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, or Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. There is an overlap in the fact that all three books deal with conspiracies that revolve around the mystical and mythical order of the Knight's Templ ...more

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Jun 10, 2010 Kamakana rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: xlong-over-400, espionage, translation, aa-europelit, all-five-star, zz1987, bestsellers, read-twice-or-more, aaa-favoritefiction, aaa-top-translation

Foucault's Pendulum
by Umberto Eco

211003: think i read this first as trade ppk (33 yrs ago!) had read The Name of the Rose 3 times before, went on to read The Island of the Day Before, Baudolino, The Prague Cemetery, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana ... this remains five, though it has lost that magical singularity on first reading. never went back to The Name of the Rose or reread the others. these are all long books but not stylistically challenging, easy to read in that way...

so it went ver ...more

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Jul 11, 2008 Terry rated it really liked it · review of another edition

2022 re-read thoughts:

A part of me has often found it appealing to think that the workaday world was really merely a veneer that hides the occult secrets that so many have either claimed to know or to seek. It does make the the hum drum everyday seem so much more intriguing. I am always convinced, however, by Eco’s refutation of it in this book…and yet even with his rebuttal of the great Templar conspiracy and the simple, one might even contend saccharine, solution to the Great Mystery as opined 2022 re-read thoughts:

A part of me has often found it appealing to think that the workaday world was really merely a veneer that hides the occult secrets that so many have either claimed to know or to seek. It does make the the hum drum everyday seem so much more intriguing. I am always convinced, however, by Eco’s refutation of it in this book…and yet even with his rebuttal of the great Templar conspiracy and the simple, one might even contend saccharine, solution to the Great Mystery as opined by Casaubon's lover Lia, he still manages to retain the magic of the world.

Maybe it’s just all in your point of view.

Still…I have to say the elegance of the made-up plot of the three editors at Garamond is almost sublime in its symmetry…and I retain the right to pretend to believe it when the whim strikes. Who knows? Maybe, after all, they really did “…arrive at the truth through the painstaking reconstruction of a false text.” I mean stranger things have happened, right?

ANYTHING can be connected to the secret of the Templars and the Great Plan if you look hard enough and want it badly enough. Any number has mystical correspondences, any place has historical significance, and any person can have secret motives to their actions that point to the answer you want to find. “…wanting connections, we found connections - always, everywhere, and between everything.” Alas that the reward for their industry was tragedy.

Eco wrote an excellent novel of ideas that looks like a thriller. Or is it a thriller, that looks like a novel of ideas? Either way, I still love it.

Original Review:

I think it could be validly opined that all of Umberto Eco’s novels primarily exist to show off how much he knows. They are all jam-packed with esoteric knowledge from such specialized and varied sources that one wonders how a single human being managed to fit them all into his head, let alone turn them into fodder for a story. In this sense Eco seems much like his own creation of Casaubon from this novel, “the Marlowe of culture”: one able to sift through the vast repository of arcane and seemingly arbitrary bits of knowledge and not only pull out the bits he wants, but to put them together to create an impressive and coherent edifice. These influences and bits of knowledge aren’t just “high culture” things one might expect from an ivory tower academic, but also include numerous pop culture references that show a deep affection for them on Eco’s part. I can get behind that kind of syncretism. From the Templars, South American religious cults, and telluric currents to the secret masters of the world, the mysteries of alchemy, and the hollow earth Eco seems to fit pretty much every occult mystery you could think of (and many you couldn’t) into his work. There is also a prevalent fascination with Cabala, the nature of words, and the way in which words (and the ideas they form) shape our reality...only natural for a semiotician I suppose.

I’m sure you all know the basic premise of the story, and in its most common shorthand description, one that I think is fairly apt, it’s been called “the thinking man’s _Da Vinci Code_”. It's the story of three clever men undone by their own ingenuity, or perhaps they are actually undone by the credulity of others. Either way these three friends, working for a small publishing house in Milan, decide to play a little game after one too many crazy ‘diabolicals’ obsessed with the occult and the mystery of the Templars comes to their office peddling the next conspiracy theory of the secret masters of the world. Why not look at all of the vast theories out there, as well as numerous other ‘normal’ facts, and tie them all together into the grandest, and most elegant conspiracy theory of them all? Beat the crazies at their own game! What happens, though, when the crazies get wind of your incredibly elegant theory and begin to suspect that maybe there’s something to it and their lust for the ‘secrets’ you possess will brook no pleas of innocence and ignorance on the matter?

Eco does a lot of clever things in this novel, not least of which is coming up with a syncretic theory of nearly everything that plausibly ties huge swathes of western history and occult theories into an overall Master-Plan neatly tied up with a bow. He also manages to keep things off kilter enough that the reader is left wondering at the end just what is real and what is false. It seems, for most of the book, that the occult-obsessed diabolicals are truly insane monomaniacs. They pursue their goal with single-minded abandon and are able not so much to ignore any fact that contradicts their ideas, as to take it and twist it to align with the meaning their world-view requires with ridiculous ease. Indeed, Casaubon and his friends Belbo and Diotallevi show just how ridiculously easy it is to twist meaning to your own ends…that’s the whole point of their game, sending up the ridiculous blinders of those they mock. And yet…there are enough strange occurrences and unexplained phenomena to give one pause. Could it be true? Is the story more than just a story? Do things dove-tail so nicely because they should?

