Foucault’s Pendulum in On Paths Unknown

Nov 25, 2013 Dolors rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2013

“ “Us two? All three of us are in this. If we don’t come out honorably, we’ll all look silly.”
“Silly to whom?”
“Why, to history. Before the tribunal of Truth.”
“Quid est veritas?” Belbo asked.
“Us,” I said.” ” (p.435)

Truth? What is truth? Truth is relative. Or isn’t it?
The fact that Umberto Eco portrays one of his characters quoting Pontius Pilate’s assertion that truth is hard to ascertain with some sort of consistent resonance of a Nietzschian Superman who has passed “beyond good and evil” ...more

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Feb 23, 2014 Philippe Malzieu rated it it was amazing

Umberto Eco distinguished professor of semiology delivers to us after "the name of the rose" a new labyrinthian book (one compared Eco with Borges?). It is question of Kabbale with luminous flash. It is known there was a Christian Kabbale with Pic of Mirandole, Italian érudit like Eco.
I let to you discover the advance of the search by reading. Inform you about the trees sefirotic and the paths to appreciate the book. The end is brilliant. In the gothic nef of Saint-Martin-in-the-fields in Paris, ...more

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May 09, 2019 J.M. Hushour rated it it was ok

In the age of the Internet rabbit hole and conspiracy-theory as legion-religion, you'd think that a playful rip on all of that would make for a wonderfully funny novel. Unfortunately, Eco follows up the magisterial "Name of the Rose" with this rather flat joke of a book that seems to defy willful criticism by making clear that it is a joke. That's fine. Eco was a semioticist, whatever you want to think that means, and there is much of game and symbol in his thought. Does that necessarily transla ...more

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Jul 18, 2021 Greg Hickey rated it it was amazing

Shelves: favorites

Umberto Eco's sharp, meticulously detailed novel feels like a better, satirical version of Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code (a book I enjoyed when I read it several years ago), despite the fact that Eco's novel was published fifteen years before Brown's. Foucault's Pendulum is a multilayered thriller that offers and challenging, enjoyable and meaningful reading experience. I suspect that even the parts I thought dragged a bit would offer new insights on a second reading.

And Eco's take on conspiracy ...more

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