On Eco

Rating:
Summary: A Concise Introduction to Eco's Semiotics
Review: A slim but informative introduction to Umberto Eco's work in philology and semiotics, Gary Radford's "On Eco" belongs to the Wadsworth Philosopher Series. Prefaced by Eco's somewhat ironic quote "I myself like easy books that put me to sleep immediately," the work gets underway with a cheerful introduction of itself as a self-aware text, suggesting to its reader that any notions of authorship or Gary Radford be tossed out the window. All you have in front of you is, well, a text; and one that will hopefully assist in the creation of its own Model Reader.

"On Eco" proceeds in this playful spirit, introducing Eco's work in semiotics, outlining his theories of interpretation, and finally relating these ideas to his first two novels. Intended for the general reader, the book is written in a refreshingly immediate style, virtually twinkling with wry humor and peppered with charmingly eclectic examples. Radford takes an obvious delight in selecting offbeat illustrations for Eco's theories, and his erudition ranges from Monty Python and Elvis Costello to Borges and Schopenhauer. Not above tweaking the nose of his subject, Umberto Eco quickly becomes the primary target of his own theories and obsessions - after finding his name emptied of content and cast as an "expression unit," the Professor is, among other things, deconstructed out of existence, semiotically "blown up," and placed in a hypothetical mystery novel as the killer's next victim.

Happily, amidst the humor and playfulness, Radford stays focused on his topic with admirable dexterity, covering the major elements of Eco's semiotics: expression units and content units, Model Authors and Model Readers, textual topics and inferential walks, closed and open texts, and theories of sign production. Radford is very careful to keep pace with his Model Reader, developing each topic from the previous one, backing theory with concrete examples, and patiently cross-connecting his points from chapter to chapter. While at times one desires more depth, the text provides many original quotes from Eco's works, an implicit invitation to further study the topic at its source.

The penultimate chapter, "Watching the Detectives," touches upon the semiotic nature of detective stories. Focusing on "The Name of the Rose" and "Foucault's Pendulum," Radford discusses the way each novel examines the quest for meaning, the former using semiotics to posit a potentially useful truth, the latter revealing what happens when meaning is consistently deferred and all truths are held equal.

"On Eco" ends as it began, with a brief discussion of itself as a text, one that will inevitably change the very nature of the subject it purports to study, and one that requires a reader to complete its meaning. With this in mind, "On Eco" admits that, like all books, it must be "incomplete and potentially endless."

A concise and often charming book, I recommend "On Eco" to any fan of Umberto Eco the novelist who wants to know more about Umberto Eco the professor.