The Name of the Rose in Read a book from each country

May 30, 2017 Simon Hollway rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2017

This was a hurler. I average one hurler every three years. A book so irritating, I end up by flinging it against a wall in frustration. My last one was Musil's 'The Man Without Qualities' (although that was more of a shot putt than a hurl as it weighs in at around 150,000 pages).

Eco writes dialogue as if he were a sub-editor for the Encyclopedia Britannica or else a serial killer penning a Valentine. The speech-sermons are so stilted they are almost perpendicular to the ground; so stiff they are This was a hurler. I average one hurler every three years. A book so irritating, I end up by flinging it against a wall in frustration. My last one was Musil's 'The Man Without Qualities' (although that was more of a shot putt than a hurl as it weighs in at around 150,000 pages).

Eco writes dialogue as if he were a sub-editor for the Encyclopedia Britannica or else a serial killer penning a Valentine. The speech-sermons are so stilted they are almost perpendicular to the ground; so stiff they are doubled over with arthritis. The narrative walks with a limp and a hump and doles out rheumatic lumps of doctrinal gristle in merciless detail. The only way I could choke my way through it was to imagine Peter Lorre playing Salvatore, Gene Wilder as William of Baskerville and Michael Cera bumbling along as Adso. Honestly, the film of this book is far superior. The music's better in it for a start AND you also get a flash of Christian Slater's bare bottom which is as close to seeing God revealed on earth as you're going to get.

And why does Eco have to telegraph everything so clunkily? I mean, honestly, why do all the inverts have 'womanly' hands and fingers from the get-go? What the hell are womanly fingers? Are all the effete members of the God Squad prancing down the mountain to the local nail bar in Piedmont and parading their fluoro acrylic nail extensions around the scriptorium? What are womanly hands? Are their hands literally so gay and ineffectual that their wrists and fingers have been deboned? Accordingly, can they not grasp or clutch anything, having, in effect, two limp cod fillets flapping about at the end of their sleeves? Do they have to be spoonfed? And, if so, how do they manage to focus on opening their mouths in time for the spoon when their 'feminine eyes' must be gummed together with mascara or fluttering like jack-hammers?

For those few fanatics that are also having migraines trudging through this dull university lecture masquerading as a murder mystery, please do not blame yourselves. Being able to read Latin is in no way an advantage here. In fact, it only serves to compound the painful ordeal as you can't look away or seek temporary respite in endnotes.

This was so bad I ended up starting to resent the writer as well as the book. I would even suggest that the last third of Foucault's Pendulum was better than any part of Name of the Rose.

Wow. Monks, medieval history, Catholicism, theology, semiotics, architecture and spritely novices seeking fleshly solace in each others cassocks. The ingredients for the best book ever yet Eco turns gold into flaccid dross. Amen.

P.S. I didn't like this book very much. ...more

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