Re Question regarding Umberto Eco

[marc issue robinson]

I just noticed that I sent this reply to Juan and not to the list
yesterday. So here it is for the list...


Quoth Juan Cires Martinez:
 
> I would like to ask why is "Foucult's Pendulum" so well regarded in
> critical books.  In bookstores I have often browsed through postmodern
> literature critical books looking for essays on TRP (never bought any,
> that's why I am asking this question) and I was surprised to see how
> many of them devoted a lot of pages to that book, which when I read it I
> thought it was sort of OK, but after reading GR and, specially, "The
> Illuminatus! Trilogy", I thought Eco had ripped off a lot and created
> very little.

Mmm, I thought FP was pretty good, actually, but I see what you're getting
at. It covers ground which is very well trodden, if you've been paying
attention to pomofict over the last twenty-odd years - but Eco has
credentials in the straight world - Name of the Rose sold by the skipload all
over the world, was made into a pretty reasonable film, - and Eco has his
professorship, and gets published in the Quality Press (tm) at the drop of a
hat. He is Taken Seriously, period.

Whereas I expect when (if?) Robert Anton Wilson makes a play for a mass
audience, the powers that be (recognising, if not understanding, a genuine,
subversive, card-carrying wild man of neuropolitics when they see one)
remember a previous engagement.

And Thomas Ruggles Pynchon is simply not available. ( - er, mostly, he adds,
still not quite understanding this Lotion business...)

rgds, marc.

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http://pcecef.dph.aber.ac.uk/~sybil/