Foucault's Pendulum

Rating:
Summary: A Great Soporific
Review: After reading a mass of raves about Humberto Eco's "Foucalt's Pendulum," I bought the book, and now am more convinced than ever that many tomes are purchased because leaving them on one's coffee table for visitors to see indicates the host is a with-it intellectual.

I found the book nearly illegible, and a hard read, which I forged through, only to find no real pay off. Perhaps it''s the translation, but in spite of the sporadic kitschy references and smart... humor, I found the result unfunny, uninteresting, and a total waste of time.

David Kramer

Rating:
Summary: Some people just don't get it ...
Review: Oh ... you want entertainment? Second door to the left.

(They should really put an "Adult Advisory" on this book.

CONTAINS: no Hollywood, no simple plot, no shallow characters, some foreign languages, lots of historical details. Plus it's way too long.

Guess this book was never ment for the US-public. Shame though.
People could actually LEARN something here...)

Rating:
Summary: Great idea, terrible execution.
Review: This book deserves at least one star for appreciable erudition, a small amount of humor and a more generous dollop of wit. The "Department of Oxymoronic Books" and a fantasy depicting Sir Francis Bacon as the Evil Overlord of the World are genuinely very, very funny. But there isn't enough of that kind of thing to justify wading through this interminable tome.

The story concerns a publisher of crank conspiracy theory books, who invents a game involving his computer: he programs it with pieces of the books he publishes, and random cultural tidbits, to see what conspiracy the computer will generate; the next thing he knows, an apparent real conspiracy is afoot to discover what the computer has discovered.

This plot alone would make for fifty different great novels, but unfortunately Pendulum isn't even one. The plot doesn't even begin until three-fifths of the way through the novel, and by then the reader no longer cares. This should have been Grand Opera reduced to comic farce, and instead is comic farce that inexplicably becomes Grand Opera - and with an ugly, unsatisfying, and bizarre punch-line, besides.

... you don't need three Ph.D.'s to understand this book, though a bit of preliminary research into the Knights Templar and the occult would certainly help. It's just that the book really has nothing to say, except that there's nothing of importance to say. It isn't worth the long, often boring, meandering, pointless journey, just to be suckered into a Monty Python routine that ultimately isn't funny, or even satisfying. It has some interesting tidbits of intellectual titillation along the way, but certainly not enough to make the book worth sifting through. Overall, it's rather like the crashing boor who takes up your entire night promising a good conversation, but instead merely washes his head at you until you can't think straight.

Rating:
Summary: Utterly Pretentious
Review: To be candid, I've not yet completed the book, but I just find it to be very pretentious. It contains lots of fancy words and apparent philosophical discourses, but none of it seems to make any real sense. It alludes to various elements of Kabbalah and mysticism but I cannot seem to understand the relevance of any of it. And lots of the dialogue seems to fail both on an absurdist level and on a comedy level- the book is uniquely unfunny. This seems like the type of book that high school rejects would read (or at least own) in order to seem like they have some cool, alternative identity, but the book just is very hollow. One section towards the beginning has ten or so pages of the guy trying to guess his friend's computer's password, and he tries all the permutations of God's name, and then God's name backwards, etc, and does all this ridiculous detective work based on high school mathematics. Everyone knows that anyone who picks a password picks an entirely random alphanumeric jumble. NO ONE I know has ever picked a password that has some true meaning. Another part of the book has this guy going on and on about how spiritual and mystical and powerful a word processor is, because no one knows what he deleted, and the edited portions reflect some sort of unfulfilled will which parallels divine will, the hallmark of the first Sephirah; it is a failed attempt at absurdism and humor. Very large sections of text appear to be subconscious ramblings that the author thinks makes very deep sense, but really is just arbitrary words that don't even sound poetic let alone make sense. It reminds me of the words that run through my head when I am just about to wake up; at that point I feel like I am envisioning a grand piece of writing but when I wake up I realize it was just mindless babble. Obviously the author has never awoken.

Rating:
Summary: Brilliance in a Bottle
Review: I found myself at my Social Studies teacher's desk (I'm in 8th grade) while he was fiddling with a projector, he asked me, "Have you heard of Umberto Eco?"
"No?"
He grinned.
He told me that he enjoyed him very much, but there was a general fight over the legitimacy of his work. I browsed through the reviews here at Amazon and figured, "I'll give it a go."
I recieved the book today and already I am engrossed in this book. I honestly suppose I should review AFTER I've finished the book, but there's no real need: the magic is still here.
Umberto Eco will have you scrambling for a dictionary, and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I was challenged from the start, sifting through my dictionary and adoring more and more of the narrative voice until finally I closed the book and decided to write this review- let me say this, Umberto Eco is and will be, for a long, long time, one of my favorite storytellers. He has a unique voice you couldn't want to trade away after the first few pages, archaec language or not.
Buy this book now, or you should die a horrible, painful death.