Casaubon is the viewpoint character for Eco’s little drama, immediately plunging the reader in medias res as we are thrust abruptly into the tail end of a conspiracy gone bad, though bit by bit he reveals the source of his troubles and terrors as he remembers the path of folly that led him to his current dire straits. While Casaubon is thus central to the story in many ways it is also (or perhaps “really”) the sad story of the life of poor Jacopo Belbo, a man whose existence has been, in his own mind at least, little more than a string of disappointments and failures. His reminiscences play a melancholic counterpoint to the larger story of the Templar conspiracy that threatens to overwhelm the three hapless editors. It is, indeed, through his single success at being the driving force (through the means of both his own thwarted creative impulses and his computer Abulafia) behind the crafting of the disparate and unlikely elements that become the Plan that his greatest failure lies...or is it his only true victory? Belbo’s story is ultimately the beating heart of the novel, the thing that keeps it grounded in human experience and ensures its wide and varied flights of fancy never take it too far from what we live and know at a gut level.

I think this is a great book that runs the gamut from ‘high-brow’ meditations on the nature of history and the mysteries of reality to ‘low-brow’ penny dreadful adventure and intrigue. The main characters are fairly well drawn, even when done so by the merest brush strokes, though the real stars in this regard are probably the large and varied cast of ‘diabolicals’, foremost amongst them that most urbane and witty cabalist, the Comte de Saint-Germain. If you like occult mysteries, conspiracy theories, and books that are densely packed with nuggets of lore then this is the book for you. ...more

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Dec 02, 2013 Paul rated it really liked it

Eco likes to show off his knowledge and the depth of his reading and he does so with a great flourish in this novel. It’s a difficult one to classify as it crosses genres and throws all sorts of references into the pot. It is really part thriller, part detective with a good dose of conspiracy theory and meandering down the byways of historical obscurity. Of course the whole thing may just be a postmodern joke!
There are lots of nods, winks and jokes throughout. Eco was good friends with the Frenc Eco likes to show off his knowledge and the depth of his reading and he does so with a great flourish in this novel. It’s a difficult one to classify as it crosses genres and throws all sorts of references into the pot. It is really part thriller, part detective with a good dose of conspiracy theory and meandering down the byways of historical obscurity. Of course the whole thing may just be a postmodern joke!
There are lots of nods, winks and jokes throughout. Eco was good friends with the French philosopher Foucault and the literary and historical references are numerous. Ten years before Dan Brown, Eco throws in the Templars, the Masons, the Kabbalah, Gnosticism, the Elders of Zion, the Jesuits, the Cathars and the Rosicrucian Enlightenment to name but a few. Obviously the grail is at the centre of it all; as is a device called Foucault’s pendulum. The plot revolves around three friends who work for a rather esoteric and dubious publishing company. There is a great deal of fun with coded and secret manuscripts and secret organisations and the friends after much research and following clues construct their own grand conspiracy theory called The Plan (completely made up). Throughout their researches and travels they have come across various members of secret societies, (most of them based on the Templars) and once they are told about the plan the trouble really starts. A grand over-arching plan is what most conspiracy theorists dream about and they fall for it and having been told there is a secret map and word are determined to get it. This puts the friends in danger.
The whole thing is narrated in flashback by Casuabon. Another element is the thought that Casuabon may not be an entirely reliable narrator. Casuabon, as his name indicates (Middlemarch and there was an actual scholar called Casuabon) represents knowledge. Another friend, Belbo, seems to seems to represent the search for inner fulfilment (possibly) and Diotallevi seems to represent a more religious certainty.
There are so many references and lines of inquiry to follow that the reader has to decide whether to take the time to do so. I decided to drift through the whole thing with a limited follow up as the book could have taken all year! It’s great fun and much better than Dan Brown. I thought the ending was a bit of a letdown, but I must admit I wouldn’t have known how to end it!
...more

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May 18, 2010 Jonfaith rated it it was amazing

Shelves: always-rereading

I believe that you can reach the point where there is no longer any difference between developing the habit of pretending to believe and developing the habit of believing.

Perhaps I have lived my life as if it was within the pages of this novel? If I do ascribe to a metanarraive, despite my Nietzschean education, it is this powerful novel: a handbook for the cynically perplexed. I wasn't sure of anything and reading this confirmed it. I've grown to love how the scenes parallel one another, how th ...more

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Jan 22, 2010 Traveller marked it as to-read · review of another edition

Descartes said: Cogito, ergo sum.
Eco says: I seek meaning, therefore I am human.

It's very hard to succinctly describe exactly what this novel is. From looking at the plot description, you may be forgiven for assuming that it is a book like Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, or Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. There is an overlap in the fact that all three books deal with conspiracies that revolve around the mystical and mythical order of the Knight's Templ ...more

3 likes · Like · see review