Tuesday 16 August 2005

Eco's latest

I'm as eager to get my teeth into Umberto Eco's latest as so many others were to get into the latest Harry Potter.

Eco writes with what Jose Louis Borges calls both "algebra and fire" -- in love with learning and with language, Eco constructs his many-layered stories with the ingenuity of a crossword puzzle. A professor of semiotics in his day job, Eco does sometimes make me wonder if academics simply have too much time on their hands, but if all post-modernists were as witty and sharp as Eco, I could easily be seduced.

What a ride he takes the reader on. What a labyrinth. I can't wait to try and decode this one.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Never heard of Umberto Eco... I'll check this book out.

Anonymous said...

Nothing wrong with Harry Potter by the way, Harry Potter hates Nanny-state just as much as we do- read some of the books, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is a surprisingly libertarian themed novel. Unfortunatly the Harry Potter books have been on a down-hill slide recently. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix is disastrous and frankly depressing. I haven't read the latest, but I will eventually

Berend de Boer said...

Eco? Top 5 writer in the world.

I still think his first is unsurpassed. Perhaps the Foucault’s Pendulum comes close, uncomparably better than the Da Vinci Code at least.

But who knows? I'm ready for it as well!