Rating:
Summary: An ultimately frustrating endeavor
Review: Eco's characters uncover a dizzying array of historical curiosities. And reading about them (to the extent that they're true) is fascinating. Unfortunately, the tremendous plot set up that they comprise leads to no payoff whatsoever. Of course, this might be Eco's point, but that doesn't make me any less dissatisfied with the outcome.

Rating:
Summary: Eco must be laughing
Review: I will start by saying that this book is incredibly dense, as most reviewers have mentioned. However, if you are willing to not understand every last historical and occult reference, this book is absolutely fascinating. I fell completely into Eco's trap. I tried to follow his descriptions of the occult, puzzling out what it could all mean. I was intrigued by hints at "the Plan" and attempted to figure out just what this plan could be. Upon reaching the end of the novel, I felt like I had been duped, but brilliantly so. There is no plan, it is all fiction, yet I, just like characters such as Aglie and Bramanti, had fallen into the trap of believing. Eco truly got the last laugh.

Rating:
Summary: Tour de Force (and other French phrases)
Review: Right off the bat, you need to know that I am listening to the abridged audio cassette version of this book. I bought the book while I was in college, but never got around to reading it. It looked like one of those books I should have, but too dense for me to actually read. Sort of like the Lord of the Rings, which just seemed so large and intimidating (both in volume and hype). And both seemed to have large bits of politics and major digressions. I got up to page 4. I still have the bookmark in place.

So here I am comparing Foucault's Pendulum to The Lord of the Rings. A fascinating thing happens when you listen to an abridged book on tape, or watch the movie. The plot is condensed in such a way that the art of the story jumps out at you. I am sure this is the case with the Lord of the Rings movies.

When I first listened to Foucault's Pendulum, I appreciated much of it, but I don't think I got a lot of it. Too many odd phrases and mintuae about the Knights Templar and the Rosecrucians. Later I read a book on the subject (Born in Blood by John J Robinson) and now I'm listening to it again.

AH. Now I understand, and while the ending will no longer be a surprise (though it was a bit of a letdown, but then, it must be given the subject matter) I appreciate everything so much more. Umberto Eco's brain is filled with facts, and the connections he makes are fascinating. He could write a non-fiction book on the subject, but instead chooses to write a fiction book, wherein they describe numerous so-called scholary works on the subject. All of which exist in Eco's brilliant mind.

There is a genre of book that re-writes history, advances various conspiracies, throws fake or ill-referenced footnotes at you and sell fairly well. Such as the aforementioned Born in Blood. They're easy to write for anyone steeped in the Genre. The 3 main characters of this book run a publishing company specializing in such books.

The twist is, they start to take it seriously. There's a further twist upon that one, and another twist on that, but I don't want to give away too much of the plot.

Tim Curry is marvelous, and he pronounces things you would never figure out on your own. If you know who the Knights Templar, the Knights of the Rosy Cross, and the Masons are, and know the difference between them, pick up a copy of this book (or tape).

I've enjoyed everything I've ever owned from Audio Renaissance and would buy from them again in a heartbeat. I also reccommend that anyone with an interest in things mysterious also check out the Pratum book company. One would almost think this book company sprang out of the pages of Foucault's Pendulum.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent, as far as weird books go
Review: I could almost ask what the hell this was all about. It is amazing how well a book with so much material that it would take a very high degree of learning in well-nigh useless subjects to understand, a plot so slow-moving you barely notice it at all, to my mind rather weird characters (who can, it seems, only talk in Philosophy) and a slightly obscure ending can, as proven by this one, work.
First, I would not recommend this to anyone who does not want to let their minds get strongly involved, as that is an absolute necessity (so people who think Philip Athans writes well, stay away).
There is really little more that needs to be said, because there is not much point in describing the plot either; basically, it is about some kind of a weird (apparently) fictional, historical conspiracy. The basic idea, though, is that if you like weird, intellectual writing (like I do), this book is for you. Somehow, I find my powers of description rather exhausted if I try to say anything more about it.

Rating:
Summary: Best book I ever read
Review: Changed some of my ways of thinking of religion and humanity.
Not an easy ride. But a skill.