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Books Foucault's Pendulum

Its deftness and scholarly style go with great good humour, more like Ariosto’s than Voltaire’s; and while its deadpan exposition of historic cults and mysteries is both hilarious and absorbing, its nuggets of generalising ‘wisdom’, most frequent in the book’s final chapters, never lapse into pretentiousness.

Tweet this quote Read the full piece at London Review of Books John Bayley London Review of Books 1989
The author, Dan Brown, is a character from Foucault’s Pendulum! I invented him. He shares my characters' fascinations—the world conspiracy of Rosicrucians, Masons, and Jesuits. The role of the Knights Templar. The hermetic secret. The principle that everything is connected. I suspect Dan Brown might not even exist.

Tweet this quote Read the full piece at The Paris Review Umberto Eco The Paris Review 2008

Like the movies of Ingmar Bergman, which also suggest many “profound” speculations but which fade overnight into a memory of impressive commonplaces, the novel of Umberto Eco is a structure of impressionistic illusions. Or would be, if it weren’t for the blessed injection of a blunt, tough sense of humor.

Tweet this quote Read the full piece at New York Review of Books Robert M. Adams New York Review of Books 1989