6 ms·

Why? I was planning on reading it as was recommend to me as one of Eco's better books.

• seren 11y ago
  It is a tortuous but great book. I would even say that the obsession of the narrator and his close friends can look a bit like people completely involved in their startup (and their own little world).
  • eru 11y ago
    Die Blendung (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-F%C3%A9_(novel) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-F%C3%A9_(novel)) is also worth reading, if you like that kind of thing.
• lmm 11y ago
  It's just an extended strawman of conspiracy theory. None of the major characters is sympathetic. It felt very misanthropic. And it's bloated by Stephenson-esque digressions, but they're somehow much less interesting than Stephenson's - partly because the primary plot is too weak to sustain you through them.
  • selimthegrim 11y ago
    The end drags a little, but I thought Belbo was sympathetic. Really, I think it's a book you get a lot more if you're swimming through academia and reading half a dozen jargon laden over interpreting articles a day. It's a very effective pastiche of Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer, and if there was any justice should have killed their careers.
    • lmm 11y ago
      > It's a very effective pastiche of Dan Brown and Jeffrey Archer, and if there was any justice should have killed their careers. That's exactly the mean-spiritedness I take the most issue with. Those guys are fun. Why not let people enjoy them? Fundamentally Foucault's Pendulum fails as a pastiche of them because it doesn't capture their positive side.
      • bshimmin 11y ago
        I personally think it was very clever of Eco to write a pastiche of The Da Vinci Code 15 years or so before it was published. That aside, Foucault's Pendulum is undeniably quite hard work, but he really does cover a fascinating breadth of material in there.
        • mcguire 11y ago
          It's actually a pastiche of Brown's sources, the conspiracy theories that Brown (and others) takes entirely too seriously. That's why I can't take him seriously.
        • selimthegrim 11y ago
          Obviously what I meant was a pastiche of the genre. It should have killed their careers in the crib.
      • mcphage 11y ago
        I have to disagree, I thought Foucault's Pendulum was a lot of fun. Not as funny as some of his other books, but still had some amusing moments. And it did like its characters, even if they were self-destructive (although it didn't mind being a little smarter than them, but that's not mean-spirited).
    • ZeroGravitas 11y ago
      I always assumed Dan Brown was ripping off Foucalt's Pendulum. Since Eco's book was published in 1988, and Dan Brown's first book in 1998 it's definately not a pastiche of him directly.