After a long time, I thought I will try fiction again and followed up on suggestions in Kerala Community. So when someone asked me what books I wanted as gifts, I named Foucault's Pendulum as one of them.So there I began, from under the Pendulum , and travelled through millennia of conspiracies, along with the three main characters...
The story, intricately woven with a rich tapestry of history, theological theories, metaphysical speculation and pages and pages of mumbo-jumbo, is told in agonising details through one of the three protagonists. Close to 90% of the book builds a complicated consipracy theory, which, like my Orkut friends had mentioned before, pales the much more popular "Da Vinci Code" in expanse and details.
However, just when you think the book is merely a much more complicated and intellectual version of the Dan Brown quickie and feel let down, Eco draws an anti-climax. And that too such a one that it elicits a sense of ridiculousness mixed with irony and surprise from the reader.
Essentially, this offering from the Milan-based semiotics expert is one that pulls the rug from underneath the feet of those who love to weave conspiracy theories--particularly those of occult and metaphysical stripes.
However, while the anti-climax is the highpoint (after a really drab monologue, I felt), it also carries the biggest failing of the book. While poo-poohing the seekers of non-existant occult meanings in everything--right from Kissan jam bottles, Kingfisher desktop calendars and Nescafe coffee vending machines to tectonic shifts and historical paradigms--Eco goes to the other extreme of whitewashing every speculation as mindless chatter and every doubter as a diabolical deviant who will face the wrath of the REAL power -- whatever that is...
Anyways, the book to failed to rekindle the fire for fiction reading in me . however, Im not gonna give up... Moby Dick... here I come...
