Foucault's Pendulum: A Playful Metafictional Mystery About the Act of Reading

As initiates into the Orden del Cruz Rosado, Umberto, Dan and I pondered on the best means by which we could draw attention from our Hermandad, and concluded that hiding it in plain sight was our best chance. Hence was born the basis for Foucault's Pendulum, and I must say, Umberto exceeded my wildest hopes in inventing a tale so phantasmagorical only Branch Davidians, UKIP supporters and the pope could possibly believe it (though I'm afraid Dan's limitations meant he could only manage something that some ordinary people actually took seriously).Three guys - erudite Casaubon, neurotic Belbo and mystic Diotallevi - at a dodgy publishing business concoct a fantasy conspiracy around the Templars which ultimately goes bad and comes back to bite them where it hurts. The fantasy is finely constructed, and draws upon texts ancient and modern, some of them in "foreign" so those who don't understand foreign feel there's a bit more depth to the plot.All sorts of stuff gets thrown into the ring, including cabala, Knights of the Round Table, the masons, alchemists and Argonauts, and what party would be complete without the Rosicrucians?People get very bamboozled by numbers, I told him, so numbers are very important, especially those divisible by three, so we get three publishing men, paralleling the holy trinity, the Roman triumvirate, Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky, and for that matter the Three Stooges, Mary, Mungo and Midge, and Andy Pandy, Loobyloo and Teddy. Making the three up to four is the sinister head of the publishing house, Garamond (a stroke of genius naming him after a typeface); hence the jest midway through about the Gospels themselves being a joke grown out of control becomes a metaphor for the whole, as Garamond brainstorms a moneymaking ruse involving the duping of gullible hermeticists.The Druids, naturally, are at the root of everything. Maybe. Or maybe it's the Grail. Then again it could be the suave Agliè, channelling some superannuated or possibly immortal Comte. But then again it could be the Zionists, although there's the possibility that "their" Protocols were misattributed, with "Ismail" being transposed with "Israel". It's history as spelling error. Cock up, not conspiracy. Where's the spellchecker when you need to avert the apocalypse?Umberto has used all sorts of devices to get the story over, including files found on a computer, but mostly he uses the kinds of implausible, contrived conversations found in 1920s satirical novels-of-ideas such as those by Aldous Huxley. And funny? It's so funny that the humour appears to have gone right over some people's heads.Perhaps the funniest moment is when Casaubon's wife Lia points out that the document that triggered the whole fantasy is nothing more sinister than a faded medieval shopping list, and proceeds to prove it in a manner matching any of Casaubon's own "proofs".But the best episode comes in chapter 73, with Belbo's derivative noodlings on his computer having a dream-like quality similar to the Hades section of Ulysses, whose author is joined in a kind of Eng Lit medley which references Finnegan's Wake (Joyce's everyman, Here Comes Everybody), The Waste Land (Madame Sosostris) and the Shakespeare authorship non-controversy, attributing the bard's work to Bacon ("Bacon was a pig," he quips).I'm sure some of the other chapters are as allusion-heavy as this one - Umberto always had his nose stuck in some book or another, some of them wholly imaginary judging by some of the epigrams heading each chapter - but this chapter plays nicely to my particular speciality, as he probably knows.At the end, I told Umberto, there should be a convoluted denouement, featuring lots of faux-foreign incantations, blokes in dodgy cloaks (he himself wanted a Star Wars angle) and a girl on roofies. Think Apocalypse Now! but without decapitated farm animals... Boy, did he go OTT on that one! I mean, I've read some well-past-credible conspiracy theories before - Kennedy, Area 61, Opus Dei (hmm, on second thoughts that's one of Dan's more credible ones) - but the contrivances he injected at the end here blow all my suggestions away.So all I can say is, "Well done, Umberto old mate. You exceeded all my expectations."

The book was delivered really quickly and in perfect condition. Bought it just because it was hardback as I hate these paperback books, they won't live long enough to be read by my grandchildren!Anyways, after I've read The Name of the Rose, The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana, the Prague Cemetery, I thought it is time to get this masterpiece. Good thing I did not start reading it before other Eco's books as you need a lot of background knowledge to really like it. Even though other books were not about templars and stuff, they still referred to them. It was really a hardcore book. It took me like two weeks to finish and in the end I was getting a bit bored of the whole historical aspect, it seemed too scientific to entertain much, but glad I went through with it. I don't remember much of the plot now, but the fact that that made up 'Plan' is in fact a reality.... It sort of reminded me of the movie 'Rosemary's baby' where the main character was giving birth to Satan's baby and then was murdered by real life satanists. Again fiction becoming reality. Just that in Foucault's Pendulum is fiction becoming reality being fiction. It was a hard read, if you like history fiction I would suggest Prague Cemetery as it was easier to read for me, this requires much more background knowledge of the templar history to really enjoy it and Eco's writing style is a bit difficult if you've not encountered it before.

Expected a lot more from this book,it's just too long and could have been edited down to about 400 pages in my opinion.I read a review where they said the ending blew them away and made all the hard work worth it,well it wasn't. I knew by about 400 pages in.The author puts too much of his own input I think,the theories are never given any credence,it's a work of fiction,I'm not going to read a book this length just for the author to basically say "Conspiracy theories are invented by people who can't cope with the demands of life"REALLY???635 pages and only about 200 of them devoted to actual plot.The characters are weak and are extras in their own story.There's also a certain amount of Intellectual superiority on the authors side,SO many names and its like a maze just trying to get through it at times,one of the few books I've actually thought about about flinging at the wall,but I persisted through the dense text thinking there would be some kind of big pay off at the end,but there wasn't.All that hard work for nothing,I kind of wished it had been true that the "Plan" was real,at the end of the day it's a work of fiction,no reason to think you are better than the story you've created.Now I know people will say "It was supposed to be that way,to make you one of the characters in the story",but here's the thing,at no point did I think the theories were true,not for a moment and this is it's biggest fault.The author can't allow himself with his big massive intellect to allow himself to submerge himself in his characters,it's basically "They're mad and you're mad if you think this is true"It only gets good when there is actual plot,towards the end it started to pick up and I thought "Yes this it,the big payoff",but no,it goes back to mindless rambling,expected so much more,the effort was just not worth it.

An unusual read; very cleverly researched and cynical take on modern(?) 'mystery cults'.A story that helps explain the origin of legends and what lies beneath them; that is nothing but someone with a vivid imagination, oh, and a plan of course!