Kant and the Platypus – Umberto Eco

Translated from the Italian by Alastair McEwen

Six months (?) and some hundred (eighty) pages in, and I had to give up. And barely on nodding acquaintance with the platypus. The pity of it is that this is a beautifully written book, but the concepts were some way beyond this average lay-person. Perhaps for the exceptional lay-person, or for the reader with some experience of philosophy, the writing and ideas would combine into an incomparable whole.

[Edit: In retrospect I notice that I forgot to say what the book does/is for. Some reviewer I am! Kant and the playpus is a collection of philosophical essays on the subjects of language and cognition. Hope that helps!]

My only criticism is really a criticism of the translation, which translates Eco’s Italian but not his Latin.

Eco begins right at the beginning. What is language? How is it formed? How do we arrive at a universal consensus?

On Chesil Beach – Ian McEwan

This is my second read of this novella.

The first time of reading was several years ago, pre-blog. On that occasion I thought the story of wedding night nerves in the fifties was well done, I appreciated the significance of a dark back story, and I was completely buying the disastrous results of a profound failure of communication.

Lighthousekeeping – Jeanette Winterson

If I’m completely honest I wasn’t expecting to be bowled over by this novel. I was expecting a well-written novel, but not an exciting novel. Hence my scruffy second-hand edition, with an eye to the price tag and not to the cover. Eugh! There are editions with lighthouses, there are editions with seahorses, but why the roses? For goodness sake! Roses?!

This limited edition would have benefitted from being a lot more limited.

Happily, this was my only negative response to the book, and appears here largely to postpone the moment when I attempt to justify my conviction that Jeanette Winterson is a subtle and wily author, whose work demands close attention.

Six Walks in the Fictional Woods – Umberto Eco

I rarely read non-fiction and I’ve never read literary criticism in book form. Ever.

Umberto Eco’s series of six Norton Lectures therefore constituted, for me, an excursion into the great unknown.

Although his thoughts were presented originally as lectures, for clarity let’s call them essays. The essays are linked by a metaphorical walk through the woods, where reading may take the empirical route to the far side provided by the empirical author, or the model reader may attempt to follow a twistier path designed by the model author. And Eco asserts that there is nothing wrong in forcing our way along paths that don’t exist:

‘It is not at all forbidden to use a text for daydreaming, and we do this frequently, but daydreaming is not a public affair; it leads us to move within the narrative wood as if it were our own private garden.’

The Mysterious Flame of Queen Loana – Umberto Eco

The Name of the Rose did for me some years ago, but Mysterious Flame came up by chance and… what the heck.

I don’t suppose Umberto is ever going to be a favourite of mine, but this novel was readable, enjoyable in parts, and, in retrospect, somewhat impressive. (I qualify with a ‘somewhat’ not out of condemnation, but because I remain unconvinced that I really understood what Eco was doing.)