Of Unicorns and Satyrs and Things With No Knees

[Dave Monroe]

The New York Times
October 16, 2002
Of Unicorns and Satyrs and Things With No Knees
By RICHARD BERNSTEIN

Baudolino is a man with a story to tell. That we know
near the beginning of Umberto Eco's new novel, set
amid the wars and religious disputations of the 12th
century. He has killed someone the very day that this
novel that bears his name begins, and the slain man,
he says, had murdered Baudolino's adoptive father, the
Holy Roman Emperor, Frederick, known as Barbarossa,
the red beard. In other words, from the outset of
"Baudolino," we know that we are in for a complicated
mystery story, in the tradition of Mr. Eco's fabulous
"Name of the Rose."

It's a mystery that begins well, and ends well, too,
drenched in the scholastic logic and the intricate,
entertaining literary gamesmanship that is Mr. Eco's
territory. The problem is that while "Baudolino"
contains plenty of learning and imagination, it is so
strenuously fanciful that it becomes tedious, like a
Thanksgiving Day parade that lasts all day.

Perhaps there are those who will take delight in a
lengthy, picaresque tale that combines historical
verisimilitude with unicorns and satyrs and creatures
called ponces who had "erect legs and no knee joints"
and "phalluses, which hung from the chest." More
likely "Baudolino" will make you wonder how a
storyteller as crafty as Mr. Eco ended up producing a
novel so formulaic and cluttered as this one.

Baudolino, Mr. Eco's main character, is your classic
up-from-humble-origins adventurer. His story is told
in the form of a conversation between him and a high
Greek official named Niketas, whom Baudolino has
rescued from rampaging warriors during the Crusaders'
sack of Constantinople in 1204. Against the background
of the burning city Baudolino recounts his eventful
life, whose turning point came when, still a boy
"living with my father and mother, a few cows and a
vegetable patch," he was adopted by Frederick during
one of his campaigns in Italy.

[...]

... Mr. Eco opts out of the genre of plausible mystery
for implausible, magical fable. His novel becomes an
erudite but not very compelling mélange, some
historically grounded reimaginings of events here, a
great deal of wonderland fantasy there....

[...]

But in the page-consuming interim, "Baudolino" strays
into the territory of the ever more fantastical and in
so doing it sacrifices both its narrative strength and
the persuasiveness of its characters. To give
"Baudolino" its due, one could say that it is a sly
commentary on the nature of truth, since, after all,
Baudolino, our narrator, shows himself to be a
consummate liar (and so, almost by definition, is Mr.
Eco and any other novelist). 

We learn that the famous forged letters supposedly
written by Prester John and discovered in 12th-century
Europe, were written by Baudolino and his gang, who,
along the way, also forged a few sacred relics able to
change the course of history. Or perhaps Mr. Eco's
novel is a parody of one of those medieval or
Renaissance traveler's tales that have survived over
the centuries, like "The Travels of Sir John
Mandeville," in which fact and fantasy blended
indistinguishably together.

[...]

... "Baudolino" for all the knowledge and cleverness
possessed by its author, fails to make us care either
about its main character or the many men and monsters
that inhabit its pages.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/10/16/books/16BERN.html

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