Foucault's Pendulum

Amazingly detailed and, at the same time, convoluted. Very enjoyable and challenging to read.I couldn't put it down! Great!

"...if there had to be a cosmic plot, we could invent the most cosmic of all.""Foucault's Pendulum" is a book rich in history and deep in mystery. Even when you reach the end, you may not be entirely sure what just happened. And of course, considering the subject matter, that is entirely the point.The story centers around one Casaubon, a student writing a paper about the Knights Templar. By chance, he meets Jacopo Belbo, a book editor working for a small publisher in Milan. They strike up a fast friendship, and Casaubon shortly begins working for the same publisher, helping them to gather facts and imagery for a new series of books they are publishing.Casaubon, Belbo, and another editor named Diotallevi take a morbid interest in the subject matter of the many books that are brought to them. The prospective authors, who they call "the Diabolicals," present them with far-fetched ideas about global historical conspiracies and a centuries-old plot to somehow rule the world from the shadows. While each story is different, the three men can see common threads running through all of them, and on their own time they explore the idea further themselves, just for the fun of it.Using an early model of a word processor (celverly named Abulafia, after the Hebrew Kabbalah scholar), they begin borrowing random concepts from the work of the Diabolicals and stringing them together. They include other sources as well, just to mix it up a bit. What they discover is what they call the Plan, and it could be the most important conspiracy theory in the history of the modern world, involving the Rosicrucians, the Jewish Kabbalah, Masonic rituals, Napoleon, the Nazis, and of course at the center of it all, the Knights Templar, spanning over 600 years of European history... or, it could just be a huge coincidence.What makes "Foucault's Pendulum" such a great novel is not just how it strings the different pieces of the puzzle together (which it does masterfully), nor simply how it makes it whole idea so compelling (which it also does well), but how, simulataneously, it makes you question everything you're reading. Right up until the end (and even beyond), Eco keeps you guessing as to what is "real" and what is not. Where other authors, covering similar subjects, make the conclusions predictable or melodramatic, Eco manages to find a place where the reader is never really sure if what they're reading about is fact, fiction, or something in between. The conclusion is subtle, and leaves nagging doubts in the reader's mind.The history presented in the book is top-notch, and it's never presented in a way that is insulting or "dumbed down" for the reader. Many books like this tend to include long, painfully obvious passages of exposition, but with Eco one never feels like the information is being presented by sacrificing the story. He manages exposition quite well, and everything that is presented matches the needed context of story and the characters.The characters themselves have depth, and their dialogue never fails to make them real for the reader. I particularly enjoyed one part, early on, when the three new friends discuss a School of Comparative Irrelevance, a course of studies for useless or impossible subjects, such as "Urban Planning for Gypsies," "Morse Syntax," and "The Phonetics of the Silent Film." This passage served many purposes. On the surface level, it was extremely amusing. It also told the reader a great deal about each of the main characters in an efficient, transparent way. Finally, it serves as foreshadowing of the far broader and deeper invention these characters would soon be embarking upon. To accomplish so much in just a few pages of (primarily) dialogue is the mark of a gifted author.Through the course of the book Casaubon has many different experiences, both mystical and mundane. Abulafia becomes more than a simple word processor, it becomes a source of truth and another veil of mystery to be pulled aside. Belbo tries to reconcile his sardonic nature with the mystery they seem to be uncovering, trying to maintain a scholarly distance while becoming more and more entranced with the story beneath the stories they hear. And Diotallevi ties everything they learn in with his own beliefs, and what truth means to him.In the end, "Foucault's Pendulum" is a story about faith, and both the wonderful and terrible things a powerful belief can accomplish. It is also about how different people can take the same facts and each will interpret them in their own way, often wildly different from one another. Eco conveys his ideas via a compelling, original story, and in so doing makes we, the readers, think about what he has to say. It is not the facts themselves that are important, but only the connections we make between them. Perhaps, in the end, it is the interpretations, not the facts themselves, which shape beliefs... and therefore shape the events of history."But I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth."

