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This is just one of many possible quotes giving a measure of how overrated Eco was and will be for the decades to come. An intellectual focusing mostly on showi
by r0muald 11y ago
This is just one of many possible quotes giving a measure of how overrated Eco was and will be for the decades to come. An intellectual focusing mostly on showing himself as much more intelligent than others, either by literary exhibitionism, nonsense metaphors on subjects he barely understood and ultimately a love for manipulation of language.
That said, his ability to do all those things with perfect execution and a not-too-well-simulated, ironic distance, makes him a top artist by any standard.
- wobbleblob 11y agoThere's an internet subculture that might appeal to you: people who write elaborate, thoroughly scathing reviews on Amazon for widely admired masterpieces. [1] http://www.salon.com/2010/04/03/mean_amazon_reviews_open2010/ http://www.salon.com/2010/04/03/mean_amazon_reviews_open2010...
- taneq 11y agoIf that quote shows how overrated he is, I should read more of his stuff.
- visakanv 11y agoInteresting. Mind recommending someone else we ought to read instead?
- galfarragem 11y agoI always recommend Italo Calvino. An underrated Italian writer IMHO. The Baron In The Trees or the Invisible Cities are a good start.
- rullopat 11y agoI remember that my teacher of Italian in high school asked us to read: "The Path to the Nest of Spiders".
- Udik 11y agoThat's Calvino's first novel, and it has a completely different style - and is much more boring as far as I remember- from everything he wrote afterwards. I think it was often chosen in Italian high schools for political reasons - it's a story about the Italian resistenza, the fight of partisans against fascists from which the modern Italian republic was born. His subsequent novels and collections of short stories depart completely from that neo-realistic style. The way to describe them is possibly "a literary Bach" - his stories seem to develop fantastic themes in an endlessly imaginative way, exploring all the possibilities afforded by the theme, (loose) internal consistency and language. My favourites are "Cosmicomics" and "The invisible cities" .
- kome 11y agoCalvino is one of the most well know Italian writer abroad. Not underrated at all.
- huxley 11y agoIncidentally translated into English by the same man that translated most of Umberto Eco's work, the late great William Weaver.
- carlob 11y agoWhile Calvino is great, I wouldn't call someone who won a Nobel prize for literature underrated.
- edko 11y agoCalvino did not win the Nobel. The latest Italian to win it was Dario Fo.
- edko 11y agoI have read all of Eco's novels and enjoy his work very much. Other authors I like are Borges, Calvino, and Mulisch.
- mcphage 11y agoI love Eco, Borges, and Calvino—but have never heard of Mulisch. I'll have to check him out—thanks!