Foucault’s Pendulum in On Paths Unknown

Dec 27, 2011 Traveller rated it really liked it

Shelves: four-and-a-half-stars, translated, 1001-books, favorites

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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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 Eco was good friends with the French philosopher Foucault and the literary and historical references are numerous.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!
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Dec 05, 2013 Saski rated it liked it

Shelves: 1001

I came to Foucault's Pendulum the way I imagine most of us do, through The Name of the Rose. That book I enjoyed so much I read twice in the same year, the second time aloud to the driver on long car trips, not easy when one remembers the plethora of languages one must pronounce, easy for me then as I was in the middle of a linguistics master's. I guess it would not be odd to expect something similar from this book, well researched in the extreme displayed in fascinating detail as background to I came to Foucault's Pendulum the way I imagine most of us do, through The Name of the Rose. That book I enjoyed so much I read twice in the same year, the second time aloud to the driver on long car trips, not easy when one remembers the plethora of languages one must pronounce, easy for me then as I was in the middle of a linguistics master's. I guess it would not be odd to expect something similar from this book, well researched in the extreme displayed in fascinating detail as background to a spellbinding plot. One might say two out three is not bad, and I could say that this book is not bad, except that it is so much worse and so much better than 'not bad'.
I loved being taken through the museum, both at the beginning and at the end. I love the playful creativity of the editors at the publishing house, producing irrelevant (and irreverent) courses for a non-existent university. That's how the quest started out, but along the way they lost the fun. They got serious, and the mischievous air became ponderous.
It's Umberto Eco, so of course we expect so much more. The research is overwhelming. In fact, I suspect this point is the core of the problem: having done so horrifically much research, Eco had to put it in. I understand. Otherwise it would be wasted, and who wants to waste good research? Except this research is names, dates, and places over and over again and even Umberto Eco can run out of ways of making such lists interesting. Conversations, discussions, arguments, letters, lectures – Eco even resorts to an actual list, nearly all of chapter 75 (only two-thirds through the tome), which our narrator tells us came about trying to make sense of a morass of research.
Alright, I get it. There are hundreds of thousands of connections one could make out of all this … stuff, so people do. I enjoy the spoof. I love how Eco laughs at us all for getting excited at all the amazing coincidences, because that's all they are – coincidences. There is no gigantic plot, no elaborate mystery. It is just life, going on as life does. I didn't need 640 pages to tell me that. ...more

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