Tonight, even though I’m suffering from a nasty upper respiratory infection, I finished one of my goals for this year.I finished Umberto Eco’s novel, Foucault’s Pendulum. For me, it was a challenging but worthy read. The novel weaves a tremendously long and detailed road through just about every religious conspiracy theory ever created. The protagonist and his friends are trying to create what I would term the Unified Crackpot Theorem. And hijinks ensue.It was an arduous read, but completely worth it in the end. Oh, the bon mots!“But now I have come to believe that the whole world is an enigma, a harmless enigma that is made terrible by our own mad attempt to interpret it as though it had an underlying truth.”“We always have to blame our failures on somebody else, and dictatorships always need an external enemy to bind their followers together. As the man said, for every complex problem there’s a simple solution, and it’s wrong.”“Proust was right: life is represented better by bad music than by a Missa solemnis. Great Art makes fun of us as it comforts us, because it shows us the world as the artists would like the world to be. The dime novel, however, pretends to joke, but then it shows us the world as it actually is—or at least the world as it will become.”“Beware of faking: people will believe you. People believe those who sell lotions that make lost hair grow back. They sense instinctively that the salesman is putting together truths that don’t go together, that he’s not being logical, that he’s not speaking in good faith. But they’ve been told that God is mysterious, unfathomable, so to them incoherence is the closest thing to God. The farfetched is the closest thing to a miracle.”“You are wise. But the greatest wisdom, at that moment, is knowing that your wisdom is too late. You understand everything when there is no longer anything to understand.”Highest recommendation.

I enjoyed this novel as a teenager but rereading it (in my 60's) has not been rewarding. There's an interesting idea in there but it drags on & on with lots of name dropping & references and very little actual insight or development. The characters are one dimensional and don't act (or speak) like real people, the motivations come out of nowhere and the action makes no sense. Sad.

This is a wonderful sideswipe at the conspiracies found in fiction like Dan Brown and "fact" like the Holy Blood and the Holy Grail.It shows what someone who understands the background to these stories can do with them, creating the conspiracy to end all conspiracies.You have to let yourself go with the flow of the book, don't try and second guess the plot (even if you're right it's irrelevant), see where you get taken, look at the sites on the way.It is also very funny.

How does it end? Why can’t I find a film about this book. I would cast Tom cruise as the elderly athlete, Dwayne Johnson as everything else with Jason statham in the wig shop. I wish Sandra bullock was younger. And Rihanna was thinner, with a smaller forehead. With a soundtrack by Terence Trent Darby and limp biscuit. Yup

Brilliant searching reflection on the shadier side of Western history. A collage of historical quotes, narrative and personal diaries, layers of propaganda and fantasy massaging credulity only to be broken down, absorbed and rehashed by publishers and self publicists. A conspiracy handbook of the cult world of secret societies set against the backdrop of Italian politics.The theme derides conspiracy theorists only to set the year for the Templar's revenge as 66 years after 1944. Whist Umberto Eco claims these things are silly nonsense he couldn't have picked a worse year as an example, but that's assuming you believe he doesn't believe in conspiracy theories.Just as his characters often own collections of rare literature such was Umberto Eco's fantastic personal library and one wonders what he came across during the research for this book. I think his point is that the more fantastic the conspiracy theory the greater the smoke screen. The question becomes, why do theories do their best to cover what they claim to be exposing. No prizes for answering that one.

Five Stars are quite rare - but this book would probably have got that first time round (have hardback and paperback copies somewhere). This purchase on Kindle was prompted by a memory sparked by something I saw on tv which made me want to look back. It is probably one of Eco's best novels - challenging to get started unless you are familiar with the background but thoroughly fascinating. It explores how secret societies and religions become powerful because of the effect on what people (will) believe. No spoilers as I'm just getting back into it, only reading a short section most days in lunchbreak!