What The Manolo Is…
Manolo says, it is Tuesday, time to see what the Manolo is…
It is with some trepidation that the Manolo begins the latest of the Umberto Eco novels.
As was the case with the previous one the Manolo he has had to enforce the year long period of cooling off following the publication, during which the Manolo has had to steel his nerves for the ordeal which would follow (and this one has the pictures!).
And, yet, despite this trepidation, the Manolo he is the undoubted and ardent fan of the Eco.
Eco is my favorite author, ever in the history of history, which he knows a lot about. I know deconstruction is terribly gauche these days, but maybe that’s why I love it.
The Mysterious Flame . . even the title is poetic! . . is enormously different from his previous novels or essays, but he pulls the memoir together in the end. Stick with it; it’s transcendent.
And there is much description of fashion, natch.
Ditto on Ida’s sentiment.
Dropkick Murphys? Manolo, you’re such the man of the world!
The Giver is an incredible book.
You know there is an article on the National Geographic about shoes? It was fascinating.
Double ditto on the Eco sentiments left by Ida and Never the Bride — I too had to frequently come up for air while reading Baudolino, simply because the assault on my imagination was so unrelenting, having to constatntly exercise it…has the Manolo read An Instance of the Fingerpost, do you think?
I agree, The Diva, Ian Pears and Umberto Eco are similar. I liked “Scipio’s Dream,” better than “An Instance of the Fingerpost,” it’s shorter, too (for the serious beach reader). This Mysterious Flame sounds like it was based on a couple of true stories by neurologist Oliver Sacks, a marvelous doctor/author who has written about people with brain injuries who have turned out to provide insight into what makes us human. One of his patients had a stroke and could remember the Italian village of his childhood in extraordinary detail, and painted it obsessively, from every angle. Another had a memory loss very similar to the protagonist of this novel.
Interesting that The Diva has linked Eco and Pears. I finally had to drop Eco when on my fifth try I could not get through _The Island of the Day Before_. I finished _The Instance of the Fingerpost_ but didn’t like it. In both cases, what annoyed me was the feeling that the authors were engaging in bouts of intellectual whacking off, if I may be so crude: throwing in bits of arcana, name-dropping historical characters and incidents, and then winking at the reader as if to say “Look how clever I am!”
I’m not writing this to claim that the Manolo and previous posters have awful literary taste–I think these novels are worthy. I’m just always fascinated about the what makes certain novels touch someone when another is left cold. I loved _The Name of the Rose_ and I liked _Foucault’s Pendulum_, but with each novel Eco has moved further and further away from traditional plotting and characterization and I couldn’t keep up.
The CyndiF, she has perfectly expressed why the Manolo has become increasingly trepedatious of the Eco.
As one may imagine, the Manolo he the is fan of the playful, deconstructive erudition, however, the Eco, he has lately strayed too far from the linear for the Manolo to be completely amused.
Oooh – the Limey! Our friend did the score.
Agreed. “The Name of the Rose” and Foucault’s Pendulum” get better every time I read them. I just can’t get into his later fiction.
Queen Loana was easier to read than Baudolino (and don’t even get me started on Island of the Day Before). I loved Baudolino just for the subject matter. You don’t need to gird your loins too much for this one. I thought the last sentence was a copout, though, even for a semiotics dude.
What do you think of Pynchon and David Foster Wallace?
I was, to my surprise, blown away by _The Crying of Lot 49_. I still have to tackle _Gravity’s Rainbow_. David Foster Wallace I haven’t read: it was always my guess that the “Infinite Jest” was on the reader, for plowing through to the end.
I also LOVED crying of lot 49, it convinced me to slog through gravity’s rainbow (made it through the second time). But I still think about large bits of GR at odd moments, which means, I suppose, that I’ll have to re-read it. I liked _Mason and Dixon_. Infinite Jest I actually found pretty easy to read; it jumped around a lot temporally, but stayed pretty much in storyteller mode. But then it’s been 10 years since I read it, and my memory may have swept away all the lit crit chaff. But I can highly recommend _A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again_.
I wonder what the Manolo thinks of David Foster Wallace and Pynchon, too…but even more, does he like Donald Barthelme? Manolo’s sense of humor reminds me of Don B.’s.
With Pynchon, too, I have to steel myself and take a deep breath before I start one of his novels and then take a year or so to recover.