Eco. Dead.

I’ve been trying to write a tribute to one of my favourite novelists, who died this week.

Can’t do it.

Instead, I can only point you to my own pathetically few posts, here, here, here and here to explain why his books gave me such enormous pleasure …

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. Professor of semiotics by day and novelist by night, 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.

… and post this video, excerpted from a longer documentary, of Eco in his home, which is to say: in his library. Titled, appropriately in all respects: When a House is a Library:

What a loss.

What a great loss.