/lit/ - Literature

>>18488986
Sometimes you just hit the right spot. This applies to literature as well.

>>18488986
He's a good storyteller. We need more work like this desu, stuff that bridges low and high to maintain a healthy midwit culture. Not saying Eco is a midwit btw.

>>18488997
>>18489007
Also, kick ass movie came out with James Bond. Movie adaptions always help books gain popularity.

Umberto Eco was a superior writer who understood that a work of fiction must be able to function even for the reader who does not share the esoteric interests of its author - but for the reader who does, it is only even more rewarding. Eco drew from the old masters of airport fiction like Dumas and heightened it to fine art by indulging his massive intellect and array of various interests to create a masterpiece. Foucault’s Pendulum is his best book btw, definitely my favorite book ever by my favorite author

>>18489070
>airport fiction like Dumas
There weren't even planes when Dumas was alive, much less airports, bro. But I see what you mean.

>>18489075
>being a literalist

>>18489075
Just picked this up at Half Price Books. Old 80s paperback. Since we're on the subject...what other 50s-80s airport fiction would you guys recommend?

>>18489089
You could've chosen a less awkward, non-anachronistic term. Don't get upset, I just thought it was curious.

>>18489070
what authors before 1900 are most airport fiction bros

>>18489103
You are a nitpicking gamma male
>>18489104
Bram stoker, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, as well as the majority of the ‘gothic’ fiction writers of that time - anything to do with magic, time travel and horror in that area. Lots of the French realists from around the same time as well

>>18489135
>You are a nitpicking gamma male
I'm not nitpicking, just mentioning how ironic it sounds.

>>18488986
He does not preach, he just gives what is required for context. Not being able to see this strongly suggests that you are a normie.

>>18488986
You do realise this is an allegory about Italian communism in the 70s and Marxs Juvenalia? Down to the fraticelli being burned alive.

Brigado Rossi

Someone posted a passage from an Eco book and it was hilarious.
ive literally never heard of this guy, but I guess ill read it. Interesting hes so mainstream

>>18488986
Eco’s a faggot.

>>18489212
Prepare yourself to read the greatest author of the second half of the twentieth century.

>>18489169
>He does not preach,
"Medieval church bad! Enlightenment good!"
He was a faggot and most of his midwit audience is too stupid to realize he made up most of the "medieval" writings in the book.

>>18489212
the intro is an extended borgesian bit where he feigns explanation that this book is actually just a transcription from memory of an old manuscript he read after breaking up with some girl on a cross country rail trip. Its too good for how big it got.

>>18489245
>missed the point
Another normie.

>>18488986
I somehow owned 4 copies of this book. I don't even know how it happened, I swear to god it just multiplies if you leave it alone long enough.

>>18489245
>Medieval church bad! Enlightenment good!
This is not preaching. It's the objective truth.

>>18489263
Now go read a book on true medieval history and on the genocides needed in order to establish the peaceful, ordered and rational enlightenment.

>>18489257
Alright, faggot. What was the point?

>>18489285
>genocides needed in order to establish the peaceful, ordered and rational enlightenment.
Killing churchfags is not genocide, it's pesticide.

>>18489309
>>18489285
both of you faggots fuck off to reddit

>>18489309
It of course didn't kill only clerics, anyhow the enlightenment was utterly btfo especially by Marquis de Sade.

>>18489312
You will never be a woman.

>>18489309
Spoken like a true jew

>>18489161
Nice

>>18489292
Eco is a FICTION author, do you know what fiction is? He makes stuff up to tell a story and convey ideas. You mock people for accepting his fiction as fact while doing the same. If you are as smart as you pretend to be than just read the book, his point should be apparent.

>>18489104
Anyone who made their living writing serials

>>18488986
>as dense as Borges
Even densest Borges is quite doable.

>>18489104
The greeks, they are pretty much action movies.

>>18489395
That is not what dense means in this context. Are you dense or something?

>>18489403

>>18489407
He is implying that he is dense as Borges yet still a best seller. But even a normie reader can get something out of Borges and won't be stumped and confused to hell like with other authors. Use your little brain and read the post again.

>>18489426
>Yes, I am dense, thank you for noticing!

>>18489432
Retarded ESL zoomer

>>18489434
Wrong on all three.

>>18489440
Right on atleast two

>>18489445
Wrong again.

>>18489383
But the other anon is not completely wrong, Ecco was biased against religion, metaphysics, spirituality, non-democratic governments. Despite the fact that he is writing fiction, his world views will be clear in the work.

>>18489426
name a "dense" story that "a normie reader can't get something out of"

>>18489448
>butthurt like a zoomer
>can't understand simple english like an ESL
>retard can't understand the context of posts without having it laid out to him
Absolutely true on all three. Proof is in the thread.

>>18489455
Dense in any manner? Any story?
Beckett's 'How it is'.
Reading Borges does not require you to know his references, which is what makes him much more doable than something like Proteus in Ulysses. Sure people might not understand the monotheism/pantheistic ideas in Tlön, Uqbar but they will still get the context of the entire story if they just finish it. This is true for all him and his other collections are easier still than Ficciones.

