Harper Lee and Umberto Eco

I have read only one book of Harper Lee's and a couple of Umberto Eco's. But what  happened this week is a double tragedy. Both died within a couple of days of each other.

To Kill a Mockingbird is a classic. It portrays a story set during apartheid in America, told through the eyes of a kid whose father is a lawyer. He (the lawyer) represents a black (coloured or negro were terms used earlier) man accused falsely of a crime. Though I don't remember the novel clearly, it made a huge impact at the time I read it. I also remember watching the film many years ago. It is timeless, because issues of racism never really go away.

Umberto Eco is an author I discovered only about five years ago. He wrote a few novels, one of which called The Name of the Rose, I have read. This is a murder mystery set in an old abbey in olden times. It is a bit long-winded, but gripping, and the atmosphere is built up well. I appreciated the book more than the movie starring Sean Connery. 

Eco also wrote some intellectual essays that were about politics, sports, the human life and condition. I found them very stimulating, and will probably read more of him, because I agreed with a lot of his thoughts.

The Name of the Rose- Film Review

I caught this by chance on the World Movies channel. The book (by Umberto Eco, translated from the Italian) I had read a couple of years ago. This is a classical tale of ancient Italy, with intrigue in an abbey where there is a large library of handwritten and translated tomes from around the world.

It is such a tome translated from the Greek that becomes the reason for the intrigue, and murder, because it has the potential to challenge the existing dictates of the Church. How? It advocates doubt and laughter. And it is written by Aristotle. So scared is one of the older monks there that he prevents the book's discovery, and kills anyone who finds it or tries to. There are sidelights like a witch-hunt, and the love story of the young monk with a village girl who gets accused of being the witch.

Brother William, a somewhat maverick monk, along with his understudy, figures out the truth, but not before a lot of drama happens on this remote hill-top abbey. The story is engrossing, and Sean Connery in the lead puts in a credible performance. Do watch it if you get a chance.

Inventing the Enemy by Umberto Eco

A good collection of essays by the guy who writes some good stuff. At least, some of the essays are good. Particularly, the title essay. He says everyone needs an enemy, and the U.S. was getting depressed (after the Cold War with the USSR ended) before Osama handed them a new one via nine-eleven. He says we tend to invent enemies if there no real ones, and usually attribute qualities to them that we abhor- like bad-smelling, thieving, good-for-nothing etc. or murdering, lazy, ugly, or worse. He actually quotes several authors who describe certain sets of people in these terms. Makes sense! All our regional/ethnic  jokes are based on this principle, anyway.

There are some idle thoughts in another one as to why Utopias are always on an island. And many other pieces on diverse themes like the excesses in Victor Hugo's novels. He says one excess may sound stupid in a novel, but a lot of excesses piled on make the novel or story interesting!

Well, for sheer range of the stuff he writes about- like living by proverbs (all your actions are according to proverbs, because they are the source of wisdom- it is worth a look. Some of them are a little boring, maybe due to the translation.

A Book about Books

I am now halfway into "This is not the end of the Book", a conversation between two authors, one of whom is Umberto Eco. I am not familiar with the other, a French writer. But they have a freewheeling conversation about the future of the book. That's what the book is about. Ain't it a novel idea?

Early into the conversation, one of them pokes fun at a futurologist who made a few stupid predictions at a Davos gathering, pointing out that futurology is a dicey business, and the only thing known about it is that it will be a surprise-that's why it is the FUTURE, and not something else.

Anyway, the context of their discussion is ways of preserving learning, history, culture through books, scrolls, digital media, film, etc. They convincingly argue that we have already lost a lot of stuff, such as the work of some excellent Greek playwrights, because someone thought them unworthy of preservation in libraries. This kind of filtered reality of cultures and realities past is all that we will get.

They also persuasively argue that storage media formats keep changing so fast that it is confusing to learn for individuals and institutions, as to which media to use for the long haul- we have had CD ROMs, VCDs and DVDs in a short span of time. They seem relatively unworried about the e-book taking over the normal book, within limits of unpredictability, of course. Many more insights on various things are peppered into the book of conversations. A great read. I have found Umberto Eco an original thinker, though I have only read two or three of his books/essays. Hope to read some more. An aside is that both these gentlemen own something like 30-40,000 books.