First, some caveats: I’ve been ill over the last few weeks and so it took me significantly longer than it normally would to consume this book. I also don’t recommend reading semiotics, even informal semiotics such as what is present in this book, with a bad sinus cold. My concentration was not what it could have been, to say the least. Also, I firmly believe that we are all better readers of one or another sort of writing than we are of others. I am not a particularly good reader of non-fiction, and my ability to process academic work has gone down quite a bit since I left the university environment. Anything I write about this book should therefore be read with those factors in mind.
The dust jacket billed this book as a collection of informal writerly essays, although with a few exceptions (“On Some Functions of Literature”, “How I Write”) these essays are more about ways of understanding how and why specific formal literary structures function. I found some of it compelling, but ultimately dry; I can’t imagine how it must have seemed to someone without my academic background (which includes a certain degree of training in semiotics). Eco’s non-fiction style, even when translated by the incomparable William Weaver, is incredibly flat, and this book is not particularly satisfying, especially in light of the fact that The Island of the Day Before was so lacking in the vision displayed in his first two novels, and Baudolino was simply a mess (I haven’t yet read Mysterious Flame).
I’m sorry that I have so little to say about this collection; it’s just that it’s very uneven and not really worth much comment. I think Eco would have been better off saving these papers until they could have been collected with more appropriate companion pieces.
Next: Island of the Sequined Love Nun, by Christopher Moore.