>>18489454
I would say that his is critical of them, he does not just say "religion bad" as that anon said, he is far more nuanced.

>>18489455
Dense just means that there is more beyond the surface level story, does not mean it is difficult to read. There are a great number of popular and widely enjoyed books whose intended point is often missed.

>>18489456
Not even slightly butthurt, enjoying myself quite a bit. Understand everything which has been said. Nothing has been laid out for me yet.

>>18489515
>more nuanced
"Religion bad, cooming good" isn't nuance.

>>18489538
For your sake I hope you are just trolling and never read it. If not, I hear Goodwill is hiring.

>>18489515
>Not even slightly butthurt, enjoying myself quite a bit. Understand everything which has been said. Nothing has been laid out for me yet
Reeks of hard denial

>>18489583
Some of aren't so easily impressed by latin in a paperback.

Wasn't this guy a fucking commie?

>>18489730
and? you gonna cancel him like some twitter tranny?

>>18489777
We will use your own weapons against you.

>>18489786
not me I'm not a nigger that categorises my /lit/ into some retarded boxes, but go ahead burger, be my guest.

>>18489730
Makes me like him more.
>oh no no no you can't just hate wagie culture you gotta slave for MR Shekelstein or else you'll be on the same side as tranniess

>>18489174
> Brigado Rossi
Hahahahahhahahahhahahahahaah the fuck out with your gabagool bullshit, if you can't speak Italian stop fucking trying, it's Brigate Rosse and no, it's not what the books about

>>18488986
I also like this book.

>>18489070
FP is awesome, and it's hilarious to see early reviews, just because imagine reading that shit on a tight deadline. Opening chapter of total schizobabble then long passages of medievalism without any of the compensations of plot he offered up in the previous book, and a great deal of the research stuff is fundamentally irrelevant. The number of people trolled is insane.

>>18489285
>true medieval history
>BTW there is no evidence anyone died at Auschwitz

>>18490719
It’s precisely how the autonomists related to the PCI. LEARN MORE LATE MEDIEVAL HERACY.

>>18489064
Another book I wish I'd read before I'd seen the film - The Adventures of James Bond & Harry Hard-on in Medieval Italy.

>>18490858
I think you don't understand what he's saying. He said that Auschwitz is a consequence of the Enlightment which might be true idk

I read this but clearly missed something because all I got was a weak plot about a lost book and a ton of discussions about religious things like whether Jesus laughed.

>>18491137
So the book is:
An attack on Aristotle for being a shit cunt.
An attack on Jesus for not being a lolz captain.
An attack on Sherlock Holmes for being weak genre fiction.
An attack on the Italian Left for not being praxical, except for class war factions, and they're tortured to death. (See "An Accidental Death of an Anarchist.")
A series of jokes about weak novels in the structure of the book.

>>18491153
I see. I should probably have thought about this more. When I started the book I didn't realise it was going to be deeper than the usual mystery novels.

>>18491153
>An attack on the Italian Left for not being praxical, except for class war factions, and they're tortured to death. (See "An Accidental Death of an Anarchist.")
wtf, Eco didn't support the BR, he only said that they had realised like many other communists the direction the world was taking (globalization, multinational companies gaining more and more power) but he was totally agains their crimes.
I think you guys are reading a bit too much into it

>>18488986
I agree with Zizek in his Very Short Introductions, it begins good and gets worse. I didn't finish it.

>>18491217
How is "The fraticelli burn while being ignored by the peasants," thus "The Operaismo / Armed Struggle was useless" in any way supporting armed struggle by Eco?

Jesus fuck mate, its layers of irony. The secret Frats inside the monestary believe they're doing work for the common people despite being illiterate idiots? Remind you of someone like Tony Black eh?

>>18489856
Communism is literally a Jewish psyop.

>>18489103
The term was well-chosen and the anachronistic nature of it only serves to highlight the point it makes. Its actually quite clever and you're probably autistic.

>>18489245
>"Medieval church bad! Enlightenment good!"

I didn't get that at all from it. In the end our enlightened hero ends up burning down the entire monastery and all the knowledge in it, just because he had to be the cleverest dude around. I interpreted it as the secretive monks being vindicated despite their flaws.

>>18491272
This

Umberto Eco is defending the PCI from Maoist and Autonomist critiques. Parliamentary Cretinism is the only way forward. A Negri was a stupid cunt.

>>18488986
I find Eco a bore. But this isn't novel, no pun intended. A lot of deep art can be popular.

>>18491459
>>18491229
lol guys, i did some googling and found out that eco signed a letter with other fifty shitty intellectuals that advocated for armed struggle and obv when things didn't go that way: "I never ever said that!"

>>18489070
I used to work at a vanity press, and the experience was spot on in FP. The kooks swarm out of the woodwork to get their stuff published.

>>18489104
The king of airport fiction is Sir Walter Scott. There is a reason that whenever you go to an antiquarian bookstore a significant % of shelf space is dedicated to Waverley.

