I just got done reading (listening to) "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, by Umberto Eco.
Oy.
I enjoyed "The Island of the Day Before", and "Baudolino" was fairly interesting. I even kind of enjoyed "The Name of the Rose". But "Faucult's Pendulum" was incoherent babbling, and "The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana" can be called nothing other than the ravings of a madman. How people can call it good writing is beyond me. But, I valiantly soldiered on through it, and finished it. The last chapter, in particular, is very trying. The first half of the book is Eco showing off all the great stuff he has ever read. The second half is more of that, but with a little bit of an interesting war-time story mixed in. But this eventually becomes less and less coherent until it is simply an increasingly insane dream sequence.
In case you wondered, I don't recommend this.
_Faoucalt's Pendulum_ is a meditation on deconstruction masqueraded as a novel. I think it's brilliant, but I can certainly understand how someone might think it's incoherent---my affection may stem from having had to slog through deconstruction as a Literature major in college, and enjoying it just validates the time I spent doing that. :)
I am a bit baffled how you can call _Loana_ "the ravings of a madman", though---whether you liked it or not, I thought it the most straightforward novel he's ever written.
Regardless of our disagreements, though, I've long enjoyed following your blog via Planet Apache.
Cheers,
Mike.
give me eco any day rather than the dumbed-down version (dann brown).
I haven't yet subjected myself to Dan Brown, and haven't yet decided if I'm going to. The whole "everything is a grand conspiracy" thing seems so profoundly unlikely to me. People can barely get along with other people for days at a time. The notion that that cooperation can span centuries seems completely absurd.
Of course, there's the Catholic Church. Hmmm.
As for the "ravings of a mad man" bit, I had just gotten done with the final chapter, which is a dream sequence with every character from every book he has ever read singing show tunes. Hardly the sanest thing I've ever experienced. It was a relief to be done with it.
To the best of my knowledge I've read all of Dan Brown's books, in rapid fire sucsession in a drug and illness induced haze. The illness lasted longer than his writings.
They're not horrible books, but I don't think they deserve the widespread praise they've received. In terms of reading level I would probably put them in the "Young Adult" section at the library.
I think it's fair to say Dan Brown writes books that are intended to become movies---there's the implication of depth without the thing itself, plenty of twists and turns, every chapter ends with some revelation or cliffhanger, etc.
And my reaction to reading _The DaVinci Code_ was that I would have been better served to just re-read _Foucault's Pendulum_.
FWIW, I guess I reacted to the "mad man" comment the way I did because it seemed obvious to me that the main character was dying, and this was what flashed through his head during that final stroke---rather than him going mad.