Pointless rant contender
Thursday, February 19th, 2004 06:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
caddymanWell, I cracked.*
Years ago, you see, when all the fuss was on about his being the greatest writer of the modern age, I tried to read Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. I tried once, I tried again. I Left it a few months and started over. I put it down, I picked it up. I stopped the table rocking with it and I used it as backing for a note pad. But could I finish it?
I could not.
It's that bloody door in the monastery, see. The big, carved oak door. There, I've described it in five words. If I was feeling a little more florid, I could take it up to twelve. When the purple prose is flowing, I could see it extending to twenty-five or maybe, at a push, thirty.
I have read novels shorter than that man's description of that bloody door. It's not purple prose, it's well off the ultraviolet end of the bloody writing spectrum and stretching off into ever more obscure and inaccessible wavelengths. I mean I know life was harsh in the Middle Ages, but recreating the sense of it by bludgeoning a poor, honest and well-meaning reader with more words of description that it would take to explain how to carve the damned thing in the first place.....
I like a bit of description. Where would we be without the odd adjective? Nowhere, that's where. Unfortunately, the Victorians spoilt it all with their endless and painstaking passages of description. At least they had the excuse that there was no telly, radio or computer games to be had. Signor Eco couldn't say the same.
So, no. I have never read that book. I doubt I ever will. It's that door; it's too heavy, too intricate, too ornate and simply too awe-inspiring. And did I mention dull? Yes, it is dull, too. Even reading it in a Sean Connery voice after the film (which was equal toss, or more so), didn't help.
Anyway, after that, I decided that reputation or not, I would never read an Umberto Eco book. Ever.
Except that constant nagging by a friend of mine has made me purchase and start reading Baudolino.
What a cracking romp it is, too.
And not a single bloody door in it. Maybe he's learnt his lesson.
*Cracked. Not am cracked. Though I know people of robust skullage who would dispute this assertion.
Years ago, you see, when all the fuss was on about his being the greatest writer of the modern age, I tried to read Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose. I tried once, I tried again. I Left it a few months and started over. I put it down, I picked it up. I stopped the table rocking with it and I used it as backing for a note pad. But could I finish it?
I could not.
It's that bloody door in the monastery, see. The big, carved oak door. There, I've described it in five words. If I was feeling a little more florid, I could take it up to twelve. When the purple prose is flowing, I could see it extending to twenty-five or maybe, at a push, thirty.
I have read novels shorter than that man's description of that bloody door. It's not purple prose, it's well off the ultraviolet end of the bloody writing spectrum and stretching off into ever more obscure and inaccessible wavelengths. I mean I know life was harsh in the Middle Ages, but recreating the sense of it by bludgeoning a poor, honest and well-meaning reader with more words of description that it would take to explain how to carve the damned thing in the first place.....
I like a bit of description. Where would we be without the odd adjective? Nowhere, that's where. Unfortunately, the Victorians spoilt it all with their endless and painstaking passages of description. At least they had the excuse that there was no telly, radio or computer games to be had. Signor Eco couldn't say the same.
So, no. I have never read that book. I doubt I ever will. It's that door; it's too heavy, too intricate, too ornate and simply too awe-inspiring. And did I mention dull? Yes, it is dull, too. Even reading it in a Sean Connery voice after the film (which was equal toss, or more so), didn't help.
Anyway, after that, I decided that reputation or not, I would never read an Umberto Eco book. Ever.
Except that constant nagging by a friend of mine has made me purchase and start reading Baudolino.
What a cracking romp it is, too.
And not a single bloody door in it. Maybe he's learnt his lesson.
*Cracked. Not am cracked. Though I know people of robust skullage who would dispute this assertion.