>>18488986
I assume a lot of people didn't actually read it, but I found myself pretty amazed at the things you mention as well
It's not that hard of a read, the setting is cool, the dialogue is usually entertaining, etc are the explanations I came to

>>18492495
>It's not that hard of a read
It's pretty long and drawn out though. There isn't very much action and if you don't find the historical elements interesting I could see it as a rough book to get through. The intrigue is there, but a lot of it is tied to the aforementioned historical elements; this book is probably a DNF for a lot of people (I read it about halfway through twice before I finished it).

>>18488986
>>18492495
>>18492731
I don't know why you guys say this kind of stuff. I mean, Dan Brown is a thing.

>>18492731
That's true yeah, I thought the same thing actually. The main mystery as it were goes by really slowly. However I just felt completely drawn to the setting and the characters. At one point I was reading more for the monks bickering than the actual murders
>>18492942
Explain

>>18492959
>Explain
I haven't read Eco but the way you guys describe the setting it reminds me something like Angels and Demons,
not comparing but still...

>>18493002
I really don't understand the point you're trying to make
>I haven't read Eco
And I'm questioning why are you even trying to make a point

>>18492495
>>18492731
People read Murakami

>>18493151
>And I'm questioning why are you even trying to make a point
Because a good chunk of this thread is you guys getting surprised about the comercial sucess of this book but then we have something like Angels and Demons, Da Vinci Code, eg that just proves that "normies" are into this kind of religious conspiracy theme much more than you'd think.

>>18489135
>>18489161
gra' mmai ballz

>>18489174
What?

>>18493207
Yeah, but that's not quite a theme of this book. I don't want to be too rude but you would have known if you read it. I don't remember much of Brown but NotR has long diatribes on history and teological discussion, and a lot of untranslated latin.
I concede that people would have bought into the book with some hope of that kind of religious mystery themes, but I don't know how many actually would have finished the book

>>18490719
if ur true italian tell me ur take on this

>>18488986
Compared to joyce its extremely forgiving.

>>18491259
It's terribly chosen and not "clever" at all.

>>18493747
Portrait of the Artist not FW

>>18493307
Yawn, I'm Italian not dumb, I'm really not interested in a Strega award 2016 book

>>18492942
>I mean, Dan Brown is a thing.
Conspiracy theories combined with a (pseudo) secular hot take (i.e. "historical" Jesus) (Brown) versus esoteric factoids about specific denominations of monks combined with the portrayal of obscure historical actors (e.g. an inquisitor most wouldn't know was a real person, especially considering the internet wasn't a thing when ITNOTR was published) (Eco). Completely different.

>>one of the 20 best selling works of all time
>>still beloved by normie parents
Two blatant lies, retard.

>>18494482
Top 30 and still well liked
No reason to be upset anon

>>18489328
>imagine believing your thousand year old nation is a made up melting pot concept like burgerland
Hollywood did a number on the west. You know who’s to blame for that.

>>18494482
By wiki's counting (which excludes holy texts or political treatises, so no Little Red Book) it's #20 *if* you only count Harry Potter once

>>18489856
>don’t work for shekelstein corporation
>instead slave away in the company owned by the state controlled by shekelstein
so this is the true power of communism...

>>18491259
>>18493761
I thought it was nice and clever.

>>18494575
>>18493761
I thought it was nice too

bump

>>18489245
You really think a guy who devoted 50% of his working life as an academic to the Middle Ages thought this? Are you fucking retarded?

>>18495733
On Eco you're right but I regret to inform you there is arguably no discipline among the humanities more suffocated with conspicuously progressive oikophobics than the medievalists

>>18489096
Is Shogun too long to be airport fiction? Maybe I'm just a weeb, but it's comfy as. There's a lot of repeated shit in it though, definitely no need for it to be as long as it is.

>>18488986
Yeah, anglophilic liberal empiricism will always get pushed hard.

>>18488986
Because it skips the full-blown schizo pomo style and also has a compelling mystery and easily discernible, engaging characters. Kind of like a Don DeLillo novel.

>>18489104
Dostoevsky.

>>18489455
Finnegans Wake, The Tunnel, pretty much anything by Pynchon.

>>18495964
>skips the full-blown schizo
I know it's not what you meant but goddamn that hallucination sequence in the beginning

i don´t know but i can attest that every single italian household has at least one copy of the name of the rose

>>18496838
lol no

>yfw everyone forgets how you openly supported terrorists at the beginning of the Years of Lead by signing a letter with other 50 members of the italian intellighenzia
>then you also sign, with other 800 valuable thinkers, a shitstorm against a police commissioner (wrongly accused of having killed an anarchist) who is then killed as a result of the hate campaign you took part in
PCI was a good thing for the country but these fucking people were dangerous

>>18498017
double based Eco

>>18497948
when i went to italy, that was the case

>>18499805
Then you only talked to people from the middle/upper middle class and/or urbanites

>>18500397
yes, that´s right

>>18488986
It's almost like most people are actually capable of learning and taking interest in detailed things and you aren't special for reading books and going on an image board

>>18493207
This. It was the Da Vinci Code of the day when people still had attention spans of more than one page.

>>18495975
kek
good one

>>18489515
>>18489538
sell me on Eco. is he based/